4 ms·

No, but large established copyright interests will go to the ends of the Earth arguing that it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pIVVpoz5zk https://www.yout

No, but large established copyright interests will go to the ends of the Earth arguing that it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pIVVpoz5zk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pIVVpoz5zk It is the same as humans learning from art to imitate one or multiple other artists' styles. The differences are in scale, and flexibility in mixing and matching different styles (a very primitive, not-very-accurate model or description would be a vector of [0,1] values, one for each artist[1]), and which vector an AI art program happens to use as a default style for any prompt that doesn't specify something akin to "in the style of <x>" [1] I'm not claiming these neural nets are learning models of each artist and linearly combining them, but if you squint hard enough it approaches that.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
> No, but large established copyright interests will go to the ends of the Earth arguing that it is. Small independent copyright interests trying to eke out a living from their art will also argue this.
- andybak 4y ago
  I love how both sides in this debate immediately claim the other side is huge, faceless and corporate. In truth both sides are a mix of both individuals and monied interests but this rhetorical tactic seems to be irresistible.
RandomLensman 4y ago
This is also a few big firms in a way harvesting the public domain - not sure we need new forms of rent seeking via AI.
czzr 4y ago
Scale matters. And there is no reason we have to have the same rules for people and for software tools.
- jstanley 4y ago
  If you're learning from existing works at scale, aren't you less infringing than someone who only learns from a handful of existing works?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
greysphere 4y ago
Everyone knows that the term machine learning doesn't actually have anything to do with human learning, right? It's just a set of words that were catchier than gradient descent or curve fitting. Asserting legal rights based on a naming quirk seems pretty unfounded. Let's try that statement again: 'It is the same as executing gradient descent over multiple artists works' That sounds a heck of a lot closer to running a Photoshop filter than learning anything now doesn't it.
- thomashop 4y ago
  I fail to see how that last sentence makes it sound like a photoshop filter. Do you mean if you can express it as an algorithm it cannot be compared to human learning? What if we can reduce human learning to making predictions based on training data? Then it's not human learning anymore but more like a photoshop filter? "Everyone knows that the term machine learning doesn't actually have anything to do with human learning, right?" Do you have sources for that? They're not equal but I see a lot of parallels.
  - greysphere 4y ago
    When someone successfully reduces human learning to predictions on training data, I will celebrate the Nobel prizes they are awarded for medicine, philosophy, and possibly physics and economics. Until then maybe we shouldn't just assert that it's true.
    - thomashop 4y ago
      Until then, we shouldn't just assert that it's false either. GPT-3 is coming quite close to being able to write novel convincing research papers. With GPT-4 and GPT-5 on the horizon I don't see why language models couldn't be significantly involved in winning a Nobel prize in the future. At least I wouldn't categorically exclude that possibility.
- sethd 4y ago
  > Everyone knows that the term machine learning doesn't actually have anything to do with human learning, right Unfortunately the answer is definitely no. People have heard the terms “learning” and “train” in this context and have anthropomorphized weak AI. The level of ignorance on display is sad to witness.
anileated 4y ago
Machine learning is not human learning in any meaningful or legal way because laws are for humans and crucially machine is not human. It will be the case as long as that machine lacks free will, human rights and all that important stuff. If it gets to a level where a machine is granted human rights this could be reassessed. Until then, whoever operates the machine is to whom laws apply, and in this case they violate copyright by capitalizing on others’ creative work and intellectual property through creating derivative works. The large interests in question are guys like OpenAI/Microsoft, and it is in their interest that we continue to see AI as some human-like enigma and don’t think about the ethics of what they do. If you ask actual small artists, most do not in fact share this enthusiasm.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

> No, but large established copyright interests will go to the ends of the Earth arguing that it is. Small independent copyright interests trying to eke out a living from their art will also argue this.

andybak 4y ago
I love how both sides in this debate immediately claim the other side is huge, faceless and corporate. In truth both sides are a mix of both individuals and monied interests but this rhetorical tactic seems to be irresistible.

RandomLensman 4y ago

This is also a few big firms in a way harvesting the public domain - not sure we need new forms of rent seeking via AI.

czzr 4y ago

Scale matters. And there is no reason we have to have the same rules for people and for software tools.

jstanley 4y ago
If you're learning from existing works at scale, aren't you less infringing than someone who only learns from a handful of existing works?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

greysphere 4y ago

Everyone knows that the term machine learning doesn't actually have anything to do with human learning, right? It's just a set of words that were catchier than gradient descent or curve fitting. Asserting legal rights based on a naming quirk seems pretty unfounded. Let's try that statement again: 'It is the same as executing gradient descent over multiple artists works' That sounds a heck of a lot closer to running a Photoshop filter than learning anything now doesn't it.

thomashop 4y ago
I fail to see how that last sentence makes it sound like a photoshop filter. Do you mean if you can express it as an algorithm it cannot be compared to human learning? What if we can reduce human learning to making predictions based on training data? Then it's not human learning anymore but more like a photoshop filter? "Everyone knows that the term machine learning doesn't actually have anything to do with human learning, right?" Do you have sources for that? They're not equal but I see a lot of parallels.
- greysphere 4y ago
  When someone successfully reduces human learning to predictions on training data, I will celebrate the Nobel prizes they are awarded for medicine, philosophy, and possibly physics and economics. Until then maybe we shouldn't just assert that it's true.
  - thomashop 4y ago
    Until then, we shouldn't just assert that it's false either. GPT-3 is coming quite close to being able to write novel convincing research papers. With GPT-4 and GPT-5 on the horizon I don't see why language models couldn't be significantly involved in winning a Nobel prize in the future. At least I wouldn't categorically exclude that possibility.
sethd 4y ago
> Everyone knows that the term machine learning doesn't actually have anything to do with human learning, right Unfortunately the answer is definitely no. People have heard the terms “learning” and “train” in this context and have anthropomorphized weak AI. The level of ignorance on display is sad to witness.

anileated 4y ago

Machine learning is not human learning in any meaningful or legal way because laws are for humans and crucially machine is not human. It will be the case as long as that machine lacks free will, human rights and all that important stuff. If it gets to a level where a machine is granted human rights this could be reassessed. Until then, whoever operates the machine is to whom laws apply, and in this case they violate copyright by capitalizing on others’ creative work and intellectual property through creating derivative works. The large interests in question are guys like OpenAI/Microsoft, and it is in their interest that we continue to see AI as some human-like enigma and don’t think about the ethics of what they do. If you ask actual small artists, most do not in fact share this enthusiasm.