9 ms·

I am attacking the statement "Given that these are algorithms and not sentient beings capable of thought, it's clearly the case that [only taking the style or g

I am attacking the statement "Given that these are algorithms and not sentient beings capable of thought, it's clearly the case that [only taking the style or genre from a work] is not what is occurring." [1] My response is that you are putting foward a novel hypothesis that is yet to be proven. It has not been established that something needs to be sentient or capable of thought to be able to "only tak[e] the style or genre from a work". How would you test this statement? What evidence do you have? (The thrust of my thinking here is that whether or not a machine is capable of thought is a red herring. The rest is me trying different angles to see if I can get that across.) (edit: to be fair: Ekidd WAS directly comparing with humans. I'm not saying Ekidd was wrong or right, but I'm not Ekidd of course. Here I'm responding to your argument as is.) (edit2: If statement [1] is not actually what you are trying to say, then I may have misunderstood, and it would be my turn to apologize and say "my bad" )

freejazz 4y ago
Sorry, I've been focused on responses where people insist that what these models do must be legal because it exhibits thought. So to the extent your point is beyond that, so be it. My thought would be that in order to discern and therefore only copy style and genre, one must develop an understanding of it such that they only take the style and genre and not anything else. I haven't seen any evidence that indicates thats what these models do. It might be true that after a certain number of iterations, what is left is only the "genre" or "style", but I don't believe that's the same thing even though it might be a similar end result. It may be true that in the interim, on the way to the final product, the iterations do include rote copies. This would run counter to the often offered argument here that this is identical to how humans do work. Except humans don't just fill in every pixel and then repeatedly iterate over an image until they get the desired result. So I probably agree with you that it's a red herring whether or not the model thinks (at least as far as the fact that it doesn't think, so it's a moot question that leads nowhere imo) but nevertheless, so much of what I see here is focused around the idea that these models and the human brain are doing similar things. So, my apologies if my hyper-fixation ran this conversation aground. I've appreciated your responses.
- Kim_Bruning 4y ago
  Note that there is a large gap between the statement "models and the human brain are doing similar things" and the statement "machines can think". by analogy: * It is a known background fact that a functioning human arm is alive. * I might make a claim "a robot arm can do similar things to a human arm". * It is unlikely that I have made the claim that a robot arm is alive. My claim is more likely to be about other properties of (robot) arms. [1] Now that this is understood, perhaps also consider re-evaluating statements by Dkidd and Filligree (and potentially others) in that light. Their statements appear to be rather orthogonal to what you previously imputed (the same as with me). And thanks for taking the time to talk. You seem a bit nicer now. :-) -- [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " .
  - freejazz 4y ago
    That was never not understood. In this context, what's being analogized is the thought process. As I expressed earlier, what is being said is that the similar thing that is being done is the process of thought, which therefore does imply that machines can think, though it's not a conclusion necessary to make anyone's argument. I don't see it being advocated that the machines are doing some non-thought-like process where the end result is analogous to what would be produced by a thought-driven process. So I think my statement was fair and wasn't entirely orthogonal. I also still disagree with Filligree, as I do not think anything about what the LLMs do is akin to my own thought process. I guess I cannot question Filligree's own thought process, but I'm highly skeptical that their thought process is anything like what the LLMs employ and I similarly reject any characterization of the creative process as being like that which is employed by LLMs wherein people just wholly copy something (like a genre or style - and I think this characterization of the creative process is incredibly ignorant and naive) and then iterate away from it. IMO that's a characterization that is a loose fit at the most abstracted scale, and doesn't even come close to being a fair representation of what goes in the creative process (again IMO) in actuality. I still, as a copyright litigator, do not understand what Ekidd is getting at, and if anything, I think it reflects a misunderstanding of how copyright law is applied (and is also probably based in a false understanding of what LLMs do). There really isn't an issue with genre and style in copyright law (maybe the blurred lines case for the music context, but it's widely recognized as not following the jurisprudence on scene a faire doctrine). To whatever point he seems to be making, I think once again describing this as just copying style and genre is just a tautological end-run around the actual issue that doesn't make an inquisition into what is being done by the LLM to capture the "genre" or "style". As I've pointed out, I think this kind of perspective is reflective of a kind of naivety about how artists create that I often see expressed from technical individuals that do not partake in creative activities such as painting, authoring poetry, writing music, etc, let alone engaging with the centuries of human exploration on what the creative process entails. To your point, sure, the machine doesn't think. If that's the case, what it is doing cannot be thoughtful. What is happening in the human brain when art is made is thoughtful, imo. I reject the notion that human creativity and art is just some sort of formulaic application of everything that came before it. I see this argument a lot now because it makes sense from the perspective of LLMs and why what they do must be a fair use (because it's inherently not different from that which a human does, which isn't considered infringing). While typically, it is the burden of the claimant to prove copying, here, I think it's a perverse reality wherein LLMs get to say to everyone "show me where they copy" meanwhile, nobody, including the LLMs creators, actually seem to understand how the LLMs use "style" or "genre". As far as I'm concerned, the LLMs can't just hide the needle in the haystack and then say "well we aren't infringing so long as you don't find the needle". To be more clear, when a human goes to a museum and looks at art, or lets say, studies it in university, I don't think what happens in the brain is in any way analogous to what happens when these models are "trained".

freejazz 4y ago

Sorry, I've been focused on responses where people insist that what these models do must be legal because it exhibits thought. So to the extent your point is beyond that, so be it. My thought would be that in order to discern and therefore only copy style and genre, one must develop an understanding of it such that they only take the style and genre and not anything else. I haven't seen any evidence that indicates thats what these models do. It might be true that after a certain number of iterations, what is left is only the "genre" or "style", but I don't believe that's the same thing even though it might be a similar end result. It may be true that in the interim, on the way to the final product, the iterations do include rote copies. This would run counter to the often offered argument here that this is identical to how humans do work. Except humans don't just fill in every pixel and then repeatedly iterate over an image until they get the desired result. So I probably agree with you that it's a red herring whether or not the model thinks (at least as far as the fact that it doesn't think, so it's a moot question that leads nowhere imo) but nevertheless, so much of what I see here is focused around the idea that these models and the human brain are doing similar things. So, my apologies if my hyper-fixation ran this conversation aground. I've appreciated your responses.

Kim_Bruning 4y ago
Note that there is a large gap between the statement "models and the human brain are doing similar things" and the statement "machines can think". by analogy: * It is a known background fact that a functioning human arm is alive. * I might make a claim "a robot arm can do similar things to a human arm". * It is unlikely that I have made the claim that a robot arm is alive. My claim is more likely to be about other properties of (robot) arms. [1] Now that this is understood, perhaps also consider re-evaluating statements by Dkidd and Filligree (and potentially others) in that light. Their statements appear to be rather orthogonal to what you previously imputed (the same as with me). And thanks for taking the time to talk. You seem a bit nicer now. :-) -- [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " .
- freejazz 4y ago
  That was never not understood. In this context, what's being analogized is the thought process. As I expressed earlier, what is being said is that the similar thing that is being done is the process of thought, which therefore does imply that machines can think, though it's not a conclusion necessary to make anyone's argument. I don't see it being advocated that the machines are doing some non-thought-like process where the end result is analogous to what would be produced by a thought-driven process. So I think my statement was fair and wasn't entirely orthogonal. I also still disagree with Filligree, as I do not think anything about what the LLMs do is akin to my own thought process. I guess I cannot question Filligree's own thought process, but I'm highly skeptical that their thought process is anything like what the LLMs employ and I similarly reject any characterization of the creative process as being like that which is employed by LLMs wherein people just wholly copy something (like a genre or style - and I think this characterization of the creative process is incredibly ignorant and naive) and then iterate away from it. IMO that's a characterization that is a loose fit at the most abstracted scale, and doesn't even come close to being a fair representation of what goes in the creative process (again IMO) in actuality. I still, as a copyright litigator, do not understand what Ekidd is getting at, and if anything, I think it reflects a misunderstanding of how copyright law is applied (and is also probably based in a false understanding of what LLMs do). There really isn't an issue with genre and style in copyright law (maybe the blurred lines case for the music context, but it's widely recognized as not following the jurisprudence on scene a faire doctrine). To whatever point he seems to be making, I think once again describing this as just copying style and genre is just a tautological end-run around the actual issue that doesn't make an inquisition into what is being done by the LLM to capture the "genre" or "style". As I've pointed out, I think this kind of perspective is reflective of a kind of naivety about how artists create that I often see expressed from technical individuals that do not partake in creative activities such as painting, authoring poetry, writing music, etc, let alone engaging with the centuries of human exploration on what the creative process entails. To your point, sure, the machine doesn't think. If that's the case, what it is doing cannot be thoughtful. What is happening in the human brain when art is made is thoughtful, imo. I reject the notion that human creativity and art is just some sort of formulaic application of everything that came before it. I see this argument a lot now because it makes sense from the perspective of LLMs and why what they do must be a fair use (because it's inherently not different from that which a human does, which isn't considered infringing). While typically, it is the burden of the claimant to prove copying, here, I think it's a perverse reality wherein LLMs get to say to everyone "show me where they copy" meanwhile, nobody, including the LLMs creators, actually seem to understand how the LLMs use "style" or "genre". As far as I'm concerned, the LLMs can't just hide the needle in the haystack and then say "well we aren't infringing so long as you don't find the needle". To be more clear, when a human goes to a museum and looks at art, or lets say, studies it in university, I don't think what happens in the brain is in any way analogous to what happens when these models are "trained".