• turnip@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      Sam Altman hasn’t complained surprisingly, he just said there’s competition and it will be harder for OpenAI to compete with open source. I think their small lead is essentially gone, and their plan is now to suckle Microsoft’s teet.

      • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
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        it will be harder for OpenAI to compete with open source

        Can we revoke the word open from their name? Please?

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    This is a tough one

    Open-ai is full of shit and should die but then again, so should copyright law as it currently is

    • meathappening@lemmy.ml
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      That’s fair, but OpenAI isn’t fighting to reform copyright law for everyone. OpenAI wants you to be subject to the same restrictions you currently face, and them to be exempt. This isn’t really an “enemy of my enemy” situation.

      • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Is anyone trying to make stronger copyright laws? Wouldn’t be rich people that control media would it?

  • AfricanExpansionist@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    Obligatory: I’m anti-AI, mostly anti-technology

    That said, I can’t say that I mind LLMs using copyrighted materials that it accesses legally/appropriately (lots of copyrighted content may be freely available to some extent, like news articles or song lyrics)

    I’m open to arguments correcting me. I’d prefer to have another reason to be against this technology, not arguing on the side of frauds like Sam Altman. Here’s my take:

    All content created by humans follows consumption of other content. If I read lots of Vonnegut, I should be able to churn out prose that roughly (or precisely) includes his idiosyncrasies as a writer. We read more than one author; we read dozens or hundreds over our lifetimes. Likewise musicians, film directors, etc etc.

    If an LLM consumes the same copyrighted content and learns how to copy its various characteristics, how is it meaningfully different from me doing it and becoming a successful writer?

    • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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      If an LLM consumes the same copyrighted content and learns how to copy its various characteristics, how is it meaningfully different from me doing it and becoming a successful writer?

      That is the trillion-dollar question, isn’t it?

      I’ve got two thoughts to frame the question, but I won’t give an answer.

      1. Laws are just social constructs, to help people get along with each other. They’re not supposed to be grand universal moral frameworks, or coherent/consistent philosophies. They’re always full of contradictions. So… does it even matter if it’s “meaningfully” different or not, if it’s socially useful to treat it as different (or not)?
      2. We’ve seen with digital locks, gig work, algorithmic market manipulation, and playing either side of Section 230 when convenient… that the ethos of big tech is pretty much “define what’s illegal, so I can colonize the precise border of illegality, to a fractal level of granularity”. I’m not super stoked to come with an objective quantitative framework for them to follow, cuz I know they’ll just flow around it like water and continue to find ways to do antisocial shit in ways that technically follow the rules.
    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      In your example, you could also be sued for ripping off his style.

      • Bassman1805@lemmy.world
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        You can sue for anything in the USA. But it is pretty much impossible to successfully sue for “ripping off someone’s style”. Where do you even begin to define a writing style?

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
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          There are lots of ways to characterize writing style. Go read Finnegans Wake and tell me James Joyce doesn’t have a characteristic style.

      • MrQuallzin@lemmy.world
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        Edited for clarity: If that were the case then Weird AL would be screwed.

        Original: In that case Weird AL would be screwed

    • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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      Right. The problem is not the fact it consumes the information, the problem is if the user uses it to violate copyright. It’s just a tool after all.

      Like, I’m capable of violating copyright in infinitely many ways, but I usually don’t.

      • SoulWager@lemmy.ml
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        The problem is that the user usually can’t tell if the AI output is infringing someone’s copyright or not unless they’ve seen all the training data.

    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
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      Except the reason Altman is so upset has nothing to do with this very valid discussion.

      As I commented elsewhere:

      Fuck Sam Altmann, the fartsniffer who convinced himself & a few other dumb people that his company really has the leverage to make such demands.

      He doesn’t care about democracy, he’s just scared because a chinese company offers what his company offers, but for a fraction of the price/resources.

      He’s scared for his government money and basically begging for one more handout “to save democracy”.

      Yes, I’ve been listening to Ed Zitron.

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      Yup. Violating IP licenses is a great reason to prevent it. According to current law, if they get Alice license for the book they should be able to use it how they want.
      I’m not permitted to pirate a book just because I only intend to read it and then give it back. AI shouldn’t be able to either if people can’t.

      Beyond that, we need to accept that might need to come up with new rules for new technology. There’s a lot of people, notably artists, who object to art they put on their website being used for training. Under current law if you make it publicly available, people can download it and use it on their computer as long as they don’t distribute it. That current law allows something we don’t want doesn’t mean we need to find a way to interpret current law as not allowing it, it just means we need new laws that say “fair use for people is not the same as fair use for AI training”.

    • droplet6585@lemmy.ml
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      and learns how to copy its various characteristics

      Because you are a human. Not an immortal corporation.

      I am tired of people trying to have iNtElLeCtUaL dIsCuSsIoN about/with entities that would feed you feet first into a wood chipper if it thought it could profit from it.

  • fartsparkles@lemmy.world
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    If this passes, piracy websites can rebrand as AI training material websites and we can all run a crappy model locally to train on pirated material.

      • droplet6585@lemmy.ml
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        They monetize it, erase authorship and bastardize the work.

        Like if copyright was to protect against anything, it would be this.

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
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    Okay, I can work with this. Hey Altman you can train on anything that’s public domain, now go take those fuck ton of billions and fight the copyright laws to make public domain make sense again.

    • meathappening@lemmy.ml
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      This is the correct answer. Never forget that US copyright law originally allowed for a 14 year (renewable for 14 more years) term. Now copyright holders are able to:

      • reach consumers more quickly and easily using the internet
      • market on more fronts (merch didn’t exist in 1710)
      • form other business types to better hold/manage IP

      So much in the modern world exists to enable copyright holders, but terms are longer than ever. It’s insane.

      • rumba@lemmy.zip
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        Counter counterpoint: I don’t know, I think making an exception for tech companies probably gives a minor advantage to consumers at least.

        You can still go to copilot and ask it for some pretty fucking off the wall python and bash, it’ll save you a good 20 minutes of writing something and it’ll already be documented and generally best practice.

        Sure the tech companies are the one walking away with billions of dollars and it presumably hurts the content creators and copyright holders.

        The problem is, feeding AI is not significantly different than feeding Google back in the day. You remember back when you could see cached versions of web pages. And hell their book scanning initiative to this day is super fucking useful.

        If you look at how we teach and train artists. And then how those artists do their work. All digital art and most painting these days has reference art all over the place. AI is taking random noise and slowly making things look more like the reference art that’s not wholly different than what people are doing.

        We’re training AI on every book that people can get their hands on, But that’s how we train people too.

        I say that training an AI is not that different than training people, and the entire content of all the copyright they look at in their lives doesn’t get a chunk of the money when they write a book or paint something that looks like the style of Van Gogh. They’re even allowed to generate content for private companies or for sale.

        What is different, is that the AI is very good at this and has machine levels of retention and abilities. And companies are poised to get rich off of the computational work. So I’m actually perfectly down with AI’s being trained on copyrighted materials as long as they can’t recite it directly and in whole, But I feel the models that are created using these techniques should also be in the public domain.

        • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 days ago

          giving an exception to tech companies gives an advantage to consumers

          No. shut the fuck up. these companies are anti human and only exist to threaten labor and run out the clock on climate change so we all die without a revolution and the billionaires flee to the bunkers they’re convinced will save them (they won’t, closed systems are doomed). it’s an existential threat. this is so obvious, I’m agreeing with fucking yudkowsky, of all fucking people-he is correct, if for entirely wrong nonsense reasons.

          good for writing code

          so, I have tried to use it for that. nothing I have ever asked it for was remotely fit for purpose, often referring to things like libraries that straight up do not exist. it might be fine if it can quote a long thing from stack exchange from a program anyone who’s been coding for a decade has ten versions of laying around in their home folder, but if you want a piece of code that does something particular, it’s worse than useless. not even as a guide.

          AI

          HOLY SHIT WE HAVE AI NOW!? WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN!? can I talk to it? or do you just mean large language models?

          there’s some benefit in these things regurgitating art

          tell me you don’t understand a single thing about how these models work, and don’t understand a single thing about the value meaning or utility of art, without saying “I don’t understand a single thing about how these models work, and don’t understand a single thing about the value meaning or utility of art.”.