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The topic's biggest cop-out. Intellectual property doesn't exist in a vacuum. I have limited-to-zero sympathy for corporate entities like Getty images that hoar

The topic's biggest cop-out. Intellectual property doesn't exist in a vacuum. I have limited-to-zero sympathy for corporate entities like Getty images that hoard IP, but our society's social contract says labor isn't free unless people donate it. We need to implement some sort of alternate compensation system before entirely disregarding IP so we don't pull the rug out from under perfectly honest independent creatives with kids and mortgages and medical bills plying their craft in an established system. Until then, taking the fruits of creative labor without permission is theft that is much more consequential and much less morally defensible than what you describe. I'll bet if someone outside of our IP jurisdiction figured out a way to reliably and thoroughly reverse engineer the most complex commercial software from binaries so people could spit out a working, fully-customized copy of a commercial application from a prompt, and the entirety of the software development market would soon collapse, the tenor of this conversation would be very different. Maybe the people with the very ethically defensible stance that private property is theft would be totally fine with OpenAI knocking down your home to build their new headquarters without compensating you? Imagine the progress! (hint: they probably wouldn't be ok with it) None of this stuff exists in a vacuum. None of it.

jstummbillig 4y ago
You are right, the (potential) negative impact AI training has on what people do will only manifest in the future. But no matter how I or anyone else feel about the car or how bad it is for the environment, or how much we dislike the noise they impose on us, it's simply not going to bring back the horse. There just is no conceivable future. It's dead.
- chefandy 4y ago
  Another cop-out. No, the horse isn't dead. This technology is at its precipice and society outside of the tech world hasn't even started to react yet let alone develop entrenched immutable norms surrounding it. A good portion of what these algorithms put out isn't even particularly commercially useful... yet. There's a lot of time to change policy, to change corporate norms, to change compensation structures, and to change perspectives. Just because you find that prospect inconvenient compared to just throwing up your hands and saying fuck it, likely because you benefit from doing so, doesn't mean that you don't have a moral obligation to reduce the harm these behaviors will result in. Beyond that, the technology is just the catalyst. It's a tool. The problem is what people are doing with it. That's an ongoing behavior that can be changed-- not a bell you can't un-ring. I won't claim to know what's in your head, but most people I've encountered who rebuff complex topics with idealistic platitudes don't really think the topics are that simple. They're avoiding confronting the negative consequences of a behavior they have no intention of changing to avoid damaging their moral self-image.
  - jstummbillig 4y ago
    Sigh, alright. Copping out of this one I guess.

jstummbillig 4y ago

You are right, the (potential) negative impact AI training has on what people do will only manifest in the future. But no matter how I or anyone else feel about the car or how bad it is for the environment, or how much we dislike the noise they impose on us, it's simply not going to bring back the horse. There just is no conceivable future. It's dead.

chefandy 4y ago
Another cop-out. No, the horse isn't dead. This technology is at its precipice and society outside of the tech world hasn't even started to react yet let alone develop entrenched immutable norms surrounding it. A good portion of what these algorithms put out isn't even particularly commercially useful... yet. There's a lot of time to change policy, to change corporate norms, to change compensation structures, and to change perspectives. Just because you find that prospect inconvenient compared to just throwing up your hands and saying fuck it, likely because you benefit from doing so, doesn't mean that you don't have a moral obligation to reduce the harm these behaviors will result in. Beyond that, the technology is just the catalyst. It's a tool. The problem is what people are doing with it. That's an ongoing behavior that can be changed-- not a bell you can't un-ring. I won't claim to know what's in your head, but most people I've encountered who rebuff complex topics with idealistic platitudes don't really think the topics are that simple. They're avoiding confronting the negative consequences of a behavior they have no intention of changing to avoid damaging their moral self-image.
- jstummbillig 4y ago
  Sigh, alright. Copping out of this one I guess.