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Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

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Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#271

Post by nkmnz »

palmotea wrote: post #168
zmmmmm wrote: post #162

The really interesting question to me is if this transcends copyright and unravels the whole concept of intellectual property. Because all of it is premised on an assumption that creativity is "hard". But LLMs are not just writing software, they are rapidly being engineered to operate completely generally as knowledge creation engines: solving math proofs, designing drugs, etc. So: once it's not "hard" any more, does…

> So: once it's not "hard" any more, does IP even make sense at all? Why grant monopoly rights to something that required little to no investment in the first place? Even with vestigial IP law - let's say, patents: it just becomes and input parameter that the AI needs to work around the patents like any other constraints. I think it still does: IIRC, the current legal situation is AI-output does not qualify for IP pr…

> AI-output does not qualify for IP protections

I beg to differ. AI-output did not entitle the person creating the prompt for IP protections, so far – but my objection is not directed towards the "so far", but towards your omission of "the person creating the prompt", because if an AI outputs copyrighted material from the training data, that material is still copyrighted. AI is not a magical copyright removal machine.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#272

Post by paxys »

makerofthings wrote: post #269

If an AI can license-wash open source software like this then the licenses become meaningless. Which is fascinating. Commercial software cloning that is simple enough for an average person to drive is next and the ultimate form of piracy, see an app for $10? Don’t fancy paying? Just ask ChatGPT for a clone. Future is going to be wild.

You've just described why every SaaS stock has taken a beating in the last 6 months.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#273

Post by mirashii »

larodi wrote: post #255
u1hcw9nx wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was not about legality. > That question is this: does legal mean legitimate? Just because something is legal does not mean it's moral thing to do.

this question should've been posed earlier when first LLMs were training. many people chose to ignore the question, and now, several distillation epochs later, it is not a question that matters, as both yes/no are true, and not true. is it legitimate for millions of people to exploit, expound on knowledge that was perhaps, to begin with, not legitimate to use? well they did already, who's to judge the commons now?

What a ridiculous take. Many people loudly raised the question and objected to the practice from the beginning, but a handful of companies ignored the objections and ran faster than the legal system. If they were in the wrong, legally or morally, they still deserve to face repercussions for it.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#274

Post by j-bos »

makerofthings wrote: post #269

If an AI can license-wash open source software like this then the licenses become meaningless. Which is fascinating. Commercial software cloning that is simple enough for an average person to drive is next and the ultimate form of piracy, see an app for $10? Don’t fancy paying? Just ask ChatGPT for a clone. Future is going to be wild.

> ultimate form of piracy

Nothing was stolen, not even copied, lamest piracy I've heard of.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#275

Post by munk-a »

crazygringo wrote: post #247
gspr wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Training on copyleft licensed code is not a license violation. Any more than a person reading it is. Some might hold that we've granted persons certain exemptions, on account of them being persons. We do not have to grant machines the same. > In copyright terms, it's such an extreme transformative use that copyright no longer applies. Has the model really performed an extreme transformation if it is able to produce…

> We do not have to grant machines the same. No we don't have to, but so far we do, because that's the most legally consistent. If you want to change that, you're going to need to pass new laws that may wind up radically redefining intellectual property. > Has the model really performed an extreme transformation if it is able to produce the training data near-verbatim? Of course it has, if the transformation is extre…

I want to briefly pick at this:

> you're going to need to pass new laws that may wind up radically redefining intellectual property

You're correct that this is one route to resolving the situation, but I think it's reasonable to lean more strongly into the original intent of intellectual property laws to defend creative works as a manner to sustain yourself that would draw a pretty clear distinction between human creativity and reuse and LLMs.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#276

Post by paxys »

zmmmmm wrote: post #249
nradov wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing changes for drug patents regardless of whether an LLM was used in the discovery process.

Even if all I have to do is tell my agent, "here is a patent for a drug, analyse the patent and determine an equivalent but non-infringing drug" and it chugs away for a couple of hours and spits out a drug along with all the specifications to manufacture it? I guess the state of play will be that for new drugs the original manufacturer will already have done that and ensured that literally anything that could be foun…

The formula is what is patented, not the process to come up with it.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#277

Post by amelius »

VorpalWay wrote: post #235
amelius wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will probably run into design patents.

Software patents is not a thing in EU.

I said design patents:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#278

Post by [deleted] »

SatvikBeri wrote: post #268
paxys wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a legal distinction between training, post-training, fine tuning and filling up a context window? In all of these cases an AI model is taking a copyrighted source, reading it, jumbling the bytes and storing it in its memory as vectors. Later a query reads these vectors and outputs them in a form which may or may not be similar to the original.

Judges have previously ruled that training counts as sufficiently transformative to qualify for fair use: https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/two-california-distr... I don't know of any rulings on the context window, but it's certainly possible judges would rule that would not qualify as transformative.

[deleted]

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#279

Post by jrochkind1 »

> If source code can now be generated from a specification, the specification is where the essential intellectual content of a GPL project resides.

Our foreparents fought for the right to implement works-a-like to corporate software packages, even if the so-called owners did not like it. We're ready to throw it all away, and let intellectual property owners get so much more control.

The implications will not end up being anti-large-corporation or pro-sharing. If you can prevent someone from re-implementing a spec or building a client that speaks your API or building a work-a-like, it will be the large corporations that exersize this power as usual.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#280

Post by _aavaa_ »

palmotea wrote: post #236
robmccoll wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a rather idealized model of IP in mind. In practice, IP law tends to be an expensive weapon the wealthy major corporations use against the little guy. Deep enough pockets and a big enough warchest of broad parents will drain the little guy every time.

> In practice, IP law tends to be an expensive weapon the wealthy major corporations use against the little guy. Deep enough pockets and a big enough warchest of broad parents will drain the little guy every time. Then fix that instead of blowing it up. Because IP law is also literally the only thing that protects the little guy's work in many cases. Arguments like yours are kinda unfathomably incomplete to me, almos…

Blowing up IP would sink the RIAA. They would no longer have legal grounds to go after file sharing, and I’m confident that given the same legal footing that file sharing would win any day of the week.
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