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Based on a Reddit post [1], the author of this is Stability AI's chief information officer. My very rough take on the situation: the company gained their notor

by Satam 4y ago

Based on a Reddit post [1], the author of this is Stability AI's chief information officer. My very rough take on the situation: the company gained their notoriety by building on OpenAI's pioneering research but with an important twist of releasing their models as unneutered open source. Now, their openness is starting to falter due to strong pressure from outside forces. If they're unable to continue playing the hardball game they themselves invented, I think their glory days will end as fast as they started. The competitive advantage was always their boldness. If they lose that, quickly others will take their place. In general, I don't think tech that's as open, powerful and easily reproducible as these language models can be stopped. Sure, maybe regulations will delay it a bit, but give it a few years and any decent hacker or tinkerer will be dabbling with 5x better tech with 5x less effort. [1] https://archive.ph/Z5sU3 https://archive.ph/Z5sU3

machina_ex_deus 4y ago
You're missing an important vulnerability of this tech. The model was trained on copyrighted material. There are enormous pressures to close and stop this. You can't predict future legislation. Intellectual property legislation (which is an absolute cancer IMO) can outlaw models and their results. It can outlaw distribution of the data sets, the training, the models. Tech companies already acted way beyond the requirements of the law and effectively censured open source projects like popcorn time. Can they prevent a determined hacker which already got everything? No. Could this be the last model to be trained on a wide dataset, available to the public? Yes. Could they make it a living hell where getting these tools in the future will only be from untrustworthy websites where half the download buttons give you an exe, and all your less tech savvy friends won't bother? Easily. Could this tool become impossible for companies to use without risking litigation? Very easily. People tend to forget those making the rules do not have their interests at heart, and every single intellectual property law is designed to leave companies and not people holding all the rights. And those laws can absolutely do damage. Do not underestimate the power of legislation.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  You're thinking copyright liability[0], but the real worry, straight from the mouths of the Stability people[1], is AI-generated CSAM. That will make the whole field of generative art legally radioactive. At least with copyright law, there's an argument for training being fair use. If generative art becomes a notorious market for CSAM, everyone in the field goes to jail. [0] Also, I'd like to know what your opinion is on GitHub Copilot. A lot of people decry Copilot for stealing code but love Stable Diffusion for being public, even though they're the same concept and trained in the same quasi-ethical way. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/y9ga5s/comment/it5kkic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/y9ga5s/com...
  - diebeforei485 4y ago
    They were shamed into working with a nonprofit aimed at protecting children (Thorn) whose executive director stated publicly at the Stanford conference a few weeks ago that her organization is against the concept of synthetic images.
  - pantalaimon 4y ago
    Maybe I’m naive, but isn’t AI generated CSAM a good outcome, actually - because it doesn’t require actual children to be hurt?
    - kortilla 4y ago
      This area is already well explored just with fake CSAM generated by artists using photoshop, cartoons, etc. The modern thinking is that it supports and encourages a behavior that can lead to actual violence. If you constantly watch videos of people eating cheeseburgers, you might want to eat a cheeseburger yourself.
      - diebeforei485 4y ago
        This is like claiming video games cause violence, which is absolutely not the case. More likely people will just generate more synthetic content to consume.
deleted 4y ago
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by Satam 4y ago

machina_ex_deus 4y ago

You're missing an important vulnerability of this tech. The model was trained on copyrighted material. There are enormous pressures to close and stop this. You can't predict future legislation. Intellectual property legislation (which is an absolute cancer IMO) can outlaw models and their results. It can outlaw distribution of the data sets, the training, the models. Tech companies already acted way beyond the requirements of the law and effectively censured open source projects like popcorn time. Can they prevent a determined hacker which already got everything? No. Could this be the last model to be trained on a wide dataset, available to the public? Yes. Could they make it a living hell where getting these tools in the future will only be from untrustworthy websites where half the download buttons give you an exe, and all your less tech savvy friends won't bother? Easily. Could this tool become impossible for companies to use without risking litigation? Very easily. People tend to forget those making the rules do not have their interests at heart, and every single intellectual property law is designed to leave companies and not people holding all the rights. And those laws can absolutely do damage. Do not underestimate the power of legislation.

kmeisthax 4y ago
You're thinking copyright liability[0], but the real worry, straight from the mouths of the Stability people[1], is AI-generated CSAM. That will make the whole field of generative art legally radioactive. At least with copyright law, there's an argument for training being fair use. If generative art becomes a notorious market for CSAM, everyone in the field goes to jail. [0] Also, I'd like to know what your opinion is on GitHub Copilot. A lot of people decry Copilot for stealing code but love Stable Diffusion for being public, even though they're the same concept and trained in the same quasi-ethical way. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/y9ga5s/comment/it5kkic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/y9ga5s/com...
- diebeforei485 4y ago
  They were shamed into working with a nonprofit aimed at protecting children (Thorn) whose executive director stated publicly at the Stanford conference a few weeks ago that her organization is against the concept of synthetic images.
- pantalaimon 4y ago
  Maybe I’m naive, but isn’t AI generated CSAM a good outcome, actually - because it doesn’t require actual children to be hurt?
  - kortilla 4y ago
    This area is already well explored just with fake CSAM generated by artists using photoshop, cartoons, etc. The modern thinking is that it supports and encourages a behavior that can lead to actual violence. If you constantly watch videos of people eating cheeseburgers, you might want to eat a cheeseburger yourself.
    - diebeforei485 4y ago
      This is like claiming video games cause violence, which is absolutely not the case. More likely people will just generate more synthetic content to consume.

deleted 4y ago

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