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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

#521

Post by ip26 »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #510

Whether or not its technically copyright infringement isn't the main issue I have. Its mostly that it concentrates the ability to collect rent from all of the content in the world into the hands of the few corporations who can build data centers at scale. This is a huge problem. Why would I make a webpage, a news site, an online magazine, or create art commercially if it can be swept up into these models and cut me o…

We went through exactly this with Google. People argued that once they were the only way anyone found websites, they were merely collecting undue economic rent.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#522

Post by jhbadger »

disposition2 wrote: post #511
mswphd wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we used to ship mass lists of addresses and phone numbers to people in each town and it was fine/appreciated.

You could also easily opt out with the single entity that shipped that information.

Yes, but getting an unlisted number was considered weird and against the norm even if possible. Even in the early 2000s when I dropped my landline, my parents were aghast - "if you do that, you won't be in the phone book! How will anyone get in contact with you?"

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#523

Post by hgs3 »

quantummagic wrote: post #507
hgs3 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If models are trained on the collective whole, they must be owned by the collective whole. If you believe funding creators for the training of private models is too slow, inconvenient, or creates a global disadvantage, then embrace collective ownership.

Sure, I wish everything was perfectly fair too. But how do you practically and REALISTICALLY proceed, and ensure you don't end up doing more damage than benefit? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Everyone seems much more focused on complaining, and talking about "what's fair", than actually proposing concrete steps that would lead to a better world, without a significant risk of creating a worse one.

> concrete steps

Start by legally compelling companies that trained on unlicensed data to either (1) license the data, (2) publish their model, or (3) destroy their model.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#524

Post by matt_kantor »

hparadiz wrote: post #417
matt_kantor wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that you're ignoring is about whether they're ethical or not. Your priors may land you on either side of that argument, but ideally you're willing to have your mind changed if the other side makes a strong enough case. But intentionally blinding yourself to the debate and plowing ahead anyway (which is how I interpreted your parent comment) sounds like willful ignorance.

I'm not ignoring anything. I've already moved on and I don't owe you further debate. No one does. If you don't like it we have a very thorough legal process you can follow.

> I don't owe you further debate

You most definitely don't have to reply. I wasn't really expecting you to.

> I've already moved on

Imagine there's a certain kind of candy that you enjoy. Now imagine you learn that candy is manufactured by literal child slaves, its ingredients include the ground-up bones of an endangered species (which happens to be carcinogenic), and the company which makes it donates all of their profits to political causes that you strongly disagree with. Would you reconsider buying said candy in the future?

Are there any facts or perspectives that you could become aware of which might change your mind about the ethics surrounding large language models? Or is it an entirely closed case for you?

I personally try to keep an open mind about pretty much everything. It's not that I don't have opinions, but they're always subject to change.

To put my cards on the table regarding my current opinions of the current subject: I've historically been pretty anti-copyright; I believe that information wants to be free. However, I'm unsettled by the uneven application of existing intellectual property laws (if these laws are going to exist they should be enforced consistently). I'm undecided as to whether I think LLMs themselves should be considered derivative works of their training material, but I definitely think they're often used to produce derivative works (sometimes unintentionally/unknowingly). None of that means they aren't useful for building cool stuff or that the technology behind them isn't amazing.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#525

Post by matt_kantor »

hparadiz wrote: post #417
matt_kantor wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that you're ignoring is about whether they're ethical or not. Your priors may land you on either side of that argument, but ideally you're willing to have your mind changed if the other side makes a strong enough case. But intentionally blinding yourself to the debate and plowing ahead anyway (which is how I interpreted your parent comment) sounds like willful ignorance.

I'm not ignoring anything. I've already moved on and I don't owe you further debate. No one does. If you don't like it we have a very thorough legal process you can follow.

In case this part wasn't clear, I read "you guys have fun arguing" as "I'm ignoring the argument". I apologize if that wasn't what you meant.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#526

Post by deaton »

Jtarii wrote: post #384
epicide wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You absolutely do not need a camera crew, a sound crew, set designers, and caterers to make a film. You need a director and scriptwriters, but those can be the same person. Do many film sets have all those? Absolutely. But one can still make a film without them. Some of the best films ever created were mostly the product of one person with a budget less than half that of the average car. Would you be able to create b…

I suppose you are okay with all animated films being impossible to create then. >I obviously like some of those too, but who's to say that the larger budget made them better? If you legitimately believe something like 2001: A Space Odyssey would be as good with a budget of $10,000 then that just seems delusional. The world you want is one in which the only people who can create things are people who are wealthy by ot…

Exactly, it is the difference between creating as a hobby and creating as a profession. The latter is only possible when there are IP protections in place to ensure compensation.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#527

Post by 8note »

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…

In general tech has sat in the opposite paradigm: identify when doing something at a small scale is bad, but at a large scale is not

unauthorized plagiarism on the individual level is bad, at the medium scale is ick, but at the ultragigantic scale is meh.

laundering through an llm takes away the real moral ick from the plagiarism - the lying and building of ego by the person reboxing somebody else's ideas and work.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#528

Post by pera »

mswphd wrote: post #503
svachalek wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

we used to ship mass lists of addresses and phone numbers to people in each town and it was fine/appreciated.

Yeah and back then it wasn't used as a sort of UUID to track every single thing you do in your life... Different times

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#529

Post by gruez »

wang_li wrote: post #466
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…

My complaint with your argument is that the word learn means one thing when we are talking about a person learning something from a webpage or book and something completely different when a webpage or book is used to adjust some weights in a matrix. Calling that learning is a distraction from the real copyright violations going on.

>when we are talking about a person learning something from a webpage or book and something completely different when a webpage or book is used to adjust some weights in a matrix

What material differences exist between the two besides "humans good, computers bad"?

>Calling that learning is a distraction from the real copyright violations going on.

Most courts so far have ruled that it counts as fair use.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#530

Post by wffurr »

8note wrote: post #527
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…

In general tech has sat in the opposite paradigm: identify when doing something at a small scale is bad, but at a large scale is not unauthorized plagiarism on the individual level is bad, at the medium scale is ick, but at the ultragigantic scale is meh. laundering through an llm takes away the real moral ick from the plagiarism - the lying and building of ego by the person reboxing somebody else's ideas and work.

>> the lying and building of ego by the person reboxing somebody else's ideas and work.

Instead the bot lies to people who use its output to boost their ego. Not sure it's really changing the moral calculus here.

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