3 ms·

Aside: it's interesting to think about the legal ramifications of copyrights in the face of AI. If my AI model "reads" a bunch of text, is the model now a "deri

Aside: it's interesting to think about the legal ramifications of copyrights in the face of AI. If my AI model "reads" a bunch of text, is the model now a "derived work" of the copyrighted work? Perhaps. But of course humans don't infringe when they watch/listen/read a copyrighted work and it changes their state of mind. Perhaps the model can be said not to infringe if it sufficiently abstracts concepts of the art in question. Typically when tuning a model we include lots of counter-cases to avoid overfitting - to make sure that the model is indeed abstracting concepts.

corobo 6y ago
I'd imagine one day this will be determined by whether you can copy the resulting 'brain' to another system It'll work well until we can upload ourselves to the cloud and we'll have to revisit it
- curtainsforus 6y ago
  As technical civilization gains power, it becomes able to make things inbetween social categories. Is a simulation of a human brain a person? And one compressed to half-size? And compressed again? And again? It's a grains-to-heap problem; eventually, you have to make an ugly choice.
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
It is derivative. There’s then a question of whether the derived work is sufficiently transformative to be fair use, which depends on what the model is outputting. But yeah that’s separate from the question of whether you properly licensed the data to train on in the first place. A big chunk of the computing community seems to approach licensing as “I can see it, so I can use it.” (See GPL code used where it shouldn’t be.)
naniwaduni 6y ago
> But of course humans don't infringe when they watch/listen/read a copyrighted work and it changes their state of mind. You're not generally distributing, performing, &c. your state of mind. On the other hand, if you then go and generate work based on what you read, then distributing that work certainly can be infringing. Thus "clean room" techniques, where one team reads copyrighted text, writes up a spec (which may then be checked off by lawyers), and then another team, without reading the copyrighted text, implements based off the spec, are sometimes used to attempt to launder copyright taint. Taking a step back, the fact that well-known authors have infamously declared that they don't read fanfiction as a CYA move against accusations of plagiarism suggests that yes, brains that have read text are widely considered derivative.
- fakedang 6y ago
  Distributing an exact copy or paraphrased content of an original work would be subject to copyright, but if a model just generates its own inferences, I don't see how it's different from say a human generated review.
  - naniwaduni 6y ago
    Human generated reviews are generally considered derivative. That's why fair use &c. doctrines have factors expressly to enable them.
- wyldfire 6y ago
  > You're not generally distributing, performing, &c. your state of mind. I don't think I agree. My employer values my contribution in some part as an oracle. People at work ask me questions and I answer them. Those answers come from the sum of my experiences (a biochemical 'model'). Other people more directly conduct public performances of their talent. If nothing else this will likely blur the lines on what's considered original work.

corobo 6y ago

I'd imagine one day this will be determined by whether you can copy the resulting 'brain' to another system It'll work well until we can upload ourselves to the cloud and we'll have to revisit it

curtainsforus 6y ago
As technical civilization gains power, it becomes able to make things inbetween social categories. Is a simulation of a human brain a person? And one compressed to half-size? And compressed again? And again? It's a grains-to-heap problem; eventually, you have to make an ugly choice.

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago

It is derivative. There’s then a question of whether the derived work is sufficiently transformative to be fair use, which depends on what the model is outputting. But yeah that’s separate from the question of whether you properly licensed the data to train on in the first place. A big chunk of the computing community seems to approach licensing as “I can see it, so I can use it.” (See GPL code used where it shouldn’t be.)

naniwaduni 6y ago

> But of course humans don't infringe when they watch/listen/read a copyrighted work and it changes their state of mind. You're not generally distributing, performing, &c. your state of mind. On the other hand, if you then go and generate work based on what you read, then distributing that work certainly can be infringing. Thus "clean room" techniques, where one team reads copyrighted text, writes up a spec (which may then be checked off by lawyers), and then another team, without reading the copyrighted text, implements based off the spec, are sometimes used to attempt to launder copyright taint. Taking a step back, the fact that well-known authors have infamously declared that they don't read fanfiction as a CYA move against accusations of plagiarism suggests that yes, brains that have read text are widely considered derivative.

fakedang 6y ago
Distributing an exact copy or paraphrased content of an original work would be subject to copyright, but if a model just generates its own inferences, I don't see how it's different from say a human generated review.
- naniwaduni 6y ago
  Human generated reviews are generally considered derivative. That's why fair use &c. doctrines have factors expressly to enable them.
wyldfire 6y ago
> You're not generally distributing, performing, &c. your state of mind. I don't think I agree. My employer values my contribution in some part as an oracle. People at work ask me questions and I answer them. Those answers come from the sum of my experiences (a biochemical 'model'). Other people more directly conduct public performances of their talent. If nothing else this will likely blur the lines on what's considered original work.