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Systems like Copilot and Dall-E and so on turn their training data into anonymous common property. Your work becomes my work. This may appeal to naive people (s
by bugfix-66 4y ago
Systems like Copilot and Dall-E and so on turn their training data into anonymous common property. Your work becomes my work. This may appeal to naive people (students, hippies, etc.), for whom socialist/communist ideas are attractive, but it's poison in the real world.
These systems are a mechanism that can regurgitate (digest, remix, emit) without attribution all of the world's open code and all of the world's art.
With these systems, you're giving everyone the ability to plagiarize everything, effortlessly and unknowingly. No skill, no effort, no time required. No awareness of the sources of the derivative work.
My work is now your work. Everyone and his 10-year old brother can "write" my code (and derivatives), without ever knowing I wrote it, without ever knowing I existed. Everyone can use my hard work, regurgitated anonymously, stripped of all credit, stripped of all attribution, stripped of all identity and ancestry and citation.
It's a new kind of use not known (or imagined?) when the copyright laws were written.
Training must be opt in, not opt out.
Every artist, every creative individual, must EXPLICITLY OPT IN to having their hard work regurgitated anonymously by Copilot or Dall-E or whatever.
If you want to donate your code or your painting or your music so it can easily be "written" or "painted", in whole or in part, by everyone else, without attribution, then go ahead and opt in.
But if an author or artist does not EXPLICITLY OPT IN, you can't use their creative work to train these systems.
All these code/art washing systems, that absorb and mix and regurgitate the hard work of creative people must be strictly opt in.
If you don't care about this, it's naivete, or a lack of foresight, or apathy as these companies pillage the commons. Not something to be proud of.
Microsoft and OpenAI (and others) are robbing us and you should care.
- numtel 4y agoAnd guess what, you're gonna die some day! What a terribly pessimistic view of sharing. MIT license gives ability to copy for any reason and it's very popular.
- bugfix-66 4y agoHere is the MIT License. Note the very important requirement for attribution ("you must give me credit for my hard work") italicized below: Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
- warkdarrior 4y agoI prefer to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission whenever I want to build on something I found online.
- bugfix-66 4y agoFollow the rules of the license. If the author wants credit for his work, you give credit. Period.
- Lendal 4y agoThe reason I'm thinking maybe it's not so bad, is because which snapshot does it use? How does it know which snapshot of an algorithm is correct and which has a bug? What if you have code that's perfectly fine but then you add several new branches, each one with a different critical security vulnerability added in that's intentional, and malevolent? Will the AI be able to detect these vulnerabilities and choose the correct version? It seems so easy to sabotage this thing. Why would anyone be stupid enough to use it? This thing seems like the perfect stupidity detector.
- pcj-github 4y agoSpot on! Great explanation.
- zokier 4y agoPersonally I think the modern hero-worshipping auteurship culture is far more harmful than anything else. You don't matter, your name doesn't matter. Culture is commons almost by definition; all works are derivative and stand on the shoulders of anonymous giants.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mrtranscendence 4y ago"All works are derivative" does not imply that just any kind of derivation is or should be OK. I can't write a Harry Potter novel and profit off of it (without being sued), for example, so clearly there are legal and ethical frameworks in place to prevent some kinds of "standing on the shoulders of giants". Frankly, it almost seems like you're saying that since all works are derivative I shouldn't care how my own works get used -- it should all be thrown in the commons for anyone, including giant corporations, to use as they wish. Is that the case? It's not obvious to me why.
- andreilys 4y agoIP rights are a cancer on society and have held back progress for generations. From drugs, to technology, I would say IP rights have done more harm than good. Especially when you consider the number of patent trolls that waste countless of hours and money. Humans are not islands, nothing you make is yours. It is likely a remix of someone else's idea or influence.
- bugfix-66 4y agoI guess every generation has to rediscover why communism doesn't work.
- andreilys 4y agoIP rights != communism. I believe in property rights, but patenting ideas leads to such perverse incentives that the benefits rarely outweigh the cost. Often times the person isn't even the first to come up with the idea! They're just the first to patent it. Look at the field of psychedelics for example, where there's a mad scramble to patent things as absurd as the process of administering the psychedelic.
- marssaxman 4y agoAnd yet... open source software continues to slowly eat the world.
- bugfix-66 4y agoWith open source software you receive something very valuable: social capital, credit, respect. Communism is where you do the work (or don't) and everybody is rewarded equally. That's the Copilot model: you work hard to write the code, and receive nothing in return, because now everyone and their 10-year old brother can write it simply by asking for it... and your name never appears. You were robbed.
- marssaxman 4y agoI wasn't robbed; I gave it away on purpose. I don't care if my name appears; credit was never the point. Sharing back to the community which has shared so much with me is enough.