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> Training an AI on an image would not be covered by fair use doctrine. Do you have a link to a court decision to that effect? How, specifically, is "training

> Training an AI on an image would not be covered by fair use doctrine. Do you have a link to a court decision to that effect? How, specifically, is "training an AI" different from "training a person" here?

anileated 3y ago
It boggles my mind when people seriously claim that if there’s a word “learning” in ML then it justifies OpenAI et al. ignoring basic copyright. Training(2) software is to training(1) a human what firewall is to an actual wall made of fire, or what killing a process is to killing a human. The word is a synonym—more precisely, industry slang that happens to resemble a word used outside of the industry due to superficial similarity. So if you wonder how training(2) software is different from training(1) a person, first understand that it’s a different word that never signified the same concept. Subsequently, if you want to argue that training(1) should apply to software now, the onus would be on you to explain why and how so. You should be prepared to argue that software is sufficiently like a human—you know, that it understands ideas, has agency and free will, thinks like a human and has human-like consciousness, is capable not only of performing instructions given to it by its operator and act as a tool but to actually consider its actions and make own moral judgements, things like that. And if you come up with satisfactory evidence in favor of all that, and have grounds to believe some software is enough like a human that training(1) applies to it, then why are you fighting to allow its operator to ignore copyright—and not for more important things, such as to free this human-like being from abuse by its operator and grant it basic human rights? If we imagine that software is like a person enough that “training” it means the same thing as training a human, we should be prepared to acknowledge all the implications that come with that. The reality is that there are companies who would like us to both believe their software is human-like (so that we don’t sue them for rampant copyright abuse) but also not at all human (so that we don’t demand them to stop profiting from what would be slave labor). Naturally, if they pick one or the other they stand to lose from “a lot of money” to “entire business model”—but we should help them make that choice.
- srslack 3y ago
  That's great and all, "training", "learning", etc. are terms of art. How does that change the fact that there is no substantial reproduction of the works in the resulting weights, or in the "output" of these models with the weights? Can you point to me where it's illegal to take copyrighted works and "train" neural networks on them, as long as there's no substantial reproduction of the works in the output of that process, or in the output of a particular configuration of "trained" and "frozen weights"?
  - anileated 3y ago
    Doesn’t make it any less of an automatically created derivative work.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  So, in brief, you don't have any legal citations to support your claim that training an AI is not fair use.
  - anileated 3y ago
    No, in brief I don’t need one and you don’t have one.
- Kim_Bruning 3y ago
  Eh, an AI/ML model is an AI/ML model. "Training" one is its own thing. However you define it, training typically doesn't involve making permanent copies of the data. This means that Under EU law -as far as I can tell- it is probably legal. Under US law the different circuits have a slightly different interpretations of the law, but probably would agree that this is fair use.
  - anileated 3y ago
    Then the law can/should be fixed.

anileated 3y ago

It boggles my mind when people seriously claim that if there’s a word “learning” in ML then it justifies OpenAI et al. ignoring basic copyright. Training(2) software is to training(1) a human what firewall is to an actual wall made of fire, or what killing a process is to killing a human. The word is a synonym—more precisely, industry slang that happens to resemble a word used outside of the industry due to superficial similarity. So if you wonder how training(2) software is different from training(1) a person, first understand that it’s a different word that never signified the same concept. Subsequently, if you want to argue that training(1) should apply to software now, the onus would be on you to explain why and how so. You should be prepared to argue that software is sufficiently like a human—you know, that it understands ideas, has agency and free will, thinks like a human and has human-like consciousness, is capable not only of performing instructions given to it by its operator and act as a tool but to actually consider its actions and make own moral judgements, things like that. And if you come up with satisfactory evidence in favor of all that, and have grounds to believe some software is enough like a human that training(1) applies to it, then why are you fighting to allow its operator to ignore copyright—and not for more important things, such as to free this human-like being from abuse by its operator and grant it basic human rights? If we imagine that software is like a person enough that “training” it means the same thing as training a human, we should be prepared to acknowledge all the implications that come with that. The reality is that there are companies who would like us to both believe their software is human-like (so that we don’t sue them for rampant copyright abuse) but also not at all human (so that we don’t demand them to stop profiting from what would be slave labor). Naturally, if they pick one or the other they stand to lose from “a lot of money” to “entire business model”—but we should help them make that choice.

srslack 3y ago
That's great and all, "training", "learning", etc. are terms of art. How does that change the fact that there is no substantial reproduction of the works in the resulting weights, or in the "output" of these models with the weights? Can you point to me where it's illegal to take copyrighted works and "train" neural networks on them, as long as there's no substantial reproduction of the works in the output of that process, or in the output of a particular configuration of "trained" and "frozen weights"?
- anileated 3y ago
  Doesn’t make it any less of an automatically created derivative work.
Turing_Machine 3y ago
So, in brief, you don't have any legal citations to support your claim that training an AI is not fair use.
- anileated 3y ago
  No, in brief I don’t need one and you don’t have one.
Kim_Bruning 3y ago
Eh, an AI/ML model is an AI/ML model. "Training" one is its own thing. However you define it, training typically doesn't involve making permanent copies of the data. This means that Under EU law -as far as I can tell- it is probably legal. Under US law the different circuits have a slightly different interpretations of the law, but probably would agree that this is fair use.
- anileated 3y ago
  Then the law can/should be fixed.