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Are you saying that these systems are just copying? Do you think the avocado chair is a copy and that nothing learning-esque occurred? >claiming that automobil

Are you saying that these systems are just copying? Do you think the avocado chair is a copy and that nothing learning-esque occurred? >claiming that automobiles are really the same as bicycles, just faster. Except automobiles resulted in major shifts in both behavior and policy, and there’s a reason people don’t ride bicycles on the autobahn. But speed (and weight) is the key difference. If cars were just really fast and heavy bikes, would anything change? I don't think so. It's purely quantitative, rather than qualitative. It might be that the quantitative differences make generative systems harmful (though I'm not convinced), but that's not substantiated by claims about it not actually being learning.

haswell 4y ago
> Are you saying that these systems are just copying? Do you think the avocado chair is a copy and that nothing learning-esque occurred? No, I think it’s neither copying nor learning in the traditional sense, but something fundamentally new, and that’s the crux of the issue. My argument is that we need to treat this as what it is: a transformative piece of software, but software nonetheless. Not some entity that should be afforded human-like status when examining the ethical questions that naturally arise. > But speed (and weight) is the key difference. If cars were just really fast and heavy bikes, would anything change? I don't think so. It's purely quantitative, rather than qualitative. Those are two key differences, but there are a myriad more, each with implications that highlight the difference, e.g. theoretical range, fuel, safety, capacity, etc. The point there is less about drawing a perfect parallel with AIs and more to point out that the category of automobile introduces a whole slew of considerations that must be accounted for to ensure safe operation alongside bicycles, horse drawn carriages and pedestrians. As a thought experiment, I think it’s interesting to consider how one might justify photographing or photocopying original works using a similar line of thinking. “This new scanner/copier sees a piece of artwork and re-draws it on your behalf, and is just a more efficient form of tracing.” Most people would find this description problematic, but seem to accept a similar form of this when examining AI primarily because the AI software is also able to generate new output. I’m not claiming that AI is similar to a photo copier, but I am advocating for a more honest conversation about what it is/is not. I think that looking at past advancements that shattered all established norms at the time is an interesting way to test how one feels about such massive advances. Nuclear energy, firearms, radio, photography, etc. have all had similarly seismic impact.
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  > "As a thought experiment, I think it’s interesting to consider how one might justify photographing or photocopying original works using a similar line of thinking." Especially if the camera or photocopier has a distortion in it. Do Smartphone filters evade copyright? Does printing a digital photograph of a painting using a dot matrix printer evade copyright? These aren't entirely new questions. https://huckleberryfineart.com/exploring-the-debate-over-andy-warhols-campbells-soup-can-prints-and-their-impact-on-copyright-and-trademark-law/ https://huckleberryfineart.com/exploring-the-debate-over-and...
  - freejazz 4y ago
    If you reproduce copyrighted works using a photocopier or a phone, you are violating copyright law. That's not exactly news...
    - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
      Well sure, but it seems that Andy Warhol may also have been in violation of copyright by transforming the art of others in his paintings. That's the interesting thing.
      - freejazz 4y ago
        Sure, but that's not exactly news either. "Appropriation art" has been in debate w/ regards to fair use and copyright for decades. If you are coming at this issue as an ignorant layman, then yeah you'd probably be like "but Andy is an artist, how can that be!?!?" Fair use is a really complicated analysis and, frankly, whether or not Warhol's Prince paintings should qualify, is in my opinion, a legitimate question that your response belies.
        anonymouskimmer 4y ago
        I, too, consider it a legitimate question. I'm trying to indicate in some way that a heavily modified photocopier or printer can make such significant transformations that it could be consider on par with Warhol. Or even moreso, say a one-off piece of copying equipment made by an artist that only ever copies the pages of a novel in a manner that makes it look like a Dali painting, substitutes the letters and number of the novel with emojis (simple substitution), and incorporates all of the pages and the machine itself into a display piece of art. Where will the line be drawn? Who knows. But as I stated in another post the only thing the AI produces that can be copyrighted is the input of the human, whatever that is. So maybe the AI art isn't copyrightable, maybe the prompts to the AI are all that's copyrightable. Which would make a great deal of sense. But if someone can get the same image by using different prompts, or even by drawing it themselves, then they're free to do so. Or if the prompt is something simple like "Something like Dali, taller than it is wide", maybe none of it is copyrightable. This entire thing is an interesting philosophical and legal question. And it's interesting to try to see the parameters that the decision will be made on. Sorry, I just realized I went off on a tangent from the original posted story.
anticensor 4y ago
A fast and heavy bike already exists. They are called motorcycles.
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  "Bicycle" is just an example. The most salient category is human-powered, pedal-driven vehicle, regardless of the number of wheels and axles it has.
klyrs 4y ago
> Are you saying that these systems are just copying? Your use of "just" is an issue, IMO. A significant problem of these systems is that they do copy. They do produce clearly derivative works of the data they're trained on. Copilot has been observed reproducing entire files, verbatim, from its training set. That they can be used to produce novel-seeming works is a legitimately interesting conversation to have, but as long as they're reproducing copyrighted works and clear derivatives thereof, that isn't the conversation the lawyers are interested in having.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  > Copilot has been observed reproducing entire files, verbatim, from its training set. And as a result, I feel very different about CoPilot than GPT-3 or especially Stable Diffusion.
freejazz 4y ago
>"nothing learning-esque occurred? Not that I have any idea what this is actually supposed to mean, but no I don't think the model "learned".

haswell 4y ago

> Are you saying that these systems are just copying? Do you think the avocado chair is a copy and that nothing learning-esque occurred? No, I think it’s neither copying nor learning in the traditional sense, but something fundamentally new, and that’s the crux of the issue. My argument is that we need to treat this as what it is: a transformative piece of software, but software nonetheless. Not some entity that should be afforded human-like status when examining the ethical questions that naturally arise. > But speed (and weight) is the key difference. If cars were just really fast and heavy bikes, would anything change? I don't think so. It's purely quantitative, rather than qualitative. Those are two key differences, but there are a myriad more, each with implications that highlight the difference, e.g. theoretical range, fuel, safety, capacity, etc. The point there is less about drawing a perfect parallel with AIs and more to point out that the category of automobile introduces a whole slew of considerations that must be accounted for to ensure safe operation alongside bicycles, horse drawn carriages and pedestrians. As a thought experiment, I think it’s interesting to consider how one might justify photographing or photocopying original works using a similar line of thinking. “This new scanner/copier sees a piece of artwork and re-draws it on your behalf, and is just a more efficient form of tracing.” Most people would find this description problematic, but seem to accept a similar form of this when examining AI primarily because the AI software is also able to generate new output. I’m not claiming that AI is similar to a photo copier, but I am advocating for a more honest conversation about what it is/is not. I think that looking at past advancements that shattered all established norms at the time is an interesting way to test how one feels about such massive advances. Nuclear energy, firearms, radio, photography, etc. have all had similarly seismic impact.

anonymouskimmer 4y ago
> "As a thought experiment, I think it’s interesting to consider how one might justify photographing or photocopying original works using a similar line of thinking." Especially if the camera or photocopier has a distortion in it. Do Smartphone filters evade copyright? Does printing a digital photograph of a painting using a dot matrix printer evade copyright? These aren't entirely new questions. https://huckleberryfineart.com/exploring-the-debate-over-andy-warhols-campbells-soup-can-prints-and-their-impact-on-copyright-and-trademark-law/ https://huckleberryfineart.com/exploring-the-debate-over-and...
- freejazz 4y ago
  If you reproduce copyrighted works using a photocopier or a phone, you are violating copyright law. That's not exactly news...
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    Well sure, but it seems that Andy Warhol may also have been in violation of copyright by transforming the art of others in his paintings. That's the interesting thing.
    - freejazz 4y ago
      Sure, but that's not exactly news either. "Appropriation art" has been in debate w/ regards to fair use and copyright for decades. If you are coming at this issue as an ignorant layman, then yeah you'd probably be like "but Andy is an artist, how can that be!?!?" Fair use is a really complicated analysis and, frankly, whether or not Warhol's Prince paintings should qualify, is in my opinion, a legitimate question that your response belies.
      - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
        I, too, consider it a legitimate question. I'm trying to indicate in some way that a heavily modified photocopier or printer can make such significant transformations that it could be consider on par with Warhol. Or even moreso, say a one-off piece of copying equipment made by an artist that only ever copies the pages of a novel in a manner that makes it look like a Dali painting, substitutes the letters and number of the novel with emojis (simple substitution), and incorporates all of the pages and the machine itself into a display piece of art. Where will the line be drawn? Who knows. But as I stated in another post the only thing the AI produces that can be copyrighted is the input of the human, whatever that is. So maybe the AI art isn't copyrightable, maybe the prompts to the AI are all that's copyrightable. Which would make a great deal of sense. But if someone can get the same image by using different prompts, or even by drawing it themselves, then they're free to do so. Or if the prompt is something simple like "Something like Dali, taller than it is wide", maybe none of it is copyrightable. This entire thing is an interesting philosophical and legal question. And it's interesting to try to see the parameters that the decision will be made on. Sorry, I just realized I went off on a tangent from the original posted story.

anticensor 4y ago

A fast and heavy bike already exists. They are called motorcycles.

anonymouskimmer 4y ago
"Bicycle" is just an example. The most salient category is human-powered, pedal-driven vehicle, regardless of the number of wheels and axles it has.

klyrs 4y ago

> Are you saying that these systems are just copying? Your use of "just" is an issue, IMO. A significant problem of these systems is that they do copy. They do produce clearly derivative works of the data they're trained on. Copilot has been observed reproducing entire files, verbatim, from its training set. That they can be used to produce novel-seeming works is a legitimately interesting conversation to have, but as long as they're reproducing copyrighted works and clear derivatives thereof, that isn't the conversation the lawyers are interested in having.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
> Copilot has been observed reproducing entire files, verbatim, from its training set. And as a result, I feel very different about CoPilot than GPT-3 or especially Stable Diffusion.

freejazz 4y ago

>"nothing learning-esque occurred? Not that I have any idea what this is actually supposed to mean, but no I don't think the model "learned".