4 ms·

I was reading an article comparing chat GPT results with the Google equivalent, and how much better the chat GPT result was. Of course, in reality, once I redu

I was reading an article comparing chat GPT results with the Google equivalent, and how much better the chat GPT result was. Of course, in reality, once I reduced the search terms to make it more Google friendly (chatGPT’s conversational mode requires a lot of superfluous language, whereas a Google search does better with only keywords), Google returned the same result much faster. The difference was that Google didn’t print the entire result. It asked me to click a link to get the answer. Which I did, and clicking the link and loading the website was still significantly faster than chatGPT. But what made it clear for me is that besides it’s conversational approach (which I don’t find beneficial), chatGPT’s biggest advantage appears to be that it’s ingestion method means that it is able to completely evade copyright, and present somebody else’s results as it’s own. Google could have done exactly the same thing and presented the entire result on its own page, but since it’s not got “AI” which we’ve apparently decided doesn’t need to honor copyright, it doesn’t do that. AI’s biggest advantage right now appears to be the bag of wool it is placing before our eyes that’s preventing us from questioning it’s blatant and outright copyright theft and abuse.

Karunamon 4y ago
And to that I say, good riddance. Copyright as it exists in 2023 is an abusive dead weight on knowledge and culture and we would be better without it.
- MattPalmer1086 4y ago
  Don't throw the baby out with the bath water! Copyright as it exists today may have too long a term. But getting rid of it entirely would create massive problems. Film, music and books would become uneconomic to produce overnight. Things like GPL would be unworkable.
  - Karunamon 4y ago
    I don't think so. We already live in a world where anything playing on a movie screen has a digital equivalent easy to find for free; ditto music and books. Despite that, sales continue to increase every single year. While removing it from the underground would no doubt decrease sales, calling it "uneconomic to produce" is unnecessarily apocalyptic. As for software licensing, the GPL and most licenses would become irrelevant, since the copying can now happen both ways.
    - MattPalmer1086 4y ago
      It is true that I pay for things I could illegally obtain for free. It is not the fear of being caught that stops me, rather that I believe the creator should be rewarded so more good stuff is made. It is not only individuals illegally downloading we have to consider. What production or publishing company will invest millions creating and distributing content if they can't make a profit? Very few I would think. It is true that software licenses would become irrelevant as well. People who think software freedom is important (i.e. copyleft) would not be happy. On the other hand, software companies could also not sell proprietary software either. I guess everything would become a SaaS product.
- zakki 4y ago
  I am curious, who has the copyright of chatGPT output from its conversation with the user?
  - basch 4y ago
    If it is an intermediate between a prompt and a human rewrite, who gets the credit? Does word get copyright credit for spellcheck? Does photoshop get credit for magic lasso? Generally, the person at the stick of an automated tool owns the result, if they input a significant enough creativity. Writing a four word prompt probably isn’t sufficiently creative. If I were trying to pass a coauthored writing sample as one I own, I would be wise to document all the prompts I provided, and keep track of editing/rewriting diffs.
- fineIllregister 4y ago
  Copyright isn't going away for the masses. People won't be able to get away with publishing Google or Disney adjacent materials justbecause they’re laundered through "AI". It just means Google and Disney will be able to take credit for and monetize peoples’ content easier.
- twelve40 4y ago
  I'll let someone else run a rabbit hole debate on "copyright as it exists in 2023", but there is basic human decency: citing the sources and crediting the authors of the original information that is being thrown out the window here.
darkerside 4y ago
I've found the summarizing capabilities of ChatGPT to be very helpful when researching certain topics
EMM_386 4y ago
> chatGPT’s conversational mode requires a lot of superfluous language, whereas a Google search does better with only keywords I was recently travelling in another country and was able to ask ChatGPT for breakfast/lunch/dinner recommendations suiting a particular style within "walking distance" from where I was and it knocked it out of the park. All great, detailed, bulleted recommendations that I may have otherwise overlooked, as I had already done Google searches on this. It was really an eye-opener, despite having interacted with it already in a variety of different ways. I will note one recommendation was permanently closed, a lack of it's current knowledge, but I informed it that the recommendation was wrong, it "thanked" me and told me I was correct and that it would not recommend this location in the future. I have no idea whether any of that is true, but it was quite interesting.
- soco 4y ago
  Were the recommended places all real places?
  - EMM_386 4y ago
    > Were the recommended places all real places? For us, they worked. They were all real minus the one I mentioned, and the descriptions weren't vague. They were accurate and what we were looking for.
- stnmtn 4y ago
  From my understanding of ChatGPT, it will not remember that it all. It isn't fully aware that its knowledge stops at 2021, and will hallucinate that it has the ability to store information. It doesn't. If you asked again in the same conversation, I'm sure it would remember, but a fresh chat session would result in ChatGPT telling you that the closed restaurant is open
- KineticLensman 4y ago
  > I was recently travelling in another country and was able to ask ChatGPT for breakfast/lunch/dinner recommendations I just tried this out myself, 'please recommend restaurants near (my home town)'. ChatGPT identified several real, local, pubs, giving generic descriptions such as 'This traditional British pub serves delicious food, including locally sourced meats and vegetables. They offer a range of pub classics like fish and chips, as well as more modern dishes like lamb rump with sweet potato mash'. None of the descriptions really sold the pubs to me. One of the descriptions put the pub concerned in the wrong village. But it was no worse than asking Google the same thing, and without adverts (yet).
visarga 4y ago
AI can reword something as much as needed to make it different. What are human authors going to do? Copyright all variations and paraphrases of their texts? Reinvent copyright to cover not just expression, but ideas? I think that would make copyright borrow characteristics from trademarks and patents, it would not be fair. And LLMs are not used just to "abuse copyright", as you put it. They are also useful for task solving, thousands of different of tasks can be executed on language models. Thinking their sole purpose is copyright evasion is denying benefits to other people. Similarly artists think SD only exists to make infringing art, but it can be applied in many other fields, even other modalities like audio. Why don't we just ban electricity to protect copyright? Without electricity there is almost no more copying, not even loading a web page. /s No AI works without electricity. Problem solved if all that matters is copyright.
- twelve40 4y ago
  the parent is not talking about 'LLMs are used just to "abuse copyright"' at all, you made that up. They are not making some vague philosophical claims about all LLMs, they are pointing out a specific fact that ChatGPT (not "LLMs") is training on information that was created by someone else, aka theft. Some sources of their training data have already shut off the access, others may not even be aware that their work is being recycled for Microsoft's and OpenAI's gain. PS I would love to see some informed debate about how is it even possible to lift that much information without any kind of credit or reference to its authors and make a billion-dollar business out of that, but frustratingly everyone is too busy fantasizing how OpenAI is about to kill Google, seems to be a flashier topic...

Karunamon 4y ago

And to that I say, good riddance. Copyright as it exists in 2023 is an abusive dead weight on knowledge and culture and we would be better without it.

MattPalmer1086 4y ago
Don't throw the baby out with the bath water! Copyright as it exists today may have too long a term. But getting rid of it entirely would create massive problems. Film, music and books would become uneconomic to produce overnight. Things like GPL would be unworkable.
- Karunamon 4y ago
  I don't think so. We already live in a world where anything playing on a movie screen has a digital equivalent easy to find for free; ditto music and books. Despite that, sales continue to increase every single year. While removing it from the underground would no doubt decrease sales, calling it "uneconomic to produce" is unnecessarily apocalyptic. As for software licensing, the GPL and most licenses would become irrelevant, since the copying can now happen both ways.
  - MattPalmer1086 4y ago
    It is true that I pay for things I could illegally obtain for free. It is not the fear of being caught that stops me, rather that I believe the creator should be rewarded so more good stuff is made. It is not only individuals illegally downloading we have to consider. What production or publishing company will invest millions creating and distributing content if they can't make a profit? Very few I would think. It is true that software licenses would become irrelevant as well. People who think software freedom is important (i.e. copyleft) would not be happy. On the other hand, software companies could also not sell proprietary software either. I guess everything would become a SaaS product.
zakki 4y ago
I am curious, who has the copyright of chatGPT output from its conversation with the user?
- basch 4y ago
  If it is an intermediate between a prompt and a human rewrite, who gets the credit? Does word get copyright credit for spellcheck? Does photoshop get credit for magic lasso? Generally, the person at the stick of an automated tool owns the result, if they input a significant enough creativity. Writing a four word prompt probably isn’t sufficiently creative. If I were trying to pass a coauthored writing sample as one I own, I would be wise to document all the prompts I provided, and keep track of editing/rewriting diffs.
fineIllregister 4y ago
Copyright isn't going away for the masses. People won't be able to get away with publishing Google or Disney adjacent materials justbecause they’re laundered through "AI". It just means Google and Disney will be able to take credit for and monetize peoples’ content easier.
twelve40 4y ago
I'll let someone else run a rabbit hole debate on "copyright as it exists in 2023", but there is basic human decency: citing the sources and crediting the authors of the original information that is being thrown out the window here.

darkerside 4y ago

I've found the summarizing capabilities of ChatGPT to be very helpful when researching certain topics

EMM_386 4y ago

> chatGPT’s conversational mode requires a lot of superfluous language, whereas a Google search does better with only keywords I was recently travelling in another country and was able to ask ChatGPT for breakfast/lunch/dinner recommendations suiting a particular style within "walking distance" from where I was and it knocked it out of the park. All great, detailed, bulleted recommendations that I may have otherwise overlooked, as I had already done Google searches on this. It was really an eye-opener, despite having interacted with it already in a variety of different ways. I will note one recommendation was permanently closed, a lack of it's current knowledge, but I informed it that the recommendation was wrong, it "thanked" me and told me I was correct and that it would not recommend this location in the future. I have no idea whether any of that is true, but it was quite interesting.

soco 4y ago
Were the recommended places all real places?
- EMM_386 4y ago
  > Were the recommended places all real places? For us, they worked. They were all real minus the one I mentioned, and the descriptions weren't vague. They were accurate and what we were looking for.
stnmtn 4y ago
From my understanding of ChatGPT, it will not remember that it all. It isn't fully aware that its knowledge stops at 2021, and will hallucinate that it has the ability to store information. It doesn't. If you asked again in the same conversation, I'm sure it would remember, but a fresh chat session would result in ChatGPT telling you that the closed restaurant is open
KineticLensman 4y ago
> I was recently travelling in another country and was able to ask ChatGPT for breakfast/lunch/dinner recommendations I just tried this out myself, 'please recommend restaurants near (my home town)'. ChatGPT identified several real, local, pubs, giving generic descriptions such as 'This traditional British pub serves delicious food, including locally sourced meats and vegetables. They offer a range of pub classics like fish and chips, as well as more modern dishes like lamb rump with sweet potato mash'. None of the descriptions really sold the pubs to me. One of the descriptions put the pub concerned in the wrong village. But it was no worse than asking Google the same thing, and without adverts (yet).

visarga 4y ago

AI can reword something as much as needed to make it different. What are human authors going to do? Copyright all variations and paraphrases of their texts? Reinvent copyright to cover not just expression, but ideas? I think that would make copyright borrow characteristics from trademarks and patents, it would not be fair. And LLMs are not used just to "abuse copyright", as you put it. They are also useful for task solving, thousands of different of tasks can be executed on language models. Thinking their sole purpose is copyright evasion is denying benefits to other people. Similarly artists think SD only exists to make infringing art, but it can be applied in many other fields, even other modalities like audio. Why don't we just ban electricity to protect copyright? Without electricity there is almost no more copying, not even loading a web page. /s No AI works without electricity. Problem solved if all that matters is copyright.

twelve40 4y ago
the parent is not talking about 'LLMs are used just to "abuse copyright"' at all, you made that up. They are not making some vague philosophical claims about all LLMs, they are pointing out a specific fact that ChatGPT (not "LLMs") is training on information that was created by someone else, aka theft. Some sources of their training data have already shut off the access, others may not even be aware that their work is being recycled for Microsoft's and OpenAI's gain. PS I would love to see some informed debate about how is it even possible to lift that much information without any kind of credit or reference to its authors and make a billion-dollar business out of that, but frustratingly everyone is too busy fantasizing how OpenAI is about to kill Google, seems to be a flashier topic...