3 ms·

All property is imaginary. It also turns out to be useful in often helping human beings coexist relatively peacefully and sometimes negotiating mutual interest

All property is imaginary. It also turns out to be useful in often helping human beings coexist relatively peacefully and sometimes negotiating mutual interests productively, so like a number of things that don't exist until enough people agree to conduct themselves as if they do, it's probably a good idea in general. Intellectual property has some distinct characteristics, but it's fundamentally the same. And assuming entitlement to any available data for ingestion into a training set without a moment's regard to the labor and agency of the people who produced it has things in common with the ethic of a thief who, coming upon your stuff, decides that if they can take it, it's theirs, society's construction of property be damned.

shadowgovt 4y ago
Except that intellectual property can be copied while leaving the original behind, but this is a centuries-old debate and I doubt we'll break new ground going 'round the mulberry bush about it again here. (... I'm literally wearing a "YOU WOULDN'T REIMPLEMENT AN API" t-shirt as I type this.)
- wwweston 4y ago
  You'll note on reviewing my comment that I didn't claim there are no differences. That's intentional, having tread the relevant ground plenty of times myself. The similarities matter more than the differences here. And the problem really isn't breaking new ground in general. People saw the similarities at least as far back as the printing press. The problem is getting people to care about the claims others have on the fruits of their labor, and why incentives might matter for everyone.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    If technology causes the value of the fruits of that labor to crash, then... The value of the fruit of that labor crashes. No more and no less. The invention of the printing press didn't stop writing, the invention of the camera didn't stop painting, and the invention of Stable Diffusion won't stop creation of novel art. But it definitely upends a known methodology for extracting value from non-fungibility of labor product. In any case, the labor-to-value question is moot because Stable Diffusion will enable companies to generate unlimited visuals off the single-time-compensated manual labor of a handful of artists (for no other reason than some artists will take that deal). So whether any one artist is in the training set will become irrelevant as people choose nearly-free good-enough product over far-more-expensive handcrafted product most of the time. Glaze is useless when an advertising firm is fairly-compensating consenting artists to toss their work into the meat grinder and that grinder then still churns out work that swamps the individuality of traditional-methods artists.
    - wwweston 4y ago
      > If technology causes the value of the fruits of that labor to crash Well then, if the fruits are worthless, then presumably there's no loss from excluding it from a training set, and creating norms or even laws which allow people the privilege of negotiating the basis on which their work can be so used, right? Of course, nobody believes that. Much like no one really believed that unauthorized copies of 18th century print works were valueless just because the production could be industrialized. The enterprises producing unauthorized copies did so because they knew full well they could capture the value... without any of the pesky pro-social obligation to respect the labor and interests of those who created it. The interest in the works as training data betrays the position. This work is valuable, and works derived from it are valuable. > Glaze is useless when an advertising firm is fairly-compensating consenting artists I imagine there will be artists who opt in after negotiating the basis on which their work can be used -- although who knows what kind of surprises there could be there, some might even demand equity or collectively bargain. But deciding there's no need for a framework of negotiation and consent just because some people will get to yes sounds like a really bad precedent. And if the argument is that this isn't sufficient to protect interests, well, sure. Necessary but insufficient points exist all the time, usually the thing to do is pair them with other axioms / initiatives.
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        Or simply don't, and let the old method wither. The printing press didn't end copyright, but it obviated the need for hand-illuminated manuscripts. I expect automatic image generation will do something similar to hand-created from-scratch art. And yes, if there's a framework to be created to allow artists to indicate that they don't want to be involved and wish to lead the charge into irrelevance, it should be created. It's best to have a revolution be tidy not messy.

shadowgovt 4y ago

Except that intellectual property can be copied while leaving the original behind, but this is a centuries-old debate and I doubt we'll break new ground going 'round the mulberry bush about it again here. (... I'm literally wearing a "YOU WOULDN'T REIMPLEMENT AN API" t-shirt as I type this.)

wwweston 4y ago
You'll note on reviewing my comment that I didn't claim there are no differences. That's intentional, having tread the relevant ground plenty of times myself. The similarities matter more than the differences here. And the problem really isn't breaking new ground in general. People saw the similarities at least as far back as the printing press. The problem is getting people to care about the claims others have on the fruits of their labor, and why incentives might matter for everyone.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  If technology causes the value of the fruits of that labor to crash, then... The value of the fruit of that labor crashes. No more and no less. The invention of the printing press didn't stop writing, the invention of the camera didn't stop painting, and the invention of Stable Diffusion won't stop creation of novel art. But it definitely upends a known methodology for extracting value from non-fungibility of labor product. In any case, the labor-to-value question is moot because Stable Diffusion will enable companies to generate unlimited visuals off the single-time-compensated manual labor of a handful of artists (for no other reason than some artists will take that deal). So whether any one artist is in the training set will become irrelevant as people choose nearly-free good-enough product over far-more-expensive handcrafted product most of the time. Glaze is useless when an advertising firm is fairly-compensating consenting artists to toss their work into the meat grinder and that grinder then still churns out work that swamps the individuality of traditional-methods artists.
  - wwweston 4y ago
    > If technology causes the value of the fruits of that labor to crash Well then, if the fruits are worthless, then presumably there's no loss from excluding it from a training set, and creating norms or even laws which allow people the privilege of negotiating the basis on which their work can be so used, right? Of course, nobody believes that. Much like no one really believed that unauthorized copies of 18th century print works were valueless just because the production could be industrialized. The enterprises producing unauthorized copies did so because they knew full well they could capture the value... without any of the pesky pro-social obligation to respect the labor and interests of those who created it. The interest in the works as training data betrays the position. This work is valuable, and works derived from it are valuable. > Glaze is useless when an advertising firm is fairly-compensating consenting artists I imagine there will be artists who opt in after negotiating the basis on which their work can be used -- although who knows what kind of surprises there could be there, some might even demand equity or collectively bargain. But deciding there's no need for a framework of negotiation and consent just because some people will get to yes sounds like a really bad precedent. And if the argument is that this isn't sufficient to protect interests, well, sure. Necessary but insufficient points exist all the time, usually the thing to do is pair them with other axioms / initiatives.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      Or simply don't, and let the old method wither. The printing press didn't end copyright, but it obviated the need for hand-illuminated manuscripts. I expect automatic image generation will do something similar to hand-created from-scratch art. And yes, if there's a framework to be created to allow artists to indicate that they don't want to be involved and wish to lead the charge into irrelevance, it should be created. It's best to have a revolution be tidy not messy.