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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

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.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
So the year is 2120. We could have tech that allows anyone to generate code and art "effortlessly and unknowingly", but we don't because we don't want to upset some dead folks from a hundred years ago. Is that the society we want?
- homarp 4y ago
  >some dead folks from 100 years ago except we are in 2022, the artist died 22 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33105773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33105773 and https://twitter.com/bg_5you/status/1578146498768175105 https://twitter.com/bg_5you/status/1578146498768175105 has "credit plz" so as long as in 2120 the tech is trained on public domain artists and code, it will be ok. But if it is trained copyrighted sources, AND requires its own attributions without actually requiring the copyrighted source attributions and/or its licenses, then you are right, we won't get it. The same way we have SSPL and other licenses in addition to public domain code.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    Or we can rip the band aid off and just get on with having nice things
    - homarp 4y ago
      if you reject copyright (I assume that is what you mean by 'having nice things') it has to work both ways and not the"Disney I love Public Domain but I lobby to extend copyright forever" way, because it suits whatever business model.
      - stale2002 4y ago
        > it has to work both ways Pretty much everyone can down and use the publicly available models. And for those without the hardware, there are cheaply available online services you can use as well. You can use it as much as everyone else. Problem solved.
- 7steps2much 4y ago
  Copyright isn't eternal. Stuff from "a hundred years ago" is no longer protected.
jerojero 4y ago
I don't seem to understand why you think the access to these tools is a bad thing. Like, I can deduce that your argument comes from a place of "this work is mine and mine alone"... but is it? We don't have copyright on mathematics for example, if you come up with an equation or a solution to a tricky problem I can make use of it without the need of attribution. And in many ways, attribution can work similarly in AI generated art; it is common for people seeking a distinctive artists style to write prompts that include said artist and the AI, in turn, will willfully comply. But what's the real core of your argument, why is it that you think information that is shared in this way is bad? I can actually empathize with artists that think this technology might threaten their livelihood but this particular position I also view as overly-catastrophic. But you don't really seem to be concerned with that and instead you're making an argument that comes solely from individuality? But to me, these AI models are the maximum expression of something that as societies we have been doing for a very long time: to take the work that's available and use it to create something new. Now, I completely agree with the licensing issue when it comes to github's copilot. It used public code to train, and therefor any work that is produced through it should be public as well. It's a different issue. But your argument that "your work becomes my work" is bad is not something I fully understand. Why is it bad? Why is it poison? Shouldn't we maybe be questioning the system that envelops us if such a thing as sharing is considered poison?
- 7steps2much 4y ago
  > Now, I completely agree with the licensing issue when it comes to github's copilot. It used public code to train, and therefor any work that is produced through it should be public as well. It's a different issue. Artwork can be very much licensed the same way that code can. If I train my AI on Creative Commons Share Alike or None Commercial licenses then why should that be any different? And if we honour one sort of licensing, the copyleft side, why should we treat the other side, the copyright differently? Either AI is allowed to ignore copyright and licenses for everything or it's not, copy or painting, it makes no difference.
ShamelessC 4y ago
> This may appeal to naive people (students, hippies, etc.), for whom socialist/communist ideas are attractive, but it's poison in the real world. This is flamebait, lacks nuance, tone deaf (who still says hippies?), etc. Please try to practice empathy online.

spywaregorilla 4y ago

So the year is 2120. We could have tech that allows anyone to generate code and art "effortlessly and unknowingly", but we don't because we don't want to upset some dead folks from a hundred years ago. Is that the society we want?

homarp 4y ago
>some dead folks from 100 years ago except we are in 2022, the artist died 22 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33105773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33105773 and https://twitter.com/bg_5you/status/1578146498768175105 https://twitter.com/bg_5you/status/1578146498768175105 has "credit plz" so as long as in 2120 the tech is trained on public domain artists and code, it will be ok. But if it is trained copyrighted sources, AND requires its own attributions without actually requiring the copyrighted source attributions and/or its licenses, then you are right, we won't get it. The same way we have SSPL and other licenses in addition to public domain code.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Or we can rip the band aid off and just get on with having nice things
  - homarp 4y ago
    if you reject copyright (I assume that is what you mean by 'having nice things') it has to work both ways and not the"Disney I love Public Domain but I lobby to extend copyright forever" way, because it suits whatever business model.
    - stale2002 4y ago
      > it has to work both ways Pretty much everyone can down and use the publicly available models. And for those without the hardware, there are cheaply available online services you can use as well. You can use it as much as everyone else. Problem solved.
7steps2much 4y ago
Copyright isn't eternal. Stuff from "a hundred years ago" is no longer protected.

jerojero 4y ago

I don't seem to understand why you think the access to these tools is a bad thing. Like, I can deduce that your argument comes from a place of "this work is mine and mine alone"... but is it? We don't have copyright on mathematics for example, if you come up with an equation or a solution to a tricky problem I can make use of it without the need of attribution. And in many ways, attribution can work similarly in AI generated art; it is common for people seeking a distinctive artists style to write prompts that include said artist and the AI, in turn, will willfully comply. But what's the real core of your argument, why is it that you think information that is shared in this way is bad? I can actually empathize with artists that think this technology might threaten their livelihood but this particular position I also view as overly-catastrophic. But you don't really seem to be concerned with that and instead you're making an argument that comes solely from individuality? But to me, these AI models are the maximum expression of something that as societies we have been doing for a very long time: to take the work that's available and use it to create something new. Now, I completely agree with the licensing issue when it comes to github's copilot. It used public code to train, and therefor any work that is produced through it should be public as well. It's a different issue. But your argument that "your work becomes my work" is bad is not something I fully understand. Why is it bad? Why is it poison? Shouldn't we maybe be questioning the system that envelops us if such a thing as sharing is considered poison?

7steps2much 4y ago
> Now, I completely agree with the licensing issue when it comes to github's copilot. It used public code to train, and therefor any work that is produced through it should be public as well. It's a different issue. Artwork can be very much licensed the same way that code can. If I train my AI on Creative Commons Share Alike or None Commercial licenses then why should that be any different? And if we honour one sort of licensing, the copyleft side, why should we treat the other side, the copyright differently? Either AI is allowed to ignore copyright and licenses for everything or it's not, copy or painting, it makes no difference.

ShamelessC 4y ago

> This may appeal to naive people (students, hippies, etc.), for whom socialist/communist ideas are attractive, but it's poison in the real world. This is flamebait, lacks nuance, tone deaf (who still says hippies?), etc. Please try to practice empathy online.