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AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

axelk.ee

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Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#481

Post by bigfishrunning »

cortesoft wrote: post #475
wgjordan wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin The argument, as I understand it is that the "theft" is in quotes because it's not literally copyright infringement, but fair use of an old public-domain folk tale that ends up consuming the latter. Today, when kids know "Aladdin" they know the copyrighted/trademarked Disney character, not the traditional folk tale- that's the "theft" that happened.

Doesn't this mean that anyone can make a competing Aladdin story, though? Since they don't own the source IP?

It does! but you can't use anything Disney added (the tiger, the talking bird, etc..) and your production values would have to be super high to avoid looking like a store-brand knockoff. It's hard to deny that the Disney version does damage the original story in some way

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#482

Post by masswerk »

Gormo wrote: post #429
masswerk wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid, the essence is that is not. Re-sequencing content is not the same as synthesis and therefore not the same as a person processing information and communicating their own conception of this. There's a vital difference. (We can even observe this in the resulting text: we immediately grasp the level of competence of the author, just by the way they take their path trough and at the matter. With LLMs, well, th…

> I'm afraid, the essence is that is not. Re-sequencing content is not the same as synthesis Drawing different sources of information together into a single understanding is quite literally the definition of "synthesis" in this context. If that process is what you're referring to as "re-sequencing content", then it does fit the definition of "synthesis" in this discussion. If you're using the phrase "re-sequencing co…

If we're talking about concepts and communication, in text, I don't know what meaning of synthesis to apply (as long as there is meaning), other than the meaning this has had for centuries. I think, aggregation, extraction and emulgating is something else.

The very purpose of text is to transfer meaning, concepts, observations and complex thoughts to human readers for them to process. And we have built a complex framework around this and for this. The fact that many feel that this framework is violated should hint at there being a problem, a conceptual discrepancy. (And be it just that there's a man-in-the middle, who hasn't authorship, standing in between me as an author and those receiving what remains of the text. In its essential lack of agency, it's less of a mediating recommendation and more of an appropriation. But, maybe, if we're talking about a slip into a new dogmatic slumber, manufactured via an unseen authority that hasn't any authority nor position as an author, the problem goes deeper than this. And, maybe, the masquerading of LLM output as human cummunication and phrasing is part of the problem.)

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#483

Post by bigfishrunning »

baby wrote: post #456

I dislike this argument because it’s about limiting the most powerful technology we ever invented because it doesn’t fit well with how we established some social structures.

I think "most powerful technology we ever invented" is a controversial statement anyway -- AI is a party trick of dubious value.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#484

Post by nitwit005 »

svachalek wrote: post #450
danorama wrote: post #414

There’s a fallacy that gets used a whole lot to justify things like this (not just with LLMs), and I see it in many of the comments here: If it’s OK (or at least negligible on a small scale), then it must be OK on a large scale. It usually goes something like: If I can make money by learning something from a web page, why does a computer making money by learning everything from everyone upset people so? It’s the same…

We ran into a lot of stuff like this in the early days of the web. For example, there was a lot of information that was "public" in that anyone could go to the city courthouse and ask to see the documents. But it changed in nature when you could suddenly look up anyone in the country by typing their name in your browser.

For a practical example of that, a lot of documents used to have things like social security numbers, and they started stripping that information off once it was visible online.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#485

Post by quantummagic »

jongjong wrote: post #473
quantummagic wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying you're not allowed to load the source code into an editor, because it's not a person. Or that you're not allowed to run a global search-replace on the entire code base, because it's a script and not a person.

But in this case, a human has awareness of what software they are copying or modifying and that's how the original software author receives credit. The contract requires some degree of human awareness to be valid. This is the critical difference.

Sorry that's nonsense. There's human awareness when ingesting MIT code into an LLM too. In both cases it's a human that says $ excute-global-replace or $ ingest-into-llm

Both operations require some degree of human awareness. What you appear to be saying is, a human can only use a limited algorithm to access this source code, not a sophisticated one. And where do you draw that line? Who should get to say what is too sophisticated?

Error: your algorithm is too sophisticated to proceed, please provide more human awareness, it's a critical difference.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#486

Post by altmanaltman »

wgjordan wrote: post #415
khuey wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney owns the 1992 production of Aladdin so who exactly are they "stealing" from?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin The argument, as I understand it is that the "theft" is in quotes because it's not literally copyright infringement, but fair use of an old public-domain folk tale that ends up consuming the latter. Today, when kids know "Aladdin" they know the copyrighted/trademarked Disney character, not the traditional folk tale- that's the "theft" that happened.

Would most kids around the world even know Aladdin if it wasn't for the Disney copyrighted movie?

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#487

Post by ElevenLathe »

throw1234567891 wrote: post #378
hajile wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

robots.txt seems like it should be a legally-binding terms of service which would make them outright copyright infringing. Sue for $180,000 per infringement which should be calculated for each illegal API call.

Was your robots txt written by a lawyer? Does it hold up in the court?

OpenAI might in fact be a good target for stuff like this at the moment. Even if your argument is weak, they may be eager to settle generously if your suit threatens the speediness of their IPO in some way. But I happen to think this is in fact a reasonable argument: I put up a sign that says not to do something with my property, and you went ahead and did it anyway, costing me money. IANAL but seems like a straightforward tort, no?

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#488

Post by vharuck »

WarmWash wrote: post #156
dvduval wrote: post #27

The broader problem of original sources not being given credit in a way that rewards them remains. Websites owners are paying to host their content so that spiders can come and crawl them and index it into the AI and then if they’re lucky, they might get a citation, but otherwise there’s very little reward for being a provider of content. And of course, this is something that’s getting worse and worse. Why look at a…

It's never been a problem with people ad-blocking for the last 20 years, why is it suddenly a problem now? We've been celebrating denying creators revenue for decades... Maybe this is just the internet hypocricy of "When I do it, it's good, when they do it, it's bad".

I use ad blockers on my personal computer and phone to avoid tracking. My work computer doesn't have a blocker, but I only visit "professional" sites and major blog aggregators on it, so those ads aren't egregious. Ad blockers wouldn't have become a thing of it weren't for ads causing terrible layout, poor performance, and annoying interruptions when playing sound. Not every website does it, but the ones that do have poisoned the well.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#489

Post by RedNifre »

sosuke wrote: post #155
ggillas wrote: post #109

IP attorney here and actively working on this problem. nla: if you create content online (public repo code, blog, podcast, YouTube, publishing) the smartest thing you can do if to file a US copyright, even if you have a hobby blog. Anthropic paid $1.5B in a class settlement to authors because it was piracy of copyrighted works. If we as a HN community had our works protected, there are potentially huge statutory dama…

I'll bite. I have always been told copyright is inherit. Does it cost money to file a copyright? Do I need to do it for each blog post? For each gist? I'll totally setup some scripts to make it happen if it what actually needs doing to have the copyright I expected. Edit: remember not to down vote ideas you disagree with. I think it was only down vote things that lower the discourse

I think it depends on the country. In Germany, everything you write is automatically copyrighted, unless you explicitly waive it. In the US, it's the other way around, you have to explicitly state that you want copyright (can somebody confirm this?).

I'm not a lawyer, but I guess a German posting on Hacker News effectively waives their copyright by sending their comment to the US, where an US company then publishes the comment on a US server.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#490

Post by gspr »

beering wrote: post #280
gspr wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a strictly worse world in almost every sense. It's as if we abolished physical property rights and suggested people arm themselves to keep what is (was) theirs instead. Civilization, gone.

It’s a false equivalence to say that intellectual property is property. Taking your car deprives you of your car. Taking your idea lets civilization advance.

> Taking your car deprives you of your car. Taking your idea lets civilization advance.

Copyright is at the heart of the matter here, so let's focus on that. Copyright does not protect ideas.

Wanna rephrase so that we stay on topic?

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