I’m a researcher who for years has been scanning my library’s holdings on my particular discipline for my own use, but also uploading the books to the shadow libraries for everyone else’s benefit. The revelation that LLMs are training on the shadow libraries has made me put a lot more effort into ensuring my scans are well-OCRed. The idea that I could eventually ask ChatGPT or whatever about obscure things in my field, and get useful output (of the "trust but verify" sort), is exciting.
Alignment whack-a-mole: Finetuning activates recall of copyrighted books in LLMs
11–20 of 184 posts
Re: Alignment whack-a-mole: Finetuning activates recall of copyrighted books in LLMs
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intelligence is compression. And frankly, if this means the end of copyright: good riddance.
Copyright is what facilitates copyleft. Getting rid of IP protections also rids us of GPL, which gave us a few things including the most popular OS in the world. It’s one thing to reject the specifics of IP laws as currently implementated; it’s another thing to celebrate the dismantling of the entire foundation of open source by for-profit corporate interests who sought to do it for decades.
RMS on copyright
"This means that copyright no longer fits in with the technology as it used to. Even if the words of copyright law had not changed, they wouldn't have the same effect. Instead of an industrial regulation on publishers controlled by authors, with the benefits set up to go to the public, it is now a restriction on the general public, controlled mainly by the publishers, in the name of the authors.
In other words, it's tyranny. It's intolerable and we can't allow it to continue this way.
As a result of this change, [copyright] is no longer easy to enforce, no longer uncontroversial, and no longer beneficial"
from https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-versus-community.en...
Re: Alignment whack-a-mole: Finetuning activates recall of copyrighted books in LLMs
#13Ok we can drop the farce now that it isn’t compression at the core, the anthropomorphic bullshit has done the job it was supposed to - Allow us to centralize the knowledge economy at the cost of IP holders and we get to claim the efficiency gains from centralization as the result of technology and force governments to choose “teh future” (and investments ) over maintaining copyright - a massive value reallocation in…
I scanned a page of a particular book, and several models recognized it was from that book. And it almost felt that it resurgitated the content that it knew than real OCR.
Re: Alignment whack-a-mole: Finetuning activates recall of copyrighted books in LLMs
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Copyright is what facilitates copyleft. Getting rid of IP protections also rids us of GPL, which gave us a few things including the most popular OS in the world. It’s one thing to reject the specifics of IP laws as currently implementated; it’s another thing to celebrate the dismantling of the entire foundation of open source by for-profit corporate interests who sought to do it for decades.
RMS on copyright "This means that copyright no longer fits in with the technology as it used to. Even if the words of copyright law had not changed, they wouldn't have the same effect. Instead of an industrial regulation on publishers controlled by authors, with the benefits set up to go to the public, it is now a restriction on the general public, controlled mainly by the publishers, in the name of the authors. In o…
First, if we assume Stallman is human, we have to grant he will not be right about everything (impossible on logical grounds and supported by the fact that he publicly changed his views on certain things in the past).
Second, when it comes to action, he only argues that copyright should have reduced power, which we can all agree with; he does not appear to argue for the death of copyright. Death of copyright would seem counter-productive, unless it also implied the death of corporate ability to withhold the source from the users and many other things.
You will note that the very text you linked to is copyrighted. There’s a reason for that.
Re: Alignment whack-a-mole: Finetuning activates recall of copyrighted books in LLMs
#15Ok we can drop the farce now that it isn’t compression at the core, the anthropomorphic bullshit has done the job it was supposed to - Allow us to centralize the knowledge economy at the cost of IP holders and we get to claim the efficiency gains from centralization as the result of technology and force governments to choose “teh future” (and investments ) over maintaining copyright - a massive value reallocation in…
Intelligence is compression. And frankly, if this means the end of copyright: good riddance.
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right .."
Copyright needs to exist, but we need to go back to its roots.
Everyone forgets that it exists to promote progress. Nothing else. The ability to profit from it exists only to serve those ends.
Anything which does not serve to promote the progress of the arts and sciences should not be protected, and "limited times" never meant "until Walt Disney says so."
Re: Alignment whack-a-mole: Finetuning activates recall of copyrighted books in LLMs
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intelligence is compression. And frankly, if this means the end of copyright: good riddance.
Copyright is what enables free and open licenses such as Creative Commons and every version/variant of the GPL. Without copyright, what would become of these licenses, and movements that have espoused them?
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Re: Alignment whack-a-mole: Finetuning activates recall of copyrighted books in LLMs
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
RMS on copyright "This means that copyright no longer fits in with the technology as it used to. Even if the words of copyright law had not changed, they wouldn't have the same effect. Instead of an industrial regulation on publishers controlled by authors, with the benefits set up to go to the public, it is now a restriction on the general public, controlled mainly by the publishers, in the name of the authors. In o…
First, if we assume Stallman is human, we have to grant he will not be right about everything (impossible on logical grounds and supported by the fact that he publicly changed his views on certain things in the past). Second, when it comes to action, he only argues that copyright should have reduced power, which we can all agree with; he does not appear to argue for the death of copyright. Death of copyright would se…
And yet he is.
Re: Alignment whack-a-mole: Finetuning activates recall of copyrighted books in LLMs
#18At some point, there will be a successful copyright infringement suit against an LLM user who redistributes infringing output generated by an LLM. It could be the NYTimes suit, or it could be another, but it's coming — after which the industry will face a Napster-style reckoning.
What comes next? Perhaps it won't be that hard to assemble a proprietary licensed corpus and get decent performance out of it. Look at all the people already willing to license their voices.
Re: Alignment whack-a-mole: Finetuning activates recall of copyrighted books in LLMs
#19Ok we can drop the farce now that it isn’t compression at the core, the anthropomorphic bullshit has done the job it was supposed to - Allow us to centralize the knowledge economy at the cost of IP holders and we get to claim the efficiency gains from centralization as the result of technology and force governments to choose “teh future” (and investments ) over maintaining copyright - a massive value reallocation in…
Intelligence is compression. And frankly, if this means the end of copyright: good riddance.
It won't mean the end of copyright, at most it will just shift the balance of power from one set of giant corporations to another.
Anthropic (predictably) issued many DMCA takedown requests after the claude code leak.
Copyright for me, but not for thee.
Re: Alignment whack-a-mole: Finetuning activates recall of copyrighted books in LLMs
#20At some point, there will be a successful copyright infringement suit against an LLM user who redistributes infringing output generated by an LLM. It could be the NYTimes suit, or it could be another, but it's coming — after which the industry will face a Napster-style reckoning. What comes next? Perhaps it won't be that hard to assemble a proprietary licensed corpus and get decent performance out of it. Look at all…
The law exists to protect the elite and punish the underclass. We’re not in a Hollywood movie. Nothing will happen.