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Meta pirated books to train its AI

theatlantic.com

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Re: Meta pirated books to train its AI

#11

Post by bwfan123 »

upghost wrote: post #5

There seems to be a precedent with tech companies that if you do a lot of illegal stuff in the beginning you can count on either failing before it matters or you can buy your way out of the consequences. Bonus points if you induce regulatory capture to make sure no one else can follow in your footsteps. Please HN do your thing and prove me wrong or tell me the benefits to society outweigh the cons, because otherwise…

It is the golden rule. Whoever has the gold rules. Laws are for mortals, while big-tech can do whatever they please while channeling their masculine energy. Basically, behave in a self-serving manner violating basic norms such as dont do unto others what you dont want done to you.

As content gets polluted with ai-garbage, human-generated content will regain value.

Here is a startup idea: A startup that protects creator's content from violations. For a nominal subscription fee, ensure content is not ripped off on major social platforms and AI. Track regulations in different jurisdictions, and keep a legal team on the beat. Sue big-tech for damages when found. ie, police for the creators.

HN - take it and run.

Re: Meta pirated books to train its AI

#12

Post by mistrial9 »

31337Logic wrote: post #2

Can we all agree to boycott these fuckers' services by now?

this is similar to situation of War - obviously "wrong" actions bring an advantage that cannot be undone, the winners press onwards without pause.. crowds and commentators are left red in the face and helpless. Extra bonus credit -- the economic empires being built with the wins will have this approach to society built-in .. ordinary becomes normal.

Re: Meta pirated books to train its AI

#13

Post by JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B »

upghost wrote: post #5

There seems to be a precedent with tech companies that if you do a lot of illegal stuff in the beginning you can count on either failing before it matters or you can buy your way out of the consequences. Bonus points if you induce regulatory capture to make sure no one else can follow in your footsteps. Please HN do your thing and prove me wrong or tell me the benefits to society outweigh the cons, because otherwise…

I can't prove you wrong and I don't think there is any benefit to society when a company with a black box doesn't give back to the community (aka humanity as a whole) and doesn't pay anyone. Copyright may be broken, but the only realistic way to encourage creators is to give them money. We don't live in a utopia, and people need money to eat.

Also, in France and as an individual, if I were to openly torrent all the content of Libgen or Anna's Archive, I would have to spend the rest of my life in jail whereas Zuck can enjoy having more billions with the same behavior.

Some kind of rant: The world is truly fucked right now if such behaviors are rewarded, but at my grand old age of almost 50, I'm starting to move away from all this and it's relaxing: I live a simpler life, I buy from small creators, and I learn whatever I want. I have also gained a lot of time that I can now spend by helping people around me. Life can be fun if you ignore that you'll never be in control of all the bad behaviors around you.

Re: Meta pirated books to train its AI

#14

Post by dartos »

xyzzy9563 wrote: post #8
upghost wrote: post #5

There seems to be a precedent with tech companies that if you do a lot of illegal stuff in the beginning you can count on either failing before it matters or you can buy your way out of the consequences. Bonus points if you induce regulatory capture to make sure no one else can follow in your footsteps. Please HN do your thing and prove me wrong or tell me the benefits to society outweigh the cons, because otherwise…

Downloading pirated material isn't illegal in the U.S., sharing it is.

Really dude?

I think a solid argument can be made that facebook downloaded and shared pirated material with literally every ML employee they had at the time…

EDIT: to those who downvoted, why? Do you disagree with what I said?

Re: Meta pirated books to train its AI

#16

Post by xiphias2 »

upghost wrote: post #5

There seems to be a precedent with tech companies that if you do a lot of illegal stuff in the beginning you can count on either failing before it matters or you can buy your way out of the consequences. Bonus points if you induce regulatory capture to make sure no one else can follow in your footsteps. Please HN do your thing and prove me wrong or tell me the benefits to society outweigh the cons, because otherwise…

I think you are right on all counts, but it doesn't make me depressed, it's just the way humanity moves forward.

Since deepseek it's clear that regulary capture just doesn't work in this case, only pure competition. If USA doesn't let NVIDIA sell GPUs to the world, Huawei will be happy to in a few years.

Re: Meta pirated books to train its AI

#17

Post by wqaatwt »

xyzzy9563 wrote: post #8
upghost wrote: post #5

There seems to be a precedent with tech companies that if you do a lot of illegal stuff in the beginning you can count on either failing before it matters or you can buy your way out of the consequences. Bonus points if you induce regulatory capture to make sure no one else can follow in your footsteps. Please HN do your thing and prove me wrong or tell me the benefits to society outweigh the cons, because otherwise…

Downloading pirated material isn't illegal in the U.S., sharing it is.

Using it for commercial purposes still might be though

Re: Meta pirated books to train its AI

#18

Post by pimlottc »

lolinder wrote: post #10

> Bulk downloading is often done with BitTorrent, the file-sharing protocol popular with pirates for its anonymity, and downloading with BitTorrent typically involves uploading to other users simultaneously. Isn't this a twofold misunderstanding of BitTorrent? I haven't used it much, but I've never believed BitTorrent to be popular for anonymity (is it even truly anonymous?), I thought it was popular because it makes…

> [D]ownloading with BitTorrent typically involves uploading to other users simultaneously.

The key word here is "typically". Mutual sharing is designed into the protocol itself, particularly in the early seeding period, where higher priority is given to peers that re-share their portions of the torrent.

Yes, you can turn off uploads, but that's not the default in any client I've ever used. So I don't see anything wrong with saying the typical user will re-upload files.

Re: Meta pirated books to train its AI

#19

Post by wwweston »

This is one of the reasons there should simply be a big tax on AI profits, assuming they come to pass: they literally require uncompensated training on the sum of human intellectual effort. There is no AI without standing on the shoulders of both giants and thousands of everyday authors.

If you're just giving the result back to humanity, OK, there's a case for it being a fair trade, though there's still the question of how to handle the disruption of long tradition of valuing & compensating labor.

If you're using it to win capitalism, 50% tax seems starting stakes. Sure, lots of expertise and resources go into the data processing to produce a model that can talk to you, but without the data, the processing doesn't matter (and without the model, we could still do this collectively).

Re: Meta pirated books to train its AI

#20

Post by HPsquared »

wwweston wrote: post #19

This is one of the reasons there should simply be a big tax on AI profits, assuming they come to pass: they literally require uncompensated training on the sum of human intellectual effort. There is no AI without standing on the shoulders of both giants and thousands of everyday authors. If you're just giving the result back to humanity, OK, there's a case for it being a fair trade, though there's still the question…

Tax doesn't reward the authors. Especially foreign authors.
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