5 ms·

The question that fascinates me about this whole debate is on what basis (if any) one draws the line between a machine learning from copyrighted data vs a human

The question that fascinates me about this whole debate is on what basis (if any) one draws the line between a machine learning from copyrighted data vs a human learning from copyrighted data. And I do think “learning” is the correct metaphor here. There are good reasons to believe that the brain is doing something conceptually similar to generative statistical models. i.e compressing inputs (/percepts) into some kind of abstract representation space. Even if we don’t understand the specific details yet. As far as I’m concerned, it makes no sense to prevent training on copyright data. If I use a trained model to substantially reproduce parts of a copyrighted work, feels like the issue is largely with me and what I do with the content. These models are just tools after all.

anankaie 4y ago
I suspect that the difference is in knowing versus unknowing use, and the deliberate choice of including learned elements or not on the part of the user. In the case of the ML model, it can reproduce a part of a training example perfectly, without the user knowing this happened (see the early Copilot analysis wherein it was possibly to get it to quote well known blocks of code verbatim). This is much less likely to happen when a user is consulting her own memories, though obviously never say "never".
trention 4y ago
On the basis that the "machine" is not a human and there is nothing that necessitates allowing neural networks to do all the things humans are permitted to do.
- angusturner 4y ago
  I don’t think it makes sense to talk about these systems as though they have any agency (and I think I was careful not to). Of course there is nothing that necessitates letting these systems do what humans do. What I am saying is that I am allowed as a human to ingest copyrighted material, learn from it, form mental abstractions and use those learnings to generate new art. Why then, would I be forbidden from externalising some of that process into an artificial system that operates on similar principles. The trained model obviously does not have agency. It is a creative and computational tool, much like any other digital tool or product.
  - trention 4y ago
    Not having agency is not the issue here. Usage of the model can (and will) be automated. Also, unlike you, the model scales. This is a qualitative difference in the output produced. You are left only with the superficial similarity of the input process.
  - Angostura 4y ago
    > What I am saying is that I am allowed as a human to ingest copyrighted material, learn from it, form mental abstractions and use those learnings to generate new art. Why then, would I be forbidden from externalising some of that process into an artificial system that operates on similar principles. For the same reason you aren't allowed to make unlimited photocopies of a library book.
    - idle_zealot 4y ago
      This analogy doesn't hold. The human equivalent of a photocopier is scribing a copy of a book. Scribing 100 copies and distributing those is just as illegal as creating and distributing photocopies.
    - angusturner 4y ago
      Where I think this analogy breaks down is that these models are not simply copying / memorizing the training data. They are using the data to fit a model, highly compressing the specifics while holding on to general patterns and abstractions. I really feel like "reading lots of books" is a better analogy. (Of course its not perfect, since these systems can scale way past the number of books a human can read).
pornel 4y ago
I think it makes sense to have a distinction between human and machine learning. • Human memory has natural limits in capacity, accuracy, speed, etc. Even if you wanted to, you just can't launder copyright all of humanity's works in a blink of an eye. Things done by humans are limited to human scale, but automation can elevate things to an industrial scale (it's legal to fart, it's not legal to have an industrial-scale sewage spill). • Humans have rights, machines don't. Being able to learn and use knowledge is fundamental for humans, and (pre-Disney) copyright is supposed to be a balance between individual's freedom of creativity and control over their works. Machines don't have needs or rights to learn and express themselves or need to control "their" creative work. Without creator's needs in the picture there's nothing to balance, it's just a business model based on using other people's work.
- angusturner 4y ago
  These are fair points. I suppose I am more optimistic about all the potential ways this tech could augment or enhance human creativity. Like, isn’t it kind of wild to think that the average person could have access to models that have learned from all art ever made… I’m also encouraged by the fact that some of the best versions of these systems are open source and run on a commercial GPU.
  - pornel 4y ago
    Personally I’m conflicted about this. It does give broader access to illustrations and artworks, and this is likely just a stepping stone to even better tools. ”Prompt engineering” is becoming a creative skill itself. OTOH a corporation scraping artworks and making money from producing knock-offs (you can even directly name an author to copy) doesn’t feel fair to me.
    - nonbirithm 4y ago
      I'm wondering how the best possible model at some given time in the future would not be reliant on the resources of a huge tech corporation like OpenAI and cloud organizations that have the computing power to process massive datasets like CLIP's. One of the first links provided on the subreddit for Disco Diffusion is a page describing the effects of adding an artist's name to an image prompt. There are hundreds of artists listed on that page. How long will it take until one of those artists notices that ML art associated with their name is getting significant attention and says it makes them unhappy? How many deceased artists on said list that are unable give their opinion would have objected if they were still alive? I suspect that even if all the arguments about copyright and learning fail to make any difference in the legal system, the original artists will eventually catch on and provide their individual opinions on what they think of the entire concept. Then the issue becomes not one of copyright infringement, but disrespect of someone else's time and labor. It would become a social problem with no technological solution. You can't tell creators what they ought to feel about people generating new art by reducing their name to a weighted keyword to be fed into a corporation's million dollar ML model. As precedent, some authors don't want people making derivative works from their content, for reasons that might not necessarily have to do with copyright. An example is not wanting NSFW content derived from the same fictional universe. In the case of copyright, sites like fanfiction.net ultimately sided with the authors who didn't want fanworks and banned users from posting them. AO3 was subsequently created in response to fanwork bans. I'm wondering if a "no AI" clause will become part of many services' terms of service in the future, splitting them along ideological lines instead of legal ones and causing a general air of distrust to arise from the ensuing need to detect which art was not created by humans. It feels like ethical reservations about including artist keywords in prompt engineering would be stronger over on the artists' side (depending on the artist's opinions), and could cause pushback at some point. Whether or not it will make a difference remains to be seen. My guess is it won't really, because it's impossible to ban GPUs or technological progress.

anankaie 4y ago

I suspect that the difference is in knowing versus unknowing use, and the deliberate choice of including learned elements or not on the part of the user. In the case of the ML model, it can reproduce a part of a training example perfectly, without the user knowing this happened (see the early Copilot analysis wherein it was possibly to get it to quote well known blocks of code verbatim). This is much less likely to happen when a user is consulting her own memories, though obviously never say "never".

trention 4y ago

On the basis that the "machine" is not a human and there is nothing that necessitates allowing neural networks to do all the things humans are permitted to do.

angusturner 4y ago
I don’t think it makes sense to talk about these systems as though they have any agency (and I think I was careful not to). Of course there is nothing that necessitates letting these systems do what humans do. What I am saying is that I am allowed as a human to ingest copyrighted material, learn from it, form mental abstractions and use those learnings to generate new art. Why then, would I be forbidden from externalising some of that process into an artificial system that operates on similar principles. The trained model obviously does not have agency. It is a creative and computational tool, much like any other digital tool or product.
- trention 4y ago
  Not having agency is not the issue here. Usage of the model can (and will) be automated. Also, unlike you, the model scales. This is a qualitative difference in the output produced. You are left only with the superficial similarity of the input process.
- Angostura 4y ago
  > What I am saying is that I am allowed as a human to ingest copyrighted material, learn from it, form mental abstractions and use those learnings to generate new art. Why then, would I be forbidden from externalising some of that process into an artificial system that operates on similar principles. For the same reason you aren't allowed to make unlimited photocopies of a library book.
  - idle_zealot 4y ago
    This analogy doesn't hold. The human equivalent of a photocopier is scribing a copy of a book. Scribing 100 copies and distributing those is just as illegal as creating and distributing photocopies.
  - angusturner 4y ago
    Where I think this analogy breaks down is that these models are not simply copying / memorizing the training data. They are using the data to fit a model, highly compressing the specifics while holding on to general patterns and abstractions. I really feel like "reading lots of books" is a better analogy. (Of course its not perfect, since these systems can scale way past the number of books a human can read).

pornel 4y ago

I think it makes sense to have a distinction between human and machine learning. • Human memory has natural limits in capacity, accuracy, speed, etc. Even if you wanted to, you just can't launder copyright all of humanity's works in a blink of an eye. Things done by humans are limited to human scale, but automation can elevate things to an industrial scale (it's legal to fart, it's not legal to have an industrial-scale sewage spill). • Humans have rights, machines don't. Being able to learn and use knowledge is fundamental for humans, and (pre-Disney) copyright is supposed to be a balance between individual's freedom of creativity and control over their works. Machines don't have needs or rights to learn and express themselves or need to control "their" creative work. Without creator's needs in the picture there's nothing to balance, it's just a business model based on using other people's work.

angusturner 4y ago
These are fair points. I suppose I am more optimistic about all the potential ways this tech could augment or enhance human creativity. Like, isn’t it kind of wild to think that the average person could have access to models that have learned from all art ever made… I’m also encouraged by the fact that some of the best versions of these systems are open source and run on a commercial GPU.
- pornel 4y ago
  Personally I’m conflicted about this. It does give broader access to illustrations and artworks, and this is likely just a stepping stone to even better tools. ”Prompt engineering” is becoming a creative skill itself. OTOH a corporation scraping artworks and making money from producing knock-offs (you can even directly name an author to copy) doesn’t feel fair to me.
  - nonbirithm 4y ago
    I'm wondering how the best possible model at some given time in the future would not be reliant on the resources of a huge tech corporation like OpenAI and cloud organizations that have the computing power to process massive datasets like CLIP's. One of the first links provided on the subreddit for Disco Diffusion is a page describing the effects of adding an artist's name to an image prompt. There are hundreds of artists listed on that page. How long will it take until one of those artists notices that ML art associated with their name is getting significant attention and says it makes them unhappy? How many deceased artists on said list that are unable give their opinion would have objected if they were still alive? I suspect that even if all the arguments about copyright and learning fail to make any difference in the legal system, the original artists will eventually catch on and provide their individual opinions on what they think of the entire concept. Then the issue becomes not one of copyright infringement, but disrespect of someone else's time and labor. It would become a social problem with no technological solution. You can't tell creators what they ought to feel about people generating new art by reducing their name to a weighted keyword to be fed into a corporation's million dollar ML model. As precedent, some authors don't want people making derivative works from their content, for reasons that might not necessarily have to do with copyright. An example is not wanting NSFW content derived from the same fictional universe. In the case of copyright, sites like fanfiction.net ultimately sided with the authors who didn't want fanworks and banned users from posting them. AO3 was subsequently created in response to fanwork bans. I'm wondering if a "no AI" clause will become part of many services' terms of service in the future, splitting them along ideological lines instead of legal ones and causing a general air of distrust to arise from the ensuing need to detect which art was not created by humans. It feels like ethical reservations about including artist keywords in prompt engineering would be stronger over on the artists' side (depending on the artist's opinions), and could cause pushback at some point. Whether or not it will make a difference remains to be seen. My guess is it won't really, because it's impossible to ban GPUs or technological progress.