4 ms·

I don't think that taking one's art and using it to train a machine to be able to make limitless art is super encouraging to the artist.

by tjr 4y ago

amanaplanacanal 4y ago
But the goal is more art, not keeping artists employed. If machines do it better, so be it.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  If you shift the reward from the people doing one kind of work to people owning (one kind of, but this is fungible) capital, and don't shift capital at the same time, you are doing concrete harm to identifiable people, even if the net is positive in some constructed aggregate. AI has a tremendous ability to do that across a wide range of different types of work rapidly and simultaneously.
- YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
  No it isn't. 'Not enough art' is basically the exact opposite of the problem we're facing right now. Do you honestly believe that there's not enough music on Spotify? That a two hundred year catalogue isn't enough and you'd rather it be two hundred thousand years?
  - dwallin 4y ago
    If your point is that we already have more than enough music than needed, isn’t that an indication that current copyright laws don’t need to be nearly as strong as they are in order to continue to promote the “useful arts”? (at least when it comes to music)
    - YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
      While this may be true, there is a middle ground between 'copyright lasts for the heat death of the Universe plus seventy years' and 'everything is stolen by robots the instant it's created'.
      - tjr 4y ago
        What we may have here is a need for some new use cases in copyright. The current laws were written with humans in mind -- human creators, human consumers. To retroactively say, "well, you released this to the [human] public under U.S. copyright law, therefore the rights you granted to humans extend to training AI systems as well" could be unfair.
    - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
      every now and then I like to point out that not every country has the same understanding as to the purposes of copyright as the U.S, in fact this whole promotion thing seems to be a specifically American argument (although obviously not familiar with every country in the world so many some other countries also have this conception and I'm not familiar with it - maybe some countries that based their national laws on the U.S for example) on edit: I just realized that of course British copyright law is also very similar to the American model.
  - CuriouslyC 4y ago
    Sure it is. There's a shit ton of shit on spotify, but if I want to listen to blackened ambient doom or technical jazz fusion death metal I might have one or two options each. Just because there are ~1000 Kanye/Taylor Swift wannabes trying to cash in on that played out mainstream sound doesn't mean there is enough music.
    - d1sxeyes 4y ago
      Interesting that you describe making music that appeals to a wide audience as “trying to cash in”. Would you not say that using an AI to do essentially the same thing, just with the benefit that you don’t really need to pay anyone for creating the art meaning you can target more niche preferences is also “cashing in”?
      - CuriouslyC 4y ago
        No. I see strong generative AI allowing people who like fun genres outside the mainstream to make music in those genres that sounds good more easily. That will enable a creative explosion as new artists are given a rocket boost and established artists are taken to the next level and made more productive. Generative AI is going to allow an amazing diversification and explosion of art and music, which is going to create the next big AI application once current systems for distributing content are strained to overloading - interactive recommenders. Imagine asking for a piece of content, getting recommendations, evaluating a short clip, giving feedback to the recommender and getting better recommendations as a result in a cycle until you get exactly what you want.
        d1sxeyes 4y ago
        Maybe I'm a luddite, and I'm not really into technical jazz fusion death metal, but I do like some technical music and some metal music. At least part of the reason I like technical music is because it is challenging to play for the musician. If an AI 'plays' 'technical' music, it loses its appeal for me. Similarly, a lot of the reason I like metal music is because of the emotion and energy poured into it by the human creator. Being able to ask a computer make noises which sounds like some musicians you like is not, in my opinion, the same as creating art.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  I don't think the concern is about machines doing it better, but machines being able to angleshoot around copyright. The issue is most easily demonstrated in writing. The current state of technology is already sufficient to create a program that could take as input a book and produce as output a book with identical story, characters, settings, and more - but 'nudged around' just enough to skirt current copyright law. Humans have already been able to do this of course, but the difference is scale and automation. With this software one could, under current law, setup a 100% legal 'shadow library' that effectively infringes on every single book published. Even a leaked copy of a book could be released and shared (in its legally infringing format) before the "real" copy hit the market. And again, all completely legally. The impacts of copyright infringement are regularly grossly distorted, but I think this is the sort of technology that could genuinely damage artists and creators across many endeavors. The exact same thing will be coming to software soon enough. 'Take this assembly/IL code, and create a functionally identical but superficially rebranded program while working to ensure you sidestep all relevant patents.' 'Sure, here you go.' The issue of this being done [relatively] instantly is going to really impact things in ways I think many are not considering. Never in a million years thought I'd see myself on the side of the copyright cartel, but this is one of the extremely rare times they're right.
  - CuriouslyC 4y ago
    That shadow library already exists, people write a shit ton of fanfic and publishers publish highly derivative stories specifically because they're basically veiled ripoffs of highly lucrative IP hoping to cash in. The barrier to shadow libraries is marketing, which is the only thing that really separates huge blockbuster music/art/books from stuff that makes literally zero money. Quality and ideas haven't been the gate for a long time.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- vkou 4y ago
  There's more good - even great - art currently in existence than I will be able to experience in my lifetime. If not a single new piece of art were created from this point on, I'd still die with a massive backlog of material to read, see, and listen to. At this point, I'm infinitely more concerned about the wellbeing of artists than about whether or not new art is going to be created.
stale2002 4y ago
> train a machine to be able to make limitless art > is super encouraging to the artist. This is the "nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded!" version of making art. Creating more, or "limitless" art is indeed the point.
- tjr 4y ago
  The statement I replied to spoke of the point of copyright being to encourage artists to create more art; not simply "to create more art". But neither of those is really what's written down, with the (U.S. law) point of copyright being "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". We might could interpret this as, training AI is progress of science, and thus the point of copyright includes training AI. Although I'm not sure that we really need copyright to do that, and accordingly, I doubt that is the intent of the law. Really, the issue here is may be that copyright law was not formed with AI systems in mind at all, neither as creators nor as consumers, and trying to apply it to AI systems, or to reason about copyright law as it pertains to what AI systems do, doesn't necessarily work very well. Maybe we need to go back and amend all of our written laws with a phrase like "for humans", just like so many science headlines need to include the phrase "in mice"!
  - blibble 4y ago
    the point of copyright is to allow people to exploit their work for material gain, which in turn benefits society by encouraging people to create works if only Microsoft (OpenAI) are able to exploit works for material gain at the cost of the literally 100% of the rest of society: why should society allow Microsoft to do this? (or even to allow Microsoft to exist at all?)
    - newswasboring 4y ago
      Yup I agree. These models should be open by law. Currently the calls for open models is not happening because its the initial chaos time, but as soon as we understand a little bit more there will be either regulation or open source reproductions. I mean LLama already exists, but even that has bullshit license stuff around it.
jutrewag 4y ago
What does it matter, the AI isn’t copying the work, just using it for “inspiration”.
newswasboring 4y ago
I see that, but it's a matter of balance. Lots of things encourage/discourage artists, not everything will be in their favor. The way I see it, as long as nobody's work is being reproduced, they shouldn't have any real qualms.
- tjr 4y ago
  I think that, just as content creators can designate a work to under various Creative Commons licenses, for commercial use, or for non-commercial use, or under MIT licenses, or GPL, or proprietary licenses, etc.... We may find that letting content creators choose to have their work included, or not, in AI training sets would be helpful? Or, included in training sets for a fee, or for some sort of attribution, or ?... The apparent current status quo of "anything on the public web is fair game for an AI training set" might not be a good permanent solution?
  - jacooper 4y ago
    The U.S. Supreme court will rule on that hopefully soon.

I don't think that taking one's art and using it to train a machine to be able to make limitless art is super encouraging to the artist.

by tjr 4y ago

I don't think that taking one's art and using it to train a machine to be able to make limitless art is super encouraging to the artist.

amanaplanacanal 4y ago

But the goal is more art, not keeping artists employed. If machines do it better, so be it.

dragonwriter 4y ago
If you shift the reward from the people doing one kind of work to people owning (one kind of, but this is fungible) capital, and don't shift capital at the same time, you are doing concrete harm to identifiable people, even if the net is positive in some constructed aggregate. AI has a tremendous ability to do that across a wide range of different types of work rapidly and simultaneously.
YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
No it isn't. 'Not enough art' is basically the exact opposite of the problem we're facing right now. Do you honestly believe that there's not enough music on Spotify? That a two hundred year catalogue isn't enough and you'd rather it be two hundred thousand years?
- dwallin 4y ago
  If your point is that we already have more than enough music than needed, isn’t that an indication that current copyright laws don’t need to be nearly as strong as they are in order to continue to promote the “useful arts”? (at least when it comes to music)
  - YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
    While this may be true, there is a middle ground between 'copyright lasts for the heat death of the Universe plus seventy years' and 'everything is stolen by robots the instant it's created'.
    - tjr 4y ago
      What we may have here is a need for some new use cases in copyright. The current laws were written with humans in mind -- human creators, human consumers. To retroactively say, "well, you released this to the [human] public under U.S. copyright law, therefore the rights you granted to humans extend to training AI systems as well" could be unfair.
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    every now and then I like to point out that not every country has the same understanding as to the purposes of copyright as the U.S, in fact this whole promotion thing seems to be a specifically American argument (although obviously not familiar with every country in the world so many some other countries also have this conception and I'm not familiar with it - maybe some countries that based their national laws on the U.S for example) on edit: I just realized that of course British copyright law is also very similar to the American model.
- CuriouslyC 4y ago
  Sure it is. There's a shit ton of shit on spotify, but if I want to listen to blackened ambient doom or technical jazz fusion death metal I might have one or two options each. Just because there are ~1000 Kanye/Taylor Swift wannabes trying to cash in on that played out mainstream sound doesn't mean there is enough music.
  - d1sxeyes 4y ago
    Interesting that you describe making music that appeals to a wide audience as “trying to cash in”. Would you not say that using an AI to do essentially the same thing, just with the benefit that you don’t really need to pay anyone for creating the art meaning you can target more niche preferences is also “cashing in”?
    - CuriouslyC 4y ago
      No. I see strong generative AI allowing people who like fun genres outside the mainstream to make music in those genres that sounds good more easily. That will enable a creative explosion as new artists are given a rocket boost and established artists are taken to the next level and made more productive. Generative AI is going to allow an amazing diversification and explosion of art and music, which is going to create the next big AI application once current systems for distributing content are strained to overloading - interactive recommenders. Imagine asking for a piece of content, getting recommendations, evaluating a short clip, giving feedback to the recommender and getting better recommendations as a result in a cycle until you get exactly what you want.
      - d1sxeyes 4y ago
        Maybe I'm a luddite, and I'm not really into technical jazz fusion death metal, but I do like some technical music and some metal music. At least part of the reason I like technical music is because it is challenging to play for the musician. If an AI 'plays' 'technical' music, it loses its appeal for me. Similarly, a lot of the reason I like metal music is because of the emotion and energy poured into it by the human creator. Being able to ask a computer make noises which sounds like some musicians you like is not, in my opinion, the same as creating art.
somenameforme 4y ago
I don't think the concern is about machines doing it better, but machines being able to angleshoot around copyright. The issue is most easily demonstrated in writing. The current state of technology is already sufficient to create a program that could take as input a book and produce as output a book with identical story, characters, settings, and more - but 'nudged around' just enough to skirt current copyright law. Humans have already been able to do this of course, but the difference is scale and automation. With this software one could, under current law, setup a 100% legal 'shadow library' that effectively infringes on every single book published. Even a leaked copy of a book could be released and shared (in its legally infringing format) before the "real" copy hit the market. And again, all completely legally. The impacts of copyright infringement are regularly grossly distorted, but I think this is the sort of technology that could genuinely damage artists and creators across many endeavors. The exact same thing will be coming to software soon enough. 'Take this assembly/IL code, and create a functionally identical but superficially rebranded program while working to ensure you sidestep all relevant patents.' 'Sure, here you go.' The issue of this being done [relatively] instantly is going to really impact things in ways I think many are not considering. Never in a million years thought I'd see myself on the side of the copyright cartel, but this is one of the extremely rare times they're right.
- CuriouslyC 4y ago
  That shadow library already exists, people write a shit ton of fanfic and publishers publish highly derivative stories specifically because they're basically veiled ripoffs of highly lucrative IP hoping to cash in. The barrier to shadow libraries is marketing, which is the only thing that really separates huge blockbuster music/art/books from stuff that makes literally zero money. Quality and ideas haven't been the gate for a long time.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
vkou 4y ago
There's more good - even great - art currently in existence than I will be able to experience in my lifetime. If not a single new piece of art were created from this point on, I'd still die with a massive backlog of material to read, see, and listen to. At this point, I'm infinitely more concerned about the wellbeing of artists than about whether or not new art is going to be created.

stale2002 4y ago

> train a machine to be able to make limitless art > is super encouraging to the artist. This is the "nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded!" version of making art. Creating more, or "limitless" art is indeed the point.

tjr 4y ago
The statement I replied to spoke of the point of copyright being to encourage artists to create more art; not simply "to create more art". But neither of those is really what's written down, with the (U.S. law) point of copyright being "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". We might could interpret this as, training AI is progress of science, and thus the point of copyright includes training AI. Although I'm not sure that we really need copyright to do that, and accordingly, I doubt that is the intent of the law. Really, the issue here is may be that copyright law was not formed with AI systems in mind at all, neither as creators nor as consumers, and trying to apply it to AI systems, or to reason about copyright law as it pertains to what AI systems do, doesn't necessarily work very well. Maybe we need to go back and amend all of our written laws with a phrase like "for humans", just like so many science headlines need to include the phrase "in mice"!
- blibble 4y ago
  the point of copyright is to allow people to exploit their work for material gain, which in turn benefits society by encouraging people to create works if only Microsoft (OpenAI) are able to exploit works for material gain at the cost of the literally 100% of the rest of society: why should society allow Microsoft to do this? (or even to allow Microsoft to exist at all?)
  - newswasboring 4y ago
    Yup I agree. These models should be open by law. Currently the calls for open models is not happening because its the initial chaos time, but as soon as we understand a little bit more there will be either regulation or open source reproductions. I mean LLama already exists, but even that has bullshit license stuff around it.

jutrewag 4y ago

What does it matter, the AI isn’t copying the work, just using it for “inspiration”.

newswasboring 4y ago

I see that, but it's a matter of balance. Lots of things encourage/discourage artists, not everything will be in their favor. The way I see it, as long as nobody's work is being reproduced, they shouldn't have any real qualms.

tjr 4y ago
I think that, just as content creators can designate a work to under various Creative Commons licenses, for commercial use, or for non-commercial use, or under MIT licenses, or GPL, or proprietary licenses, etc.... We may find that letting content creators choose to have their work included, or not, in AI training sets would be helpful? Or, included in training sets for a fee, or for some sort of attribution, or ?... The apparent current status quo of "anything on the public web is fair game for an AI training set" might not be a good permanent solution?
- jacooper 4y ago
  The U.S. Supreme court will rule on that hopefully soon.