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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

#591

Post by keeda »

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…

> But quantitative changes in an activity produce qualitative changes.

Interesting take. I think a corollary is that the qualitative changes are in the economics of things. And more than the scale, it is the value of those economic effects that determines how "accepted" that activity becomes.

Take Uber as an example; it basically enabled mass avoidance of taxi regulations, and naturally existing taxi drivers and lawmakers cried foul. But enough people found value in the service and kept using it that gradually and inexorably society and laws adjusted to it.

On the other hand, copyright infringement is an interesting case. While pretty much everyone and their dog pirates content to some extent, the % of people who think it's acceptable to do so is surprisingly small (22% apparently, up from only 14% in 2019). Furthermore the media industry, especially including ads, is a significant % of US GDP. I think those reasons, more than any RIAA/MPAA lobbying, are why copyright laws have remained as stringent as they have.

As such at a social level, I don't think these effects were dismissed, rather they were considered and formally internalized.

I suspect the same thing is happening with AI companies. They get away with devouring and training on the sum of human knowledge largely because existing laws are insufficient to stop them. So stopping this would require new laws but... well, given the early economic impact LLM technology is having my hunch is new laws will be brought in to protect it rather than restrain it.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#592

Post by Jtarii »

scronkfinkle wrote: post #590
Jtarii wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the most powerful technology we ever invented I recon agriculture and the steam engine would beat out ChatGPT by just a smidge. I would put eyeglasses/the book/vaccines/sanitation far above LLMs in technological power. Right now AI is just kinda nothing, it has potential sure, but today its just a giant pit for people to burn money in.

Solving one of the most famous Erdos problems that has remained unsolved for 80 years without using tools like lean but instead a giant reasoning block is quite a lot more than "kinda nothing"

Solving a math problem is very close to nothing in the grand scheme of things. Humans have been solving math problems for thousands of years.

I think people suffer from recency bias with AI a bit and take for granted you know gestures vaguely at the rest of human civilisation

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#593

Post by BoneShard »

WarmWash wrote: post #310
theamk wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more to life than money. Many of the websites I read do not collect any appreciable amount of money from ads, or have no ads at all (one example: news.ycombinator.com :) ). They want a recognition, or to share the knowledge, or community, or they are building their brand... And AI is destroying this all - the first result of "zx80" is an AI overview with a link to wikipedia and some youtube videos. If person…

This website is an ad for Ycombinator. It's in no way, shape, or form a charity place for devs to hang out. It's a feeding ground to lure tech people into a mega VCs pastures. When you click "news.ycombinator.com" you are clicking on the ad. :)

If all ads were like that, I would't have an ad blocker.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#594

Post by gspr »

DharmaPolice wrote: post #298
gspr wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you pour your heart and soul into writing a novel over the course of years, and it becomes modestly successful earning you a little money in return for your sweat, I should be allowed to just copy it, give it away for free (hell, even say I wrote it – it's not as if it's even yours to own in your world)?

Yes.

What do you think this will do to the production of novels going forward?

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#595

Post by hughw »

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…

Honestly that's what's wrong with capitalism and property rights. We can understand what it means to own a thing like a piece of furniture, or a house, and "a person's home is their castle" rings true. But scale that up to individuals controlling resources that affect a neighborhood, a city, a country, or the world -- at each step their army of voters supports their right to own 800 billion dollars or whatever, same as they own their own houses -- it's only fair! And if they want to build a starbase and launch some rockets near your house and sensitive ecology they're just exercising the same rights you or I have, and attack on their ability to inflict damage on the community is an attack on all.

[edit] and the same goes for corporations owning "means of production". It's not the same as owning an iPhone.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#596

Post by psychoslave »

gruez wrote: post #544
psychoslave wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course quantity makes emerge it’s own quality. If you kill a single person, you are a murderer, if you genocide "others" and distribute the spoliation wealth to those unscathed you are a national hero. If you steal small material you are a theft and go to prison, if you hog some billions you can enact laws to grab even more.

>If you kill a single person, you are a murderer, if you genocide "others" and distribute the spoliation wealth to those unscathed you are a national hero. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how laws work. It's not the scale that makes it okay, it's that it's done through some official process. Trump's raid to grab Maduro killed less than 100 people. Pretty modest by "genocide" standards, and is easily eclipse…

That's exactly how laws work then.

International Right for those who don't have all the nukes and lobotomized cannon meat bag ready to invade on a whim, and on the other side doing all the crimes and atrocities, straight transgress all legal processes ever invented, and expecting no possible punishment in return.

Number of directly killed people is not something that can be eclipsed by bigger number of killed people. Not in a mind that keeps empathy high in its value.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#597

Post by proofofcontempt »

waynesonfire wrote: post #589
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…

Of course it's robbery. I don't think anyone is truly arguing it's not. The issue is that, if we don't do it, China will. Game over. I'm surprised I hvan't seen more economist scholars exploring this topic; it's a fastincating phenomenon. I've seen folks try and re-visit history and compare what's happening with AI to some historic event--but, we've never seen anything quite like it. As much as history repeats itself…

This argument of "if we don't do it, someone else will" to justify theft is so tiring. The companies doing the stealing are collectively the same ones that have power to prevent it, if they were incentivised to do so.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#598

Post by latexr »

soerxpso wrote: post #566
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…

> 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…

> Whatever 'theft' you perceive is entirely in your head

Rather, it appears to be in your head, since the person you’re replying to has not mentioned or even hinted at theft. The problem with taking all flowers from a public park for your own profit is multifaceted. Amongst others, you’re depriving everyone else from enjoying them, but also degrading the image of the park and harming all the insects which depend on those flowers and the birds who depend on those insects, which in turn degrades the park further, which stops people from enjoying it and going there and caring for it. It’s not about a single physical object, it’s about the ripple effect the selfish action produces.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#599

Post by hgs3 »

quantummagic wrote: post #539
hgs3 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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. You are lost in an imaginary world where everything is simple and has no negative consequences. First off, there is NOBODY who has that power over all the companies in the world. So immediately you are creating an imbalance between companies and potentially destr…

Data is being licensed by AI companies, but negotiations are limited to those with the capital [1][2][3]. You write about "imbalance" but ignore that large firms can cut deals while small creators languish.

You seem to believe advancement only happens in the private sector while ignoring academic institutions and publicly funded research. You've dismissed the possibility of public models entirely.

You fail to consider that when you financially disincentivize individual creators from publicly distributing their work, you starve future models resulting in a world were data is licensed only to those who can afford it anyway.

[1] https://openai.com/index/disney-sora-agreement/

[2] https://openai.com/index/axel-springer-partnership/

[3] https://openai.com/index/openai-and-reddit-partnership/

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#600

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

4chandaily wrote: post #555
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if companies didn't have copyright protection on their source code, that doesn't mean they'd post it all on the internet for anybody to freely download.

No, not all of them, but some companies, many organizations, and plenty of individuals would. Not everything has to be done for a profit. Plenty of us make software, art, and technology because we find it fun and interesting to work on, and because we want to live in a world that is richer for it. Removing draconian intellectual property laws that mostly only benefit the giant corporations that lobbied for them isn't…

Ok, but copyright law already doesn't stop anyone from putting things into the public domain.
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