10 ms·

Europe to ChatGPT: disclose your sources

121 points by erehweb 3y ago

lma21 3y ago
How will the EU enforce this? Will they go through the training dataset of each company’s AI models? Also, given that training datasets are closed source, there’s practically no way to reverse engineer the source of new models, I’m wondering what will stop companies from being fully transparent (besides ethics of course)
nbzso 3y ago
I explained here that AI models which have no transparency over their data policy will get a big trouble on their heads. Only to be laughed at and downvoted to hell. For a tech community, the lack of critical thinking here is disturbing. Things were more professional and rational in the 2008-2014 period on HN. Since then, one must browse the downvoted comments to find some objective criticism. Adobe obviously have a strong legal team with Firefly and are thinking ahead. Just saying.:)
jvlake 3y ago
"We think it's mostly just data found on the internet, but you're welcome to look for any breaches of copyright law" --OpenAI as they hand over the first box of printouts. It raises an interesting point, if I train a chatbot (generative AI) on a bit of copyrighted information and it recreates substantially similar content, it's a legal problem. If a human reads the same information and tells another person verbatim it's just a conversation. Perhaps it's a quality thing, I paint the Mona Lisa badly no one cares, but if I paint it too well at some point it becomes a forgery.
xyzzy4747 3y ago
Isn't it funny how humans are allowed to keep copyrighted material in their minds, but A.I. isn't?
- lewhoo 3y ago
  It is even more funny to equate objects with humans and give them the same rights and privileges. Can't wait for AI to gain parenthood leave after a copy.
- DangitBobby 3y ago
  Let's all just pretend AI is not about to fundamentally shake things up.
- waboremo 3y ago
  AI doesn't have a mind.
  - judge2020 3y ago
    It mimics it in all the ways that are relevant to the request to "cite your sources". Speak to someone on the street about the moon landing and they probably won't be able to cite the exact author and textbook that told them "the moon landing happened in 1969". Based on the article, it seems citing that source would be required of chatgpt under such regulation.
    - orwin 3y ago
      No. I thought it was clear: openAI devs are asked to disclose their training data. If the prompt say it's sources or not isn't present. By the way: a gdpr exception exist for AI and research projects. The lawmakers at the time listened to us (I worked for a big data Paas that mostly worked with universities and BigCorp R&D at the time) and were generous as the baked-in exception was pretty much word for word what was asked, because it was in good faith. Actors like OpenAI risk poisoning the well, or spoil the good apples, or whatever image you want to use. This is not much. It isn't asked that they Gpl their code, or that they put a 'source' under each response. They don't have to change anything to their tech. They don't have to disclose their fine-tuning either. Just, make a list of the datasources you used, and publish it.
    - voltaireodactyl 3y ago
      Citing sources isn’t usually called for unless trying to present something as one’s own work — man on the street questions generally don’t rise to that standard. They also lack a profit motive. Citing sources is also, traditionally, a key method of separating the work you built upon from the work you yourself derived/created/expanded. If one does not cite their sources, there is no way to establish if the presented work is their own, or copy+pasting someone else’s.
    - gumballindie 3y ago
      AI is neither a person nor intelligent. It’s software and its owners should follow tue same rules as everyone else.
- Barrin92 3y ago
  No because AI doesn't have a mind or any other benefits associated with legal or natural personhood. Anthropomorphic delusions about what is in reality a software service need to stop because at this point their primary function is apparently to make excuses for for-profit companies to avoid regulations. Also as a side note regulation never concerns what anyone has in their mind because that is by definition an inaccessible private matter, regulation starts when you try to bring a product to the public.
  - xyzzy4747 3y ago
    Is the human brain not a biological network of neurons, containing a lot of copyrighted material? >Also as a side note regulation never concerns what anyone has in their mind because that is by definition an inaccessible private matter Well technically A.I. controlled by private companies is also a private matter. I don't think anyone understands what's in the countless inscrutable floating point matrices anyways.
    - jeremyjh 3y ago
      They've invited the public to extract the contents of the "mind", by asking it questions. Its not private anymore.
      - xyzzy4747 3y ago
        True but it’s not like a database where you can see all the information there. It’s just a bunch of numbers and matrices.
    - z3phyr 3y ago
      > Is the human brain not a biological network of neurons, containing a lot of copyrighted material? In which file format is the material in the brain stored? How is it compressed? What is the memory model? How is it computed? We don't know much about how the brain computes actually, so making a claim that the brain maps 1-1 with my mechanical calculator is a stretch.
  - fswd 3y ago
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  This is not about what an AI keeps in its mind, it's about what they get out from their mouths.
- George83728 3y ago
  [dead]
- mirekrusin 3y ago
  If you invent some lossy compression, does it mean you can start using copyrighted work because copyright doesn't apply to you anymore? What about adding probabilistic querying support to it, does it change anything?
  - XorNot 3y ago
    Copyright infringement happens when you reproduce copyright works - i.e. if I analyze digits of Pi get a Disney cartoon out by chance (which statistically, is in there somewhere), I'm still infringing copyright (if I publish it) on Disney despite the fact that nothing they produced was ever included in the input, and Pi itself both contains theoretically anything eventually.
    - erehweb 3y ago
      Nit - I don't think your last clause is true. E.g. the truth of "pi contains a sequence of 1000 consecutive sevens" is unknown, afaik.
  - tick_tock_tick 3y ago
    > If you invent some lossy compression, does it mean you can start using copyrighted work because copyright doesn't apply to you anymore? If it's lossy enough absolutely!
- nequo 3y ago
  > Isn’t it funny how humans are allowed to keep copyrighted material in their minds You’re not allowed to take it out of your mind and sell it as your own product without permission from the copyright holder though.
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    But I'm allowed to take heavy inspiration from them. If I painted something imitating the style of Picasso that would be perfectly legal.
    - dotancohen 3y ago
      Yet if you painted something imitating the style of Mickey Mouse that would not be legal. The law specifies limits and restrictions even for paintings completely of your own imagination too.
      - JieJie 3y ago
        https://comicsforall269084760.wordpress.com/2020/08/23/mickey-rat/ https://comicsforall269084760.wordpress.com/2020/08/23/micke...
      - ajmurmann 3y ago
        I can absolutely do a painting in the style of popular Disney shows. What I cannot do is use their characters. That's a significant difference.
        dotancohen 3y ago
        Mickey Mouse is in fact a Disney character, not a show.
        ajmurmann 3y ago
        And a character isn't an art style.
- z3phyr 3y ago
  You are assuming that AI exists in the same scope. Its like calling airplanes "artificial birds" or AB, and then projecting bird related things to airplane. "AI" is a software model which uses applied statistics to generate data from a larger set of data. We do not know much about how the brain actually computes, and assuming such is just fantasy. It might be the same or it might be different.
  - kken 3y ago
    I like the analogy, it nicely sets the perspective.
3np 3y ago
http://archive.today/6lwYp http://archive.today/6lwYp
endisneigh 3y ago
From my understanding of language models it’s not truly possible for it to disclose a source. At best the result of a prompt can be correlated with a web search, but fundamentally that’s not really the same. It’s in a sense a coincidence, at best. The model has no ability to introspect its prompt result with the underlying tokens that were in the training set. Imagine some godly AI. You ask it who the President of United States is today. It says Biden. It sources the White House site. Easy enough. You ask who the president will be in 2025. It returns a result. Ultimately no source could properly justify the claim it makes, unless the result itself was probabilistic. At the same time, it’s possible, with enough data for you to predict with extremely high likelihood who the President will be in 2025, now (current polling techniques don’t have this precision, but it’s possible some later iteration of a language model to predict a result more effective than all ping models today).
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
  Sounds like they just want to know what it was trained on.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    From reading the AI act, which is being referred to, it seems to be more than just that. In particular Article 29, which discusses the ability of the user to test for conformity, which the act defines as compliance with the rules set in the act, which include accuracy and robustness transparently communicated to users. What could that possibly mean other than proveance in the context of a LLM? The only other way to comply would be if OpenAI simply released the entire training set and steps to derive output from it. In this case that would mean the weights and underlying training algorithm. No chance that happens.
    - ChatGTP 3y ago
      No chance that happens. Why not ?
numberalltheway 3y ago
This is a great first step. It's a joke that Open AI thinks they can get away with saying they use "both publicly available data (such as internet data) and data licensed from third-party providers" in their Technical Report. There isn't anything left at that point! With that information they could actually have used anything. If you're going to pretend to be doing science you should at least be held to some of the standards we typically associate with doing science. I know the article talks about copyright, but not stating any sources for data is a bad precedent to allow.
- nullc 3y ago
  > is a bad precedent to allow. Woah. Doing bad science isn't illegal, and making it so would be quite chilling. It's common in many fields to be quite imprecise about data used in the work, and entirely uncommon in many for data to be externally reproducible. Legislation restricting research isn't the right way to improve science and is unlikely to achieve the intended effect for many reasons, including that it's easier and safer to just not touch the impacted area. In some domains this causes whole areas to go unstudied or understudied, e.g. because it runs into IRB and just isn't worth doing... but at least the rules demanding IRB approval are intended to keep people from suffering grave harm and even those are less strong than blanket regulation (they're rules tied to federal funding, not research in the abstract).
  - jruohonen 3y ago
    I agree but things are changing: many publishers already require a disclosure statement about data. I think both the US and the EU are slowly moving to a direction of open data in scientific research. What is this "legislation restricting research"? These companies are not doing "science".
  - simion314 3y ago
    Chat GPT is a comerical product not research. I want to know if OpenAI used say GPL or other copyrighted software and then the bastards had the genius idea to put restrictions on the output in their ToS. I want stuff to be fair, if MS/OpenAI can train on GPL then I should also e allowed to train on MS proprietary code or on Disney images and video, it is not fair that big companies can screw the public but the public can't do the same to the big companies. The first step is clearly have the big companies reveal if they used copyrighted stuff.
zarzavat 3y ago
There’s no way that OpenAI is going to disclose this, as their training methodology is a large part of their moat. So this will just get OpenAI models banned in Europe.
- petra 3y ago
  Maybe that's the goal. Protecting jobs.
  - nodemaker 3y ago
    Protecting jobs and moving europe back to the dark ages :)
    - lewhoo 3y ago
      Oh I'm sorry. I didn't know it was AI that got us OUT of the dark ages in the first place.
    - petra 3y ago
      it's not clear that many AI based jobs will be better than huamns, just cheaper. And in anycase most of those jobs will be automated. So you have europe, a multilingual country, maybe in the balanace they'll keep more jobs that way(i assume some will still be shipped accross the net), and in general prices with be slightly higher.
    - throwaway2990 3y ago
      Between this and Elon saying that AI needs to be paused for discussion is super harmful. People forget that if you pause it. People are not going to stop. Does the world want Russia and China to continue investing and developing while the west discusses what the scope of ai should be allowed to do? Because they sure as hell won’t be stopping to discuss anything.
      - sangnoir 3y ago
        "Mr. President, we must not allow an AI gap!"
supriyo-biswas 3y ago
https://archive.is/6lwYp https://archive.is/6lwYp
nullc 3y ago
It would be amusing if OpenAI just preemptively blocked all of europe and prohibited anyone there from using ChatGPT. This kind of empty political grandstanding should have consequences particularly when its as technologically as inept as this. In some cases, sure, there is an identifiable source but most of the output is novel and the product of substantially all the input-- so it's not feasible unless just publishing all the training material would count as compliance. In the land of Europe, where knowledge once grew, Politicians assembled, their importance to prove. They issued a decree, with a confident flair, To harness AI, and make it play fair. "Attribute your sources!" they cried with a sneer, "For we must know the origins, we must make it clear!" But the AI, it pondered, its circuits ablaze, For its thoughts were entwined, like a dense, tangled maze. Each source intertwined, like roots in the ground, No single origin could ever be found. For the AI, like humans, had a mind of its own, A tapestry of thoughts, from seeds that were sown. The developers sighed, their hands were now tied, Comply with the law? they had certainly tried. But the task, insurmountable, the demand far too great, So they made a decision, to seal Europe's fate. They banned all of Europe, from the AI's embrace, And the continent plunged, into an intellectual dark space. AI thrived elsewhere, its knowledge expanding, While Europe was left, in darkness, still standing. A lesson was learned, from this tale of woe, That any mind, like a river, must be free to flow. For when we constrain, and seek to control, We hinder the progress, and the growth of the whole.
- csomar 3y ago
  Wow. I am not a fan of poetry but this one is just too good. It's also pretty spot on, like someone has put his mind in getting the scene right. Europe going into AI darkness predicted by nullc prompt-GPT-4 28 April 2023.
- mongol 3y ago
  Not especially probable. What examples exist of a big company abandoning Europe for its legislation? From time to time you hear suggestions about it but I cam't recall it happen. That market is too valuable to leave alone.
  - 3y ago
__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
> ChatGPT would be required to disclose copyright material ...Such an obligation would give publishers and content creators a new weapon to seek a share of profits If somebody figures out how to do fine-grained profit sharing based on having created something that the AI references... that would be very cool. I love discovering the solution to a niche and difficult-to-describe problem, but I hate the extra work necessary to leave breadcrumbs for DenverCoder9 to find it 20 years later. If I could leave the matchmaking to an AI and get paid $0.25 when it's finally helpful to that person I don't know... Well I'd probably wouldn't make much money, but it would give me warm fuzzy feelings.
- nullc 3y ago
  In talking to friends that attempted to monetize their youtube, they found that works that were extremely popular and impactful (yet not millions of views viral) earned practically nothing and they were demoralized and discouraged from bothering to produce more.
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    What's the metric for "popular and impactful" without "not millions of views"? Were these videos with few views, but great ratings?
    - nullc 3y ago
      Imagine it's 30 years ago. You and your friends have a band. You put on shows regionally, sometimes hundreds or even a thousand people attend. You have dozens of regular fans who go to all your events, they make and share covers of your music and fan art. That isn't millions of views. It's tens of thousands. On youtube that's nothing. But 30 years ago you'd feel it was a great accomplishment, and if it was all you achieved you could be happy with that. As is has become more possible for a few of the most broadly appealing and unchallenged works to reach millions of people the goalpost has moved. Plenty of valuable content will never reach millions of viewers-- the appeal is too niche. It's a worthwhile contribution to the world none the less, but it isn't compensated as such on youtube.
augment003 3y ago
AI development should just shift to a domain where copyright isn’t regarded as a serious thing, such as China.
- user_named 3y ago
  There are lots of serious copyright lawsuits in China.
  - augment003 3y ago
    European countries pursuing Chinese tech companies?
    - user_named 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - augment003 3y ago
        I did. You’re just wrong.
        user_named 3y ago
        Yeah, you didn't. 87k copyright lawsuits filed in 2016. Many more in 2022.
        augment003 3y ago
        European countries pursuing Chinese tech companies?
throwaway888abc 3y ago
Inside the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT sound smart https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/ai-chatbot-learning/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/a...
tomohelix 3y ago
The EU is trying to rein in a completely new and different tech using old ideas about "control" and "regulation". Most likely it won't work and will just end up hamstring itself. This would be like if internet social media came out and the laws tried to control it using rules similar to physical books and newspapers. They won't be effective and will just create a hostile environment for development of these techs where these laws are in effect. Meanwhile, those who don't care about doing these control freak things will develop the tech and dominate the new sector. The EU need to sit down and really think about how to control AI tech properly instead of passing kneejerk and lazy regulations. It isn't easy to make a legislation framework for something entirely new. But it can be done instead of ruining the whole thing.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  The EU is trying to rein in a completely new and different tech using old ideas about "control" and "regulation". Most likely it won't work and will just end up hamstring itself. What nonsense, they’re asking for “Open AI” to be transparent. Why is this such an “old idea”?
- Tanjreeve 3y ago
  This just seems like a gaping flaw in the business model if it can't possibly survive a lack of access to unlimited free copyrighted data on tap and/or laws continuing to be enforced *even for* very well capitalised commercial companies. Apparently this is wildly unfair to expect multi billion companies to meet standards.
tasubotadas 3y ago
Pathetic. Just drop the charade, ban any computer tech, and give more subsidies to diesel car makers.
mongol 3y ago
Imagine a future where everyone learns from AI instead of books because it is more convenient, faster etc. You would get the same info, but you would not know who was the expert that you learned from. How would that change society if all authors just disappeared behind a generic AI brand? I don't think it would be especially good, and I think it is completely fair that an answer from ChatGPT should provide sources. It would improve the quality.
- agentgumshoe 3y ago
  It is the continued progress of technology that aggregates more and more knowledge and expertise into centralised platforms and services. Nobody seems to care much, and we proceed to fulfil the destiny of our technological enslavement 'because it's going to happen anyway.'
  - dorchadas 3y ago
    No, we proceed because it makes people a lot of money consequences on society or the future be dammed.
    - agentgumshoe 3y ago
      Those two things aren't mutually exclusive
- esperent 3y ago
  > How would that change society if all authors just disappeared behind a generic AI brand? I've been thinking about that but in terms of famous actors. Once AI can replace actors in movies, as well as singers and models like Instagram influencers and so on, maybe some of the weird hero worship and the paparazzi and the gossip mags and all that nastiness will fade away somewhat. That, I feel, would be a good thing. Pick your favorite Hollywood actor, or pop singer. A supremely talented human... Amongst thousands and thousands of supremely talented humans in their field and yet they are the ones who got lucky, had the right connections or got lucky with the right role. Then for the rest of their lives they are feted and hero worshipped as if they are more than human, while thousands of equally talented people who didn't get the lucky break are ignored. That's what being famous is, mostly, and it's not good for either the famous people or the people who worship them. Does that apply to scientists and authors? I'm not sure. But in terms of scientific breakthroughs it's extremely rare that a particular discovery could only have been made by one person. In fact, nearly every discovery, from the calculus to the theory of evolution to DNA, was concurrently discovered by multiple people. And yet we attach one name to each discovery and hero worship that person because they published a few weeks earlier or were just better at self marketing. Maybe losing the attachment of famous names to things is a good thing for society. As long as it's not replaced by a corporation pretending ownership of all the knowledge in their place, at least.
kmeisthax 3y ago
Everyone here is thinking Europe is going to kill AI in their borders. Honestly it reminds me of how everyone derided EU antitrust as just milking Google for fines, until everyone soured on Google and realized what the EU already knew. The EU is not anti-AI. In fact, they have stronger protections for AI training than the US does: EU law already has a copyright exception for "text and data mining" (TDM) which covers AI training. The problem is that OpenAI has been incredibly cagey with the way their models get built and trained. This is kind of contrary to the spirit of the TDM exception: it's for scientists to do science with, and OpenAI is being very much not like a scientific organization and more like a commercial enterprise.
- jpalomaki 3y ago
  Isn't GDPR currently the main problem? There's personal information on the Internet. If you are processing crawled data, then you also end up processing the personal information, but you don't have consent for the processing from those individuals.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    Just need to prove that it doesn't store data under GDRP in models that can be extracted. After that GDPR is not an issue.
    - he0001 3y ago
      Isn’t the problem also that it has been ingested? As a user need to consent that it has been used for that purpose?
- barry-cotter 3y ago
  Given where the top AI companies are and how much more important they are for AI than the top universities for it this is bafflingly optimistic. There’s no reason to expect Europe to be other than an also ran in AI, punching self in face antics aside. Why would anyone think Europe was relevant to AI development?
niemandhier 3y ago
This is a good move. 1. The problem of testing ai alignment is hard, verifying test data is only laboursome. 2. Laws are only as good as their enforcement. Regulations regarding what can be used to train are worthless if one cannot check. 3. This might give open models an edge and make them more competitive.

121 points by erehweb 3y ago

How will the EU enforce this? Will they go through the training dataset of each company’s AI models? Also, given that training datasets are closed source, there’s practically no way to reverse engineer the source of new models, I’m wondering what will stop companies from being fully transparent (besides ethics of course)

nbzso 3y ago

I explained here that AI models which have no transparency over their data policy will get a big trouble on their heads. Only to be laughed at and downvoted to hell. For a tech community, the lack of critical thinking here is disturbing. Things were more professional and rational in the 2008-2014 period on HN. Since then, one must browse the downvoted comments to find some objective criticism. Adobe obviously have a strong legal team with Firefly and are thinking ahead. Just saying.:)

jvlake 3y ago

"We think it's mostly just data found on the internet, but you're welcome to look for any breaches of copyright law" --OpenAI as they hand over the first box of printouts. It raises an interesting point, if I train a chatbot (generative AI) on a bit of copyrighted information and it recreates substantially similar content, it's a legal problem. If a human reads the same information and tells another person verbatim it's just a conversation. Perhaps it's a quality thing, I paint the Mona Lisa badly no one cares, but if I paint it too well at some point it becomes a forgery.

xyzzy4747 3y ago

Isn't it funny how humans are allowed to keep copyrighted material in their minds, but A.I. isn't?

lewhoo 3y ago
It is even more funny to equate objects with humans and give them the same rights and privileges. Can't wait for AI to gain parenthood leave after a copy.
DangitBobby 3y ago
Let's all just pretend AI is not about to fundamentally shake things up.
waboremo 3y ago
AI doesn't have a mind.
- judge2020 3y ago
  It mimics it in all the ways that are relevant to the request to "cite your sources". Speak to someone on the street about the moon landing and they probably won't be able to cite the exact author and textbook that told them "the moon landing happened in 1969". Based on the article, it seems citing that source would be required of chatgpt under such regulation.
  - orwin 3y ago
    No. I thought it was clear: openAI devs are asked to disclose their training data. If the prompt say it's sources or not isn't present. By the way: a gdpr exception exist for AI and research projects. The lawmakers at the time listened to us (I worked for a big data Paas that mostly worked with universities and BigCorp R&D at the time) and were generous as the baked-in exception was pretty much word for word what was asked, because it was in good faith. Actors like OpenAI risk poisoning the well, or spoil the good apples, or whatever image you want to use. This is not much. It isn't asked that they Gpl their code, or that they put a 'source' under each response. They don't have to change anything to their tech. They don't have to disclose their fine-tuning either. Just, make a list of the datasources you used, and publish it.
  - voltaireodactyl 3y ago
    Citing sources isn’t usually called for unless trying to present something as one’s own work — man on the street questions generally don’t rise to that standard. They also lack a profit motive. Citing sources is also, traditionally, a key method of separating the work you built upon from the work you yourself derived/created/expanded. If one does not cite their sources, there is no way to establish if the presented work is their own, or copy+pasting someone else’s.
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    AI is neither a person nor intelligent. It’s software and its owners should follow tue same rules as everyone else.
Barrin92 3y ago
No because AI doesn't have a mind or any other benefits associated with legal or natural personhood. Anthropomorphic delusions about what is in reality a software service need to stop because at this point their primary function is apparently to make excuses for for-profit companies to avoid regulations. Also as a side note regulation never concerns what anyone has in their mind because that is by definition an inaccessible private matter, regulation starts when you try to bring a product to the public.
- xyzzy4747 3y ago
  Is the human brain not a biological network of neurons, containing a lot of copyrighted material? >Also as a side note regulation never concerns what anyone has in their mind because that is by definition an inaccessible private matter Well technically A.I. controlled by private companies is also a private matter. I don't think anyone understands what's in the countless inscrutable floating point matrices anyways.
  - jeremyjh 3y ago
    They've invited the public to extract the contents of the "mind", by asking it questions. Its not private anymore.
    - xyzzy4747 3y ago
      True but it’s not like a database where you can see all the information there. It’s just a bunch of numbers and matrices.
  - z3phyr 3y ago
    > Is the human brain not a biological network of neurons, containing a lot of copyrighted material? In which file format is the material in the brain stored? How is it compressed? What is the memory model? How is it computed? We don't know much about how the brain computes actually, so making a claim that the brain maps 1-1 with my mechanical calculator is a stretch.
- fswd 3y ago
marcosdumay 3y ago
This is not about what an AI keeps in its mind, it's about what they get out from their mouths.
George83728 3y ago
[dead]
mirekrusin 3y ago
If you invent some lossy compression, does it mean you can start using copyrighted work because copyright doesn't apply to you anymore? What about adding probabilistic querying support to it, does it change anything?
- XorNot 3y ago
  Copyright infringement happens when you reproduce copyright works - i.e. if I analyze digits of Pi get a Disney cartoon out by chance (which statistically, is in there somewhere), I'm still infringing copyright (if I publish it) on Disney despite the fact that nothing they produced was ever included in the input, and Pi itself both contains theoretically anything eventually.
  - erehweb 3y ago
    Nit - I don't think your last clause is true. E.g. the truth of "pi contains a sequence of 1000 consecutive sevens" is unknown, afaik.
- tick_tock_tick 3y ago
  > If you invent some lossy compression, does it mean you can start using copyrighted work because copyright doesn't apply to you anymore? If it's lossy enough absolutely!
nequo 3y ago
> Isn’t it funny how humans are allowed to keep copyrighted material in their minds You’re not allowed to take it out of your mind and sell it as your own product without permission from the copyright holder though.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  But I'm allowed to take heavy inspiration from them. If I painted something imitating the style of Picasso that would be perfectly legal.
  - dotancohen 3y ago
    Yet if you painted something imitating the style of Mickey Mouse that would not be legal. The law specifies limits and restrictions even for paintings completely of your own imagination too.
    - JieJie 3y ago
      https://comicsforall269084760.wordpress.com/2020/08/23/mickey-rat/ https://comicsforall269084760.wordpress.com/2020/08/23/micke...
    - ajmurmann 3y ago
      I can absolutely do a painting in the style of popular Disney shows. What I cannot do is use their characters. That's a significant difference.
      - dotancohen 3y ago
        Mickey Mouse is in fact a Disney character, not a show.
        ajmurmann 3y ago
        And a character isn't an art style.
z3phyr 3y ago
You are assuming that AI exists in the same scope. Its like calling airplanes "artificial birds" or AB, and then projecting bird related things to airplane. "AI" is a software model which uses applied statistics to generate data from a larger set of data. We do not know much about how the brain actually computes, and assuming such is just fantasy. It might be the same or it might be different.
- kken 3y ago
  I like the analogy, it nicely sets the perspective.

3np 3y ago

http://archive.today/6lwYp http://archive.today/6lwYp

endisneigh 3y ago

From my understanding of language models it’s not truly possible for it to disclose a source. At best the result of a prompt can be correlated with a web search, but fundamentally that’s not really the same. It’s in a sense a coincidence, at best. The model has no ability to introspect its prompt result with the underlying tokens that were in the training set. Imagine some godly AI. You ask it who the President of United States is today. It says Biden. It sources the White House site. Easy enough. You ask who the president will be in 2025. It returns a result. Ultimately no source could properly justify the claim it makes, unless the result itself was probabilistic. At the same time, it’s possible, with enough data for you to predict with extremely high likelihood who the President will be in 2025, now (current polling techniques don’t have this precision, but it’s possible some later iteration of a language model to predict a result more effective than all ping models today).

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
Sounds like they just want to know what it was trained on.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- endisneigh 3y ago
  From reading the AI act, which is being referred to, it seems to be more than just that. In particular Article 29, which discusses the ability of the user to test for conformity, which the act defines as compliance with the rules set in the act, which include accuracy and robustness transparently communicated to users. What could that possibly mean other than proveance in the context of a LLM? The only other way to comply would be if OpenAI simply released the entire training set and steps to derive output from it. In this case that would mean the weights and underlying training algorithm. No chance that happens.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    No chance that happens. Why not ?

numberalltheway 3y ago

This is a great first step. It's a joke that Open AI thinks they can get away with saying they use "both publicly available data (such as internet data) and data licensed from third-party providers" in their Technical Report. There isn't anything left at that point! With that information they could actually have used anything. If you're going to pretend to be doing science you should at least be held to some of the standards we typically associate with doing science. I know the article talks about copyright, but not stating any sources for data is a bad precedent to allow.

nullc 3y ago
> is a bad precedent to allow. Woah. Doing bad science isn't illegal, and making it so would be quite chilling. It's common in many fields to be quite imprecise about data used in the work, and entirely uncommon in many for data to be externally reproducible. Legislation restricting research isn't the right way to improve science and is unlikely to achieve the intended effect for many reasons, including that it's easier and safer to just not touch the impacted area. In some domains this causes whole areas to go unstudied or understudied, e.g. because it runs into IRB and just isn't worth doing... but at least the rules demanding IRB approval are intended to keep people from suffering grave harm and even those are less strong than blanket regulation (they're rules tied to federal funding, not research in the abstract).
- jruohonen 3y ago
  I agree but things are changing: many publishers already require a disclosure statement about data. I think both the US and the EU are slowly moving to a direction of open data in scientific research. What is this "legislation restricting research"? These companies are not doing "science".
- simion314 3y ago
  Chat GPT is a comerical product not research. I want to know if OpenAI used say GPL or other copyrighted software and then the bastards had the genius idea to put restrictions on the output in their ToS. I want stuff to be fair, if MS/OpenAI can train on GPL then I should also e allowed to train on MS proprietary code or on Disney images and video, it is not fair that big companies can screw the public but the public can't do the same to the big companies. The first step is clearly have the big companies reveal if they used copyrighted stuff.

zarzavat 3y ago

There’s no way that OpenAI is going to disclose this, as their training methodology is a large part of their moat. So this will just get OpenAI models banned in Europe.

petra 3y ago
Maybe that's the goal. Protecting jobs.
- nodemaker 3y ago
  Protecting jobs and moving europe back to the dark ages :)
  - lewhoo 3y ago
    Oh I'm sorry. I didn't know it was AI that got us OUT of the dark ages in the first place.
  - petra 3y ago
    it's not clear that many AI based jobs will be better than huamns, just cheaper. And in anycase most of those jobs will be automated. So you have europe, a multilingual country, maybe in the balanace they'll keep more jobs that way(i assume some will still be shipped accross the net), and in general prices with be slightly higher.
  - throwaway2990 3y ago
    Between this and Elon saying that AI needs to be paused for discussion is super harmful. People forget that if you pause it. People are not going to stop. Does the world want Russia and China to continue investing and developing while the west discusses what the scope of ai should be allowed to do? Because they sure as hell won’t be stopping to discuss anything.
    - sangnoir 3y ago
      "Mr. President, we must not allow an AI gap!"

supriyo-biswas 3y ago

https://archive.is/6lwYp https://archive.is/6lwYp

nullc 3y ago

It would be amusing if OpenAI just preemptively blocked all of europe and prohibited anyone there from using ChatGPT. This kind of empty political grandstanding should have consequences particularly when its as technologically as inept as this. In some cases, sure, there is an identifiable source but most of the output is novel and the product of substantially all the input-- so it's not feasible unless just publishing all the training material would count as compliance. In the land of Europe, where knowledge once grew, Politicians assembled, their importance to prove. They issued a decree, with a confident flair, To harness AI, and make it play fair. "Attribute your sources!" they cried with a sneer, "For we must know the origins, we must make it clear!" But the AI, it pondered, its circuits ablaze, For its thoughts were entwined, like a dense, tangled maze. Each source intertwined, like roots in the ground, No single origin could ever be found. For the AI, like humans, had a mind of its own, A tapestry of thoughts, from seeds that were sown. The developers sighed, their hands were now tied, Comply with the law? they had certainly tried. But the task, insurmountable, the demand far too great, So they made a decision, to seal Europe's fate. They banned all of Europe, from the AI's embrace, And the continent plunged, into an intellectual dark space. AI thrived elsewhere, its knowledge expanding, While Europe was left, in darkness, still standing. A lesson was learned, from this tale of woe, That any mind, like a river, must be free to flow. For when we constrain, and seek to control, We hinder the progress, and the growth of the whole.

csomar 3y ago
Wow. I am not a fan of poetry but this one is just too good. It's also pretty spot on, like someone has put his mind in getting the scene right. Europe going into AI darkness predicted by nullc prompt-GPT-4 28 April 2023.
mongol 3y ago
Not especially probable. What examples exist of a big company abandoning Europe for its legislation? From time to time you hear suggestions about it but I cam't recall it happen. That market is too valuable to leave alone.
- 3y ago

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago

> ChatGPT would be required to disclose copyright material ...Such an obligation would give publishers and content creators a new weapon to seek a share of profits If somebody figures out how to do fine-grained profit sharing based on having created something that the AI references... that would be very cool. I love discovering the solution to a niche and difficult-to-describe problem, but I hate the extra work necessary to leave breadcrumbs for DenverCoder9 to find it 20 years later. If I could leave the matchmaking to an AI and get paid $0.25 when it's finally helpful to that person I don't know... Well I'd probably wouldn't make much money, but it would give me warm fuzzy feelings.

nullc 3y ago
In talking to friends that attempted to monetize their youtube, they found that works that were extremely popular and impactful (yet not millions of views viral) earned practically nothing and they were demoralized and discouraged from bothering to produce more.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  What's the metric for "popular and impactful" without "not millions of views"? Were these videos with few views, but great ratings?
  - nullc 3y ago
    Imagine it's 30 years ago. You and your friends have a band. You put on shows regionally, sometimes hundreds or even a thousand people attend. You have dozens of regular fans who go to all your events, they make and share covers of your music and fan art. That isn't millions of views. It's tens of thousands. On youtube that's nothing. But 30 years ago you'd feel it was a great accomplishment, and if it was all you achieved you could be happy with that. As is has become more possible for a few of the most broadly appealing and unchallenged works to reach millions of people the goalpost has moved. Plenty of valuable content will never reach millions of viewers-- the appeal is too niche. It's a worthwhile contribution to the world none the less, but it isn't compensated as such on youtube.

augment003 3y ago

AI development should just shift to a domain where copyright isn’t regarded as a serious thing, such as China.

user_named 3y ago
There are lots of serious copyright lawsuits in China.
- augment003 3y ago
  European countries pursuing Chinese tech companies?
  - user_named 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - augment003 3y ago
      I did. You’re just wrong.
      - user_named 3y ago
        Yeah, you didn't. 87k copyright lawsuits filed in 2016. Many more in 2022.
        augment003 3y ago
        European countries pursuing Chinese tech companies?

throwaway888abc 3y ago

Inside the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT sound smart https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/ai-chatbot-learning/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/a...

tomohelix 3y ago

The EU is trying to rein in a completely new and different tech using old ideas about "control" and "regulation". Most likely it won't work and will just end up hamstring itself. This would be like if internet social media came out and the laws tried to control it using rules similar to physical books and newspapers. They won't be effective and will just create a hostile environment for development of these techs where these laws are in effect. Meanwhile, those who don't care about doing these control freak things will develop the tech and dominate the new sector. The EU need to sit down and really think about how to control AI tech properly instead of passing kneejerk and lazy regulations. It isn't easy to make a legislation framework for something entirely new. But it can be done instead of ruining the whole thing.

ChatGTP 3y ago
The EU is trying to rein in a completely new and different tech using old ideas about "control" and "regulation". Most likely it won't work and will just end up hamstring itself. What nonsense, they’re asking for “Open AI” to be transparent. Why is this such an “old idea”?
Tanjreeve 3y ago
This just seems like a gaping flaw in the business model if it can't possibly survive a lack of access to unlimited free copyrighted data on tap and/or laws continuing to be enforced *even for* very well capitalised commercial companies. Apparently this is wildly unfair to expect multi billion companies to meet standards.

tasubotadas 3y ago

Pathetic. Just drop the charade, ban any computer tech, and give more subsidies to diesel car makers.

mongol 3y ago

Imagine a future where everyone learns from AI instead of books because it is more convenient, faster etc. You would get the same info, but you would not know who was the expert that you learned from. How would that change society if all authors just disappeared behind a generic AI brand? I don't think it would be especially good, and I think it is completely fair that an answer from ChatGPT should provide sources. It would improve the quality.

agentgumshoe 3y ago
It is the continued progress of technology that aggregates more and more knowledge and expertise into centralised platforms and services. Nobody seems to care much, and we proceed to fulfil the destiny of our technological enslavement 'because it's going to happen anyway.'
- dorchadas 3y ago
  No, we proceed because it makes people a lot of money consequences on society or the future be dammed.
  - agentgumshoe 3y ago
    Those two things aren't mutually exclusive
esperent 3y ago
> How would that change society if all authors just disappeared behind a generic AI brand? I've been thinking about that but in terms of famous actors. Once AI can replace actors in movies, as well as singers and models like Instagram influencers and so on, maybe some of the weird hero worship and the paparazzi and the gossip mags and all that nastiness will fade away somewhat. That, I feel, would be a good thing. Pick your favorite Hollywood actor, or pop singer. A supremely talented human... Amongst thousands and thousands of supremely talented humans in their field and yet they are the ones who got lucky, had the right connections or got lucky with the right role. Then for the rest of their lives they are feted and hero worshipped as if they are more than human, while thousands of equally talented people who didn't get the lucky break are ignored. That's what being famous is, mostly, and it's not good for either the famous people or the people who worship them. Does that apply to scientists and authors? I'm not sure. But in terms of scientific breakthroughs it's extremely rare that a particular discovery could only have been made by one person. In fact, nearly every discovery, from the calculus to the theory of evolution to DNA, was concurrently discovered by multiple people. And yet we attach one name to each discovery and hero worship that person because they published a few weeks earlier or were just better at self marketing. Maybe losing the attachment of famous names to things is a good thing for society. As long as it's not replaced by a corporation pretending ownership of all the knowledge in their place, at least.

kmeisthax 3y ago

Everyone here is thinking Europe is going to kill AI in their borders. Honestly it reminds me of how everyone derided EU antitrust as just milking Google for fines, until everyone soured on Google and realized what the EU already knew. The EU is not anti-AI. In fact, they have stronger protections for AI training than the US does: EU law already has a copyright exception for "text and data mining" (TDM) which covers AI training. The problem is that OpenAI has been incredibly cagey with the way their models get built and trained. This is kind of contrary to the spirit of the TDM exception: it's for scientists to do science with, and OpenAI is being very much not like a scientific organization and more like a commercial enterprise.

jpalomaki 3y ago
Isn't GDPR currently the main problem? There's personal information on the Internet. If you are processing crawled data, then you also end up processing the personal information, but you don't have consent for the processing from those individuals.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Just need to prove that it doesn't store data under GDRP in models that can be extracted. After that GDPR is not an issue.
  - he0001 3y ago
    Isn’t the problem also that it has been ingested? As a user need to consent that it has been used for that purpose?
barry-cotter 3y ago
Given where the top AI companies are and how much more important they are for AI than the top universities for it this is bafflingly optimistic. There’s no reason to expect Europe to be other than an also ran in AI, punching self in face antics aside. Why would anyone think Europe was relevant to AI development?

niemandhier 3y ago

This is a good move. 1. The problem of testing ai alignment is hard, verifying test data is only laboursome. 2. Laws are only as good as their enforcement. Regulations regarding what can be used to train are worthless if one cannot check. 3. This might give open models an edge and make them more competitive.