You guys have fun arguing. I'm gonna be building cool stuff.
Yeah, don't let pesky discussions about ethics get in the way of building cool stuff. I'm working on paving over the Amazon rainforest so I can build the world's largest roller coaster, but for some reason people keep trying to talk me out of it. Good thing I have this bucket of sand to put my head in so I can tune them out.
AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale
571–580 of 783 posts
Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale
#572There’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…
> It’s like if I go to Golden Gate Park and pick one flower, I shouldn’t do that, but no one cares. But if I build a machine to automatically cut every flower in the park because I want to sell them, that’s different. The problem here is, in your example the small scale example, and the large scale example are both unacceptable behavior. Learning from others at a small scale is not only socially acceptable, but is th…
Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale
#573There’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…
> It’s like if I go to Golden Gate Park and pick one flower, I shouldn’t do that, but no one cares. But if I build a machine to automatically cut every flower in the park because I want to sell them, that’s different. It's not like that, because flowers are a physical object and moving them to one place deprives their original location of the flowers. When an LLM learns something from a webpage, the webpage is still…
Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale
#574Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may want to review your history. The GPL is copyleft -it only exists to subvert copyright law by using it against itself in a sort of intellectual legal judo. If "IP" laws were not as they were, there would be no need for the GPL. Software would be Free. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft
A key component of the GPL is the requirement that source of code of programs that use the GPL code be made available. Without IP laws, how would you achieve that goal of the GPL?
Source code is a recipe. You can't copyright recipes by themselves, but that hasn't caused any sort of chilling effect in the food and hospitality industries.
I agree with you that removing copyright protections breaks the GPL. What I think most responses to my comment miss is that we wouldnt NEED the GPL without copyright. Copyleft only exists so that copyright cannot be used by companies against users.
I know Stallman isnt the most popular on this forum, but history has sorta proven he was right, time after time.
Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale
#575Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, LLMs fundamentally operate as a lossy compression scheme for their training data. There's been countless examples of them reproducing their training data with very high accuracy People claim that the data isn't stored, but clearly a representation of it is encoded and reproducible. I saw chatgpt word for word plagiarise a stack overflow comment just two days ago
Does this actually imply a representation of it has been stored or simply that the model is sort of over-fit?
Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
> why does a computer making money by learning everything from everyone upset people so? It’s the same thing! The majority of the population, sitting outside the VC bubble, views AI unfavorably. That's not my hot take, that's a fact from the NYT survey published today. It's going to be hilarious when VCs, having expropriated the IP of the entire internet, build The Layoff Machine That Does Everything Without Workers,…
>The majority of the population, sitting outside the VC bubble, views AI unfavorably. Sure, where AI means threatens my job or my skills, people view it unfavourably. But then they use it. They're all using it. People's rhetoric seldom matches their actions. >enthusiastically expropriate that, and we end up with Fully Automated Luxury Communism Maybe in other countries, initially, but the US is very firmly a plutocra…
I don't see any contradiction. I criticize the hell out of guns and want them strictly controlled, and yet I own one. `¯\_(ツ)_/¯`
People can use AI and still demand that all of society receive the benefits, instead of a small group of oppressors.
Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale
#577There’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…
> It’s like if I go to Golden Gate Park and pick one flower, I shouldn’t do that, but no one cares. But if I build a machine to automatically cut every flower in the park because I want to sell them, that’s different. It's not like that, because flowers are a physical object and moving them to one place deprives their original location of the flowers. When an LLM learns something from a webpage, the webpage is still…
And you understand that. You're not stupid. This is the thing: AI is convenient for corporations, so you'll make dishonest arguments to justify your unethical behavior. Maybe you even believe what you say, but that's because people will hold on to any flimsy thing that lets them feel like they're good people, not because the reasoning actually makes any sense.
This is why people talking about AI get booed at speeches. There's no conversation to be had: you're not interested in the truth, or what's right, or what's good for anyone but yourself.
Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale
#578What has "artificial" to do with it? Human intelligence is also unauthorized unconscious plagiarism.
People can't memorize as much information, and can't manually reproduce the works as quickly. There's a natural limit to how much damage a person can do without help of machines. That's why it's legal to fart where industrial-scale sewage outlets are not allowed.
Second, laws are for people. Laws don't have to treat machines the same. People have needs for things like freedom of artistic expression, participation in a shared culture, and machines don't. Copyright is a compromise that tries to balance needs of people, and stops making sense when the same compromises are done for machines that don't have these needs.
Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale
#579Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s like if I go to Golden Gate Park and pick one flower, I shouldn’t do that, but no one cares. But if I build a machine to automatically cut every flower in the park because I want to sell them, that’s different. The problem here is, in your example the small scale example, and the large scale example are both unacceptable behavior. Learning from others at a small scale is not only socially acceptable, but is th…
Wasn’t his point about plagiarism? That is also not ok on a small scale.
Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale
#580There’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…
> It’s like if I go to Golden Gate Park and pick one flower, I shouldn’t do that, but no one cares. But if I build a machine to automatically cut every flower in the park because I want to sell them, that’s different. It's not like that, because flowers are a physical object and moving them to one place deprives their original location of the flowers. When an LLM learns something from a webpage, the webpage is still…