Live data from Hacker News

An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

theaiunderwriter.substack.com

331–340 of 927 posts

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of open sourcing everything and nullifying patents would benefit corporations like Disney and OpenAI vastly more than it would benefit the people. The first thing that would happen is that BigCorp would eat up every interesting or useful piece of art, technology, and culture that has ever been created and monetize the life out of it. These legal protections are needed by the people. To the Pirate Party's cre…

The original claim is false, > intellectual property [...] used over and over again, primarily by the rich and powerful, to stifle original ideas and hold back cultural innovation. There's nothing about IP which prevents you from creating your own. There are, in fact, a near infinite number of things you can create. More things than there exist stars in our galaxy. The problem with ideas is that they have to be good.…

> The problem with ideas is that they have to be good.

No they don't, look at music popular in social networks.

> and now creation will be (relatively) easy. More taste makers will be slinging content and we'll wind up in a land of abundance.

Even before the generative AI, I think we live in the era where there are more creators than ever in history: everybody today can publish their music or art without any large investments (except for instruments: they are expensive as always). I would prefer we have cheaper pianos, samples and microphones instead of worthless music-copying models.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#332
I don't condone or endorse breaking any laws.

That said, trademark laws like life of the author + 95 years are absolutely absurd. The ONLY reason to have any law prohibiting unlicensed copying of intangible property is to incentivize the creation of intangible property. The reasoning being that if you don't allow people to exclude 3rd party copying, then the primary party will assumedly not receive compensation for their creation and they'll never create.

Even in the case where the above is assumed true, the length of time that a protection should be afforded should be no more than the length of time necessary to ensure that creators create.

There are approximately zero people who decide they'll create something if they're protected for 95 years after their death but won't if it's 94 years. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same for 1 year past death.

For that matter, this argument extends to other criminal penalties, but that's a whole other subject.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#333
post #322
post #30

Idk, the models generating what are basically 1:1 copies of the training data from pretty generic descriptions feels like a severe case of overfitting to me. What use is a generational model that just regurgitates the input? I feel like the less advanced generations, maybe even because of their limitations in terms of size, were better at coming up with something that at least feels new. In the end, other than for co…

I'm not sure if this is a problem with overfitting. I'm ok with the model knowing what Indiana Jones or the Predator looks like with well remembered details, it just seems that it's generating images from that knowledge in cases where that isn't appropriate. I wonder if it's a fine tuning issue where people have overly provided archetypes of the thing that they were training towards. That would be the fastest way for…

What I'm kind of concerned about is that these images will persist and will be reinforced by positive feedback. Meaning, an adventurous archeologist will be the same very image, forever. We're entering the epitome of dogmatic ages. (And it will be the same corporate images and narratives, over and over again.)

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#334
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do restaurants work, then? You can’t copyright a recipe. Instructions can’t generally be copyrighted, otherwise someone would own the fastest route from A to B and charge every person who used it. The whole idea of intellectual property gets really weird when you try to pinpoint what exactly is being owned. I do not agree with your conjecture that big corps would win by default. Ask why would people need protecti…

Closed source - when was the last time your restaurant told you what was in, and how to make, your favourite dish? What's in Coca Cola? What are the 11 herbs and spices in Kentucky Fried Chicken? How do I make the sauce in a Big Mac?

Yes, and notably the source recipe can’t be copyrighted. Trade secrets and recipes are not copyrightable. That’s the point. We have entire vastly profitable industries built around protection of trade secrets, with no copyright in play. Competing to make make the best cola flavored beverage or the best burrito is a thing. Competing to make the best rendition of Snow White, is not. What’s the rub? They don’t seem that different at all.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we not call it "theft"? It's such a loaded term and doesn't really mean the same thing when we're talking about bits and bytes.

Only if we stop calling software distribution "piracy" under the false pretenses that anything is being stolen.

I'm OK with that too!

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am against dissolution of patents if the technology took lot of research. In this case the patent protects from others copying the result of research. However, obvious patents like "a computer system with a display displaying a product and a button to order it" should not be allowed. Also, software patents should not exist (copyright is enough).

What if all that research led to some incredible world changing for the better idea/concept/product in an open society that would benefit everyone, in the closed society only those allowed to use the patent benefit

Who would pay for the years of research in the open society?

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#337
post #137

I was really hoping that the conversation around AI art would at least be partially centered on the perhaps now dated "2008 pirate party" idea that intellectual property, the royalty system, the draconian copyright laws that we have today are deeply silly, rooted in a fiction, and used over and over again, primarily by the rich and powerful, to stifle original ideas and hold back cultural innovation. Unfortunately, i…

I think what you observe is more like a natural blowback to the prevailing idea that this is somehow beyond critique because it will fundamentally change culture and civilization forever. There's a bit of irony here too. The intellectual discourse around intellectural property, a diverse and lively one from an academic standpoint, the whole free and open source software movements, software patents, the piracy movemen…

Let's be clear. You can be for free software, against copyright, etc., and STILL be in favor of these firms being punished for violating copyright as they have. Because frankly, we -- normal people -- have always known that we would be punished if we did anything close to this: so many people have been thrown in jail, even killed themselves, because they distributed some film or hosted some books. But now, when a big corporation does it, and in doing so seeks to replace and impoverish thousands, millions of hard-working, law-abiding people, now is when we should expect the government to finally say -- oh, that copyright thing was silly all along? No. Perhaps if the deal was that the whole system would go away entirely -- that we, too, could do what these firms have done. But that's not what's being proposed. That will not happen. They want the laws to be for them, not for us, and I will always be opposed to attempts at actualizing that injustice.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#338
post #137

I was really hoping that the conversation around AI art would at least be partially centered on the perhaps now dated "2008 pirate party" idea that intellectual property, the royalty system, the draconian copyright laws that we have today are deeply silly, rooted in a fiction, and used over and over again, primarily by the rich and powerful, to stifle original ideas and hold back cultural innovation. Unfortunately, i…

How do you suggest you protect your "thing"?

* If I make a thing that is different and I get a patent - cool. * If I create a design that is unusual and I get copyright on it - is that cool?

Both concepts - patent and copyright - are somewhat controversial, for multiple reasons.

If you invented a thingie, would you not want some initial patent related protection to allow you to crack on with some sort of clout against cough CN? If you created a film/creative thang, would you not want some protection against your characters being ... subverted.

Patents and copywrite are what we have - do you have any better ideas?

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#339
post #129

Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine. One thing I would say, it's interesting to consider what would make this not so obviously bad. Like, we could ask AI to assess the physical attributes of the characters it generated. Then ask it to permute some of those attributes. Generate some random tweaks: ok but brawy, short, and a different descent. Do similarly on some clothing colors. Change the game. Hit the "rando…

Do google pay anyone when I use image search and the results are straight from their website?

This was decided in court[1] over two decades as acceptable fair-use and that thumbnail images do not constitute a copyright violation.

[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=137674209419772...

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#340
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original claim is false, > intellectual property [...] used over and over again, primarily by the rich and powerful, to stifle original ideas and hold back cultural innovation. There's nothing about IP which prevents you from creating your own. There are, in fact, a near infinite number of things you can create. More things than there exist stars in our galaxy. The problem with ideas is that they have to be good.…

This is the same argument we made in the 90s about what the web was going to do. What ended up happening was the growth of aggregators and silos like Facebook that baited everyone with ease of use into putting everything into their walled garden and then monetized it. The creators, namely the posters of the content, got nothing. The same is happening already with AI creations. Doing it yourself is work and takes some…

To be fair, people who post on Facebook get exactly what they were promised. Users of free products generally don't expect a rev share.
Post reply on HN