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The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

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Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#141

Post by froh »

Orygin wrote: post #74

Great article but I don't really agree with their take on GPL regarding this paragraph: > The spirit of the GPL is to promote the free sharing and development of software [...] the reality is that they are proceeding in a different vector from the direction of code sharing idealized by GPL. If only the theory of GPL propagation to models walks alone, in reality, only data exclusion and closing off to avoid litigation…

> The spirit of the GPL is the freedom of the user, not the code being freely shared.

who do you mean by "user"?

the spirit is that the person who actually uses the software also has the freedom to modify it, and that the users recovering these modifications have the same rights.

is that what you meant?

and while technically that's the spirit of the GPL, the license is not only about users, but about a _relationship_, that of the user and the software and what the user is allowed to do with the software.

it thus makes sense to talk about "software freedom".

last not least, about a single GPL function --- many GPL _libraries_ are licensed less restrictively, LGPL.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#143

Post by dmezzetti »

hgs3 wrote: post #140
dmezzetti wrote: post #18

[flagged]

Copyleft isn't about the software authors freedom, it's about the end-users freedom. Copyleft grants the end-user the freedom to study and modify the code, i.e. the right to repair. Contrast this with closed-source software which may incorporate permissively licensed code: the end-user has no right to study, no right to modify, and no right to repair. Ergo less freedom.

I think it makes a lot of sense for hobby software and non-commercial software. It's just tough to do in a commercial setting for a number of reasons.

So ultimately while good intentioned, you end up limiting how many people can use what you've built.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#144

Post by raincole »

scotty79 wrote: post #44
phplovesong wrote: post #25

We need a new license that forbids all training. That is the only way to stop big corporations from doing this.

We need a ruling that LLM generated code enters public domain automatically and can't be covered by any license.

It's more or less already the case though. Pure AI-generated works without human touches are not copyrightable.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#145

Post by Animats »

palata wrote: post #67

Genuine question: if I train my model with copyleft material, how do you prove I did? Like if there is no way to trace it back to the original material, does it make sense to regulate it? Not that I like the idea, just wondering. I have been thinking for a while that LLMs are copyright-laundering machines, and I am not sure if there is anything we can do about it other than accepting that it fundamentally changes wha…

There's the other side of this issue. The current position of the U.S. Copyright Office is that AI output is not copyrightable, because the Constitution's copyright clause only protects human authors. This is consistent with the US position that databases and lists are not copyrightable.[1]

Trump is trying to fire the head of the U.S. Copyright Office, but they work for the Library of Congress, not the executive branch, so that didn't work.[2]

[1] https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...

[2] https://apnews.com/article/trump-supreme-court-copyright-off...

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#146

Post by CamperBob2 »

Orygin wrote: post #74

Great article but I don't really agree with their take on GPL regarding this paragraph: > The spirit of the GPL is to promote the free sharing and development of software [...] the reality is that they are proceeding in a different vector from the direction of code sharing idealized by GPL. If only the theory of GPL propagation to models walks alone, in reality, only data exclusion and closing off to avoid litigation…

The GPL arose from Stallman's frustration at not having access to the source code for a printer driver that was causing him grief.

In a world where he could have just said "Please create a PDP-whatever driver for an IBM-whatever printer," there never would have been a GPL. In that sense AI represents the fulfillment of his vision, not a refutation or violation.

I'd be surprised if he saw it that way, of course.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#147

Post by quotemstr »

bwfan123 wrote: post #123
palata wrote: post #67

Genuine question: if I train my model with copyleft material, how do you prove I did? Like if there is no way to trace it back to the original material, does it make sense to regulate it? Not that I like the idea, just wondering. I have been thinking for a while that LLMs are copyright-laundering machines, and I am not sure if there is anything we can do about it other than accepting that it fundamentally changes wha…

Sometime, LLMs actually generate copyright headers as well in their output - lol - like in this PR which was the subject of a recent HN post [1] https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/14369/files#diff-062dbbe... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46039274

So what? I can probably produce parts of the header from memory. Doesn't mean my brain is GPLed.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#148

Post by LtWorf »

maxloh wrote: post #41
phplovesong wrote: post #25

We need a new license that forbids all training. That is the only way to stop big corporations from doing this.

To my understanding, if the material is publicly available or obtained legally (i.e., not pirated), then training a model with it falls under fair use, at least in the US and some other jurisdictions. If the training is established as fair use, the underlying license doesn't really matter. The term you added would likely be void or deemed unenforceable if someone ever brought it to a court.

Fair use was for citing and so on not for ripping off 100% of the content.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#149

Post by Chris_Newton »

bwfan123 wrote: post #123
palata wrote: post #67

Genuine question: if I train my model with copyleft material, how do you prove I did? Like if there is no way to trace it back to the original material, does it make sense to regulate it? Not that I like the idea, just wondering. I have been thinking for a while that LLMs are copyright-laundering machines, and I am not sure if there is anything we can do about it other than accepting that it fundamentally changes wha…

Sometime, LLMs actually generate copyright headers as well in their output - lol - like in this PR which was the subject of a recent HN post [1] https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/14369/files#diff-062dbbe... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46039274

I once had a well-known LLM reproduce pretty much an entire file from a well-known React library verbatim.

I was writing code in an unrelated programming language at the time, and the bizarre inclusion of that particular file in the output was presumably because the name of the library was very similar to a keyword I was using in my existing code, but this experience did not fill me with confidence about the abilities of contemporary AI. ;-)

However, it did clearly demonstrate that LLMs with billions or even trillions of parameters certainly can embed enough information to reproduce some of the material they were trained on verbatim or very close to it.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#150

Post by LtWorf »

gus_massa wrote: post #52
WithinReason wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be still legal to train on the data due to fair use?

I don't think it's fair use, but everyone on Earth disagree with me. So even with the standard default licence that prohibits absolutely everything, the humanity-1 consider it fair use.

Just corporations, their shills, and people who think llms are god's gift to humanity disagree with you.
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