Although, there is such a thing as Semantic Web, where such information can be embedded within a page.
Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”
121–130 of 296 posts
Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”
#122This is a well-intentioned thing to do. But I can't help but feel that we are way past the point where something like this would even matter.
Do search robots even care if you have a "noindex" in your page ``? Do websites care if your browser sends a Do Not Track request?
Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "We" now want stricter copyright law when it comes to AI, but at the same time shorter copyright duration... This gross generalization of other people's views on important issues is really offensive. My view is that the Copyright Act of 1976 had it about right when they established the duration of copyright. My view is that members of Congress were handsomely rewarded by a specific corporation to carve out special…
> Don't recruit me into some bullshit argument that rewrites history and entrenches Disney's ill-gotten monopoly. You don't think it's them being allowed to buy Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm? Is creativity ruined because I can't make a Mickey Mouse cartoon or t-shirt? Does the world need Luke Skywalker coming from any individual studio? People are free to make the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Hunchback of Notre D…
Both things can, and I think are, true. I see it as reduced competition in both cases, corporate consolidation making companies huge and large copyright timelines.
The long timelines stifle new creative works by keeping other, especially smaller, outfits having to make sure they don't accidentally run afoul of another copyright from decades ago. This needs capital to either be proactive in searching or to defend a suit that's brought.
Here's a recent article about the battle between the copyright holders of Let's Get It On and Ed Sheeran for Thinking Out Loud. Those two songs are separated by around 40 years. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/may/07/ed-sheeran-cop...
Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”
#124I don't think that it would be wise for anyone to rely on such practices. Even with the best of intentions, obsolescence and unintentional misdirection are strong possibilities. Considering normative intentions, it is an invitation for "optimization" attempts by websites presenting contested information.
Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "We" now want stricter copyright law when it comes to AI, but at the same time shorter copyright duration... This gross generalization of other people's views on important issues is really offensive. My view is that the Copyright Act of 1976 had it about right when they established the duration of copyright. My view is that members of Congress were handsomely rewarded by a specific corporation to carve out special…
I'm not sure arguing for a company to rest on its laurels and keep feeding of an IP from 100 years ago is an argument for creativity and innovation.
but is it much different that descendants living off the interest and dividends of some large sum of money that their great-great grandparents accumulated a few hundred years ago?
To me it is pretty much the same thing - not a fan of nepo-kids living off of trust funds they didn't earn - but if you are going to fix one problem, you should try to fix all of the almost identical ones at the same time and not get upset that disney is still making money off of something they created 100 years ago, and not be upset about kennedy's, rockefellers, and the like still living of the money their great-greats generated a hundred years ago.
Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”
#126This is the wrong model imho. Humans can figure out a website. We only tire. An AI system does not. But can do the same thing.
Additionally, any cooperative attempt won't work because humans will attempt to misrepresent themselves.
No successful AI system will listen to someone's self representation because the AI system does not need proxies: it can act by simply acquiring all recorded observed behaviour.
Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "We" now want stricter copyright law when it comes to AI, but at the same time shorter copyright duration... This gross generalization of other people's views on important issues is really offensive. My view is that the Copyright Act of 1976 had it about right when they established the duration of copyright. My view is that members of Congress were handsomely rewarded by a specific corporation to carve out special…
> Don't recruit me into some bullshit argument that rewrites history and entrenches Disney's ill-gotten monopoly. You don't think it's them being allowed to buy Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm? Is creativity ruined because I can't make a Mickey Mouse cartoon or t-shirt? Does the world need Luke Skywalker coming from any individual studio? People are free to make the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Hunchback of Notre D…
The three acquisitions you mentioned all took place many years after the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. Without the financial benefits conferred by that law (the timing and content of which benefited them more than it did their competitors), they might not have made all of those acquisitions.
A lot of people in this thread seem to be undervaluing those old school Disney characters, yes now Disney is huge and has a much larger portfolio of IP, but in 1998 they were a far bigger percentage of Disney's portfolio than they are now.
You're not wrong that consolidation is a problem. My point is that Congress changed the law in a way that helped Disney and at least partially enabled that consolidation. (In fact, it's fairly rare to come across a monopoly or any heavily entrenched corporation that isn't enabled in some way by government collusion.)
If you shoot someone, take all his money, then build a business with it, you're still a murderer. (Just now you're a rich murderer.)
Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”
#128@Jeannen I really like the thinking here...But instead of ai.txt - since the intent is not to block, but rather, to inform AI models (or any other presumably automaton) - my reflex is to suggest something more general like readme.txt. But, then i thought, well, since its really more about metadata, as others have stated, there might already be existing standards...Or, at least, common behaviors that could become standardized. For example, someone noted about security.txt, and i know there's the humans.txt approach (see https://humanstxt.org/), and of course there are web manifest files (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Manifest), etc. I wonder if you might want to consider reviewing existing approaches, and maybe augment them or see if any of thjose makese sense (or not)...?
Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "We" now want stricter copyright law when it comes to AI, but at the same time shorter copyright duration... This gross generalization of other people's views on important issues is really offensive. My view is that the Copyright Act of 1976 had it about right when they established the duration of copyright. My view is that members of Congress were handsomely rewarded by a specific corporation to carve out special…
I think they nailed it with the original 1790 act. 14 years + 14 more is plenty.
Same. The very nature of information is that it yearns to be free. Information cannot be "owned." The point of copyright should be to grant temporary monopolies to encourage creation, not to confer ownership.
Thomas Jefferson put it beautifully:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
The poster wants the opposite - a way of explicitly helping AI systems/etc to use their site. If people ignore it, they're just giving up a bit of help.
Yes, I feel like this person only read the title and not the text of the post and made an assumption
Not an assumption. Just a response to the title of the article.