5 ms·

It’s strange to me that there’s a lot of overlap between people who think AI training should require explicit consent for every piece of training data, and peop

by pigsty 4y ago

It’s strange to me that there’s a lot of overlap between people who think AI training should require explicit consent for every piece of training data, and people who think copyright and patents are insanely restrictive in the music/movies/literature/software world. It’s also worrying that requiring consent to train an AI model will inevitably lead to requiring consent to make handmade art that’s a little too similar to some other existing artwork (ie, how all art works through reference, training, and inspiration). A world where Getty and Disney control even more than they already do.

profile53 4y ago
I don’t personally think it’s that strange or internally inconsistent. People seem to be saying “within the current copyright system, consent should be required, but I still think the copyright system is broken”.
sacrosancty 4y ago
It's probably those same people who publish their code under open source licenses instead of giving it to the public domain. I don't understand why people cling so hard onto every worthless little bit of code they write while also sort of half giving it away to almost everyone for almost any purpose.
- bombolo 4y ago
  1. People who use copyleft licenses do it because they know that the end result will be using a good license forever. 2. People using non-copyleft license just do it because public domain seems to have a complicated legal status across the world.
  - yakubin 4y ago
    Most non-copyleft licences require attribution. That's significantly more than than public domain. Copilot breaks even permissive licences.
- _ph_ 4y ago
  First of all, don't pretend that copyright depends on how much "worth" a copyrighted piece of work has. Not just the works of Prince and the Beatles deserve copyright. Then, a lot of open source authors understand that their works are not groundbraking inventions and want to share them with the world without any fees or costs. And others have groundbraking inventions and still share them for free with the world. But there are almost always license terms attached to the piece of the work. They can be essentially non-limiting, like public domain or MIT. But they can also enforce some minimal requirements like attribution. Why should any entity, especially huge corporations, not be bound to those conditions? It was mostly those corporations which created a restrictive copyright. Try to draw an image of Micky Mouse and put it on your website and see what happens.
jeroenhd 4y ago
All or nothing, in my opinion. Either abolish or severely reduce copyright, or abide by it. The simple fact of the matter is that Disney and Getty invest a lot of money into these materials being out there in the first place. Open source programmers and artists spend a lot of time producing works for no cost other than some minor courtesies. AI companies aren't your friend or the little mom ''n pop shop down the road. Their technology giants backed by billionaires. When it comes to Disney versus Google/Microsoft, I'm against both sides if it means giving up my rights. Big AI taking your stuff and ignoring copyright law isn't some kind of protests against copyright, it's the very opposite; it shows that copyright doesn't matter if you have the money to defend yourself in court. Violate the the MPAA's copyright and you get extradited, violate some random person's copyright and you should feel honoured that people even want to steal your work. In my opinion, the idea behind the current copyright system works fine if the terms weren't so ridiculously long. Restrict copyright to five or ten years and I'd be fine with the whole thing. This "70 years after the death of the author" crap is the biggest stifle on copyright adds.
- scheeseman486 4y ago
  It's Disney that was most responsible for those copyright extensions you hate. It's Disney that are, by proxy, suing Stable Diffusion to create the legal precedent that you desire.
- arp242 4y ago
  > All or nothing, in my opinion. Either abolish or severely reduce copyright, or abide by it. I firmly believe in "practice what you preach". I you declare you firmly believe in A but then do something directly counter to that because it's more convenient in this specific case, then that doesn't sit right with me. Besides, further expanding copyright in this one area will only make it so much harder to reduce it later. And the pro-copyright folks will be able to say "you say you want less copyright, but you vigorously advocated in favour of copyright then, you hypocrite!" (and they wouldn't be entirely wrong, either). All this effort and energy fighting ML tools would be better directed at reducing copyright instead. I don't disagree with your view on corporations. Do I like what CoPilot is doing? Not really. But at the end of the day: does CoPilot's or ChatGPT's mere existence really take away anything concrete from me? Am I harmed or even inconvenienced by it? Are my rights reduced? Is my code harmed by it? Is my income reduced? I don't really see how it concretely affects me, other than a general "feeling of unfairness". And I see real risks with all of this: most regular people and small businesses don't have the resources to litigate as it's expensive and time-consuming, so a "license" that you or I slap on a piece of code is, realistically speaking, just ink on a piece of paper. GPL violations are rampant, violations of other licenses probably happen even more (but people generally care less about that, so not as widely publicized). Who will benefit with more copyright law on their side? The ones with deep pockets and many lawyers on retainer. i.e., the corporations neither of us like. Think creative new copyright lawsuits such "we claim copyright on the Java API" kind of stuff.
happymellon 4y ago
Look at GitHub training it's models on other people's code. They aren't training it on Microsoft or GitHub code. > A world where Getty and Disney control even more than they already do. This is exactly what is currently happening though, it's okay to rip off the little guy artist or coder. The argument here is that one big guy stood on another big guys foot, and as the little folks we shouldn't stand for it either.
wruza 4y ago
What is strange in it exactly? I can’t speak for everyone, but personally I find that copyright can be used properly or abused, at both sides (holder/consumer). It doesn’t mean that copyright is bad, only particular caregories of claims and usage are. But abusing copyrighted material from millions of little creators at insanely automated scale is another level of evil, especially when they explicitly require consent for exactly this type of use. worrying that requiring consent to train an AI model will inevitably lead to requiring consent to make handmade art that’s a little too similar to some other existing artwork That’s the root of misunderstanding, afaict. We can agree that at-scale processing is bad and that fair use is still okay. A human with a pen (or a text editor) can’t damage copyright at scale by learning terabytes of material in few weeks and producing the same amount in hours, so they can be excluded from this. Humans who use AI can, so they’re a target.
thewanderer1983 4y ago
Right. Not that long ago artists were rallying against Disney and the Music Industry for weaponizing Copyright against Artistic Freedom. Now it seems some artists have decided to use the same tactic.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  Microsoft is not an artist.
asddubs 4y ago
I'm anti intellectual property, but as long as people have to abide by it, I think AI has to, too. Being anti intellectual property doesn't mean I'm in favor of corporations stealing open source code, it means I want the law changed.
heisenbit 4y ago
In the music business there is already so much copyrighted that there is a real risk of making something that is too similar.
mbgerring 4y ago
I believe that adding data to an AI training data set should require explicit consent, and I derive that belief from being wrong about copyright laws in the 00’s. The artists that tried to stop filesharing were right, and the total collapse of musicians’ livelihoods in the streaming era proves them right. We have the chance now to correct the mistake we made then.
rhdunn 4y ago
Copyright is a good thing. The issue with copyright is that it has been extended too long, from 20+20 years (the latter of which is a manual extension) to 95 years (for publication) and life+70/80/100 years for the author. -- I understand extending copyright to keep up with extended lifespans, but it should be something like 30+30 or 40+40. The copyright terms means that for Life+70 countries only works where a) the author died before 1953 and where the works were published before 1928 are in the public domain. An AI training on a given work should comply with the law and with copyrights, just like anyone else. It should also respect the license or other terms the works were released under. -- You could easily silo the data by license, and have a different model per license. Patents should be a good thing (they allowed inventions to be published instead of being kept secret). However, it is easy for large companies to get patents on trivial things, write overly broad patents, and collate a large number of patents in a domain. That means trying to innovate or compete in a highly patented field like audio or video compression is difficult.
Guid_NewGuid 4y ago
Exactly this. You can hold that the current copyright system is good and fine. That's a moral position that is, in my view, entirely deluded but internally consistent and not really worth having a discussion about. People who conclude that look at the world through a fundamentally incompatible lense for discussions between the other set to be productive. Or you can (correctly) think it's a huge drag on innovation and human progress. If you think the latter then hoping in this case for legal precedent to broaden the scope of copyright enforcement is just bizarre logic. This isn't a rule that already exists as such. The case will set a precedent (based on interpretation of existing law) for the future.
mathteddybear 4y ago
Not sure what you intended to imply, but I don't think those two consents are related that much to worry about. Copyright licenses usually are written down like this: "[you are allowed to] use, reproduce, modify, adapt, perform, display, distribute" and so on. When a new technology is introduced, for example the compact disc was invented, lawyers get to poke whether that "distribute" applies to the music CDs, or just to vinyls and music tapes (because at the time of granting that license, CDs weren't yet a thing! gotcha!). The answer to this conundrum might vary in different countries, and we can have fun discussing that in the context of AI, but it does not affect how handmade art shouldn't be too similar.
hooverd 4y ago
The issue I have with AI artists is they seem to love copyright again as soon as it comes to their works or their prompts.

by pigsty 4y ago

profile53 4y ago

I don’t personally think it’s that strange or internally inconsistent. People seem to be saying “within the current copyright system, consent should be required, but I still think the copyright system is broken”.

sacrosancty 4y ago

It's probably those same people who publish their code under open source licenses instead of giving it to the public domain. I don't understand why people cling so hard onto every worthless little bit of code they write while also sort of half giving it away to almost everyone for almost any purpose.

bombolo 4y ago
1. People who use copyleft licenses do it because they know that the end result will be using a good license forever. 2. People using non-copyleft license just do it because public domain seems to have a complicated legal status across the world.
- yakubin 4y ago
  Most non-copyleft licences require attribution. That's significantly more than than public domain. Copilot breaks even permissive licences.
_ph_ 4y ago
First of all, don't pretend that copyright depends on how much "worth" a copyrighted piece of work has. Not just the works of Prince and the Beatles deserve copyright. Then, a lot of open source authors understand that their works are not groundbraking inventions and want to share them with the world without any fees or costs. And others have groundbraking inventions and still share them for free with the world. But there are almost always license terms attached to the piece of the work. They can be essentially non-limiting, like public domain or MIT. But they can also enforce some minimal requirements like attribution. Why should any entity, especially huge corporations, not be bound to those conditions? It was mostly those corporations which created a restrictive copyright. Try to draw an image of Micky Mouse and put it on your website and see what happens.

jeroenhd 4y ago

All or nothing, in my opinion. Either abolish or severely reduce copyright, or abide by it. The simple fact of the matter is that Disney and Getty invest a lot of money into these materials being out there in the first place. Open source programmers and artists spend a lot of time producing works for no cost other than some minor courtesies. AI companies aren't your friend or the little mom ''n pop shop down the road. Their technology giants backed by billionaires. When it comes to Disney versus Google/Microsoft, I'm against both sides if it means giving up my rights. Big AI taking your stuff and ignoring copyright law isn't some kind of protests against copyright, it's the very opposite; it shows that copyright doesn't matter if you have the money to defend yourself in court. Violate the the MPAA's copyright and you get extradited, violate some random person's copyright and you should feel honoured that people even want to steal your work. In my opinion, the idea behind the current copyright system works fine if the terms weren't so ridiculously long. Restrict copyright to five or ten years and I'd be fine with the whole thing. This "70 years after the death of the author" crap is the biggest stifle on copyright adds.

scheeseman486 4y ago
It's Disney that was most responsible for those copyright extensions you hate. It's Disney that are, by proxy, suing Stable Diffusion to create the legal precedent that you desire.
arp242 4y ago
> All or nothing, in my opinion. Either abolish or severely reduce copyright, or abide by it. I firmly believe in "practice what you preach". I you declare you firmly believe in A but then do something directly counter to that because it's more convenient in this specific case, then that doesn't sit right with me. Besides, further expanding copyright in this one area will only make it so much harder to reduce it later. And the pro-copyright folks will be able to say "you say you want less copyright, but you vigorously advocated in favour of copyright then, you hypocrite!" (and they wouldn't be entirely wrong, either). All this effort and energy fighting ML tools would be better directed at reducing copyright instead. I don't disagree with your view on corporations. Do I like what CoPilot is doing? Not really. But at the end of the day: does CoPilot's or ChatGPT's mere existence really take away anything concrete from me? Am I harmed or even inconvenienced by it? Are my rights reduced? Is my code harmed by it? Is my income reduced? I don't really see how it concretely affects me, other than a general "feeling of unfairness". And I see real risks with all of this: most regular people and small businesses don't have the resources to litigate as it's expensive and time-consuming, so a "license" that you or I slap on a piece of code is, realistically speaking, just ink on a piece of paper. GPL violations are rampant, violations of other licenses probably happen even more (but people generally care less about that, so not as widely publicized). Who will benefit with more copyright law on their side? The ones with deep pockets and many lawyers on retainer. i.e., the corporations neither of us like. Think creative new copyright lawsuits such "we claim copyright on the Java API" kind of stuff.

happymellon 4y ago

Look at GitHub training it's models on other people's code. They aren't training it on Microsoft or GitHub code. > A world where Getty and Disney control even more than they already do. This is exactly what is currently happening though, it's okay to rip off the little guy artist or coder. The argument here is that one big guy stood on another big guys foot, and as the little folks we shouldn't stand for it either.

wruza 4y ago

What is strange in it exactly? I can’t speak for everyone, but personally I find that copyright can be used properly or abused, at both sides (holder/consumer). It doesn’t mean that copyright is bad, only particular caregories of claims and usage are. But abusing copyrighted material from millions of little creators at insanely automated scale is another level of evil, especially when they explicitly require consent for exactly this type of use. worrying that requiring consent to train an AI model will inevitably lead to requiring consent to make handmade art that’s a little too similar to some other existing artwork That’s the root of misunderstanding, afaict. We can agree that at-scale processing is bad and that fair use is still okay. A human with a pen (or a text editor) can’t damage copyright at scale by learning terabytes of material in few weeks and producing the same amount in hours, so they can be excluded from this. Humans who use AI can, so they’re a target.

thewanderer1983 4y ago

Right. Not that long ago artists were rallying against Disney and the Music Industry for weaponizing Copyright against Artistic Freedom. Now it seems some artists have decided to use the same tactic.

cycomanic 4y ago
Microsoft is not an artist.

asddubs 4y ago

I'm anti intellectual property, but as long as people have to abide by it, I think AI has to, too. Being anti intellectual property doesn't mean I'm in favor of corporations stealing open source code, it means I want the law changed.

heisenbit 4y ago

In the music business there is already so much copyrighted that there is a real risk of making something that is too similar.

mbgerring 4y ago

I believe that adding data to an AI training data set should require explicit consent, and I derive that belief from being wrong about copyright laws in the 00’s. The artists that tried to stop filesharing were right, and the total collapse of musicians’ livelihoods in the streaming era proves them right. We have the chance now to correct the mistake we made then.

rhdunn 4y ago

Copyright is a good thing. The issue with copyright is that it has been extended too long, from 20+20 years (the latter of which is a manual extension) to 95 years (for publication) and life+70/80/100 years for the author. -- I understand extending copyright to keep up with extended lifespans, but it should be something like 30+30 or 40+40. The copyright terms means that for Life+70 countries only works where a) the author died before 1953 and where the works were published before 1928 are in the public domain. An AI training on a given work should comply with the law and with copyrights, just like anyone else. It should also respect the license or other terms the works were released under. -- You could easily silo the data by license, and have a different model per license. Patents should be a good thing (they allowed inventions to be published instead of being kept secret). However, it is easy for large companies to get patents on trivial things, write overly broad patents, and collate a large number of patents in a domain. That means trying to innovate or compete in a highly patented field like audio or video compression is difficult.

Guid_NewGuid 4y ago

Exactly this. You can hold that the current copyright system is good and fine. That's a moral position that is, in my view, entirely deluded but internally consistent and not really worth having a discussion about. People who conclude that look at the world through a fundamentally incompatible lense for discussions between the other set to be productive. Or you can (correctly) think it's a huge drag on innovation and human progress. If you think the latter then hoping in this case for legal precedent to broaden the scope of copyright enforcement is just bizarre logic. This isn't a rule that already exists as such. The case will set a precedent (based on interpretation of existing law) for the future.

mathteddybear 4y ago

Not sure what you intended to imply, but I don't think those two consents are related that much to worry about. Copyright licenses usually are written down like this: "[you are allowed to] use, reproduce, modify, adapt, perform, display, distribute" and so on. When a new technology is introduced, for example the compact disc was invented, lawyers get to poke whether that "distribute" applies to the music CDs, or just to vinyls and music tapes (because at the time of granting that license, CDs weren't yet a thing! gotcha!). The answer to this conundrum might vary in different countries, and we can have fun discussing that in the context of AI, but it does not affect how handmade art shouldn't be too similar.

hooverd 4y ago

The issue I have with AI artists is they seem to love copyright again as soon as it comes to their works or their prompts.