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This article is an example of emerging AI-bro tactics that completely mirrors crypto-bro tactics: they pick any piece of news and reinterpret it to fit an agend

This article is an example of emerging AI-bro tactics that completely mirrors crypto-bro tactics: they pick any piece of news and reinterpret it to fit an agenda. While the article is in English, the link to source is in Japanese. The only external source I found suggests the discussion is about promoting open data and open science from research institutions [1] [1] https://asianews.network/japan-to-promote-use-of-generative-ai-while-addressing-risks/ https://asianews.network/japan-to-promote-use-of-generative-...

walthamstow 3y ago
Not just crypto bros, this kind of thing is rife in politics too. Brexit is full of it. People pick one article about one minor thing in one niche area of the economy and use it to 'prove' their entire agenda.
- Aachen 3y ago
  Not just politics. I remember this being a realisation as a teenager, noticing that if you bring five reasons, the person you're talking to will refute a random one in a funny way and now the audience will decide you were wrong. Danny was the person who was absolutely the best at this. I should have written one of them down, as I can't even reproduce it but he'd use some logical fallacy to make his case which is, for me at least, super hard to then have to dive into "but that's not how the universe works" without having a 20 minute discussion about life and losing the audience plus the person I'm talking to. Meanwhile, what he said was funny as hell. Sure, anyone who understood the situation would understand this isn't a good reason, but you had to think about it (at least a little) before realising that. The "owww" moment removed any thinking brain cells from the audience. It was more impressive than frustrating to be honest, even being on the losing side every time. These days, politics and PR frustrate me because the tactics are no longer among 16 year old classmates but about things that actually matter. The methods haven't changed, only the importance of the argument.
  - rowanG077 3y ago
    Yes. That's why debating is almost entirely about how charismatic you are and your debate skills rather then whether your point has merit. There is a good reason science types are generally considered bad debaters. Even though their points mostly align with reality.
  - testermelon 3y ago
    In short, for most people HOW you say it is far more important than WHAT you’re saying.
  - indy 3y ago
    whose Danny?
    - Aachen 3y ago
      Mine!
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    > These days, politics and PR frustrate me because the tactics are no longer among 16 year old classmates but about things that actually matter. That’s because the audience is usually at the stage of a 16 year old, even if they are older. The aim of politics and pr are easily manipulated folks. You know, those referred to as the “the market” or “the electorate”.
  - jtode 3y ago
    There's a name for this: The Gish Gallop. It was not invented but was the specialty of one Duane T. Gish, a creationist who specialized in "winning" debates with unsuspecting academics for a while until the community decided to stop playing chess with a pigeon.
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    They should really teach rhetoric more in schools, so people are a bit more immune to the common tricks of the trade.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  And before politics we had religion. This persons house, who disagrees about the right dogma X was struck by lightning, see this proofs he disobeyed (the) god(s). And X is the law. (ignoring the other people also struck by the lightning, or those who did not got hit)
- nologic01 3y ago
  Conflicting political or economic agendas and strategies to promote them are of-course the bread and butter of humanity. But we grossly under-estimated how out-of-control this game will become when transposed into the unified digital space comprising social media, blogs and online news outlets (the so-called echo-chamber), combined with invasive data mining techniques of online behavior, sentiment analysis, click farms and now, drum roll... infinite amounts of LLM generated junk. It is remarkable that people don't appreciate how broken the design that supposedly signifies "modernity" and opportunity.
dooraven 3y ago
The Japanese article does explicitly state it if you run it through a translator, and also this is from May 11 > Additionally, the group raised other issues that Article 30-4 of the Copyright Law, which permits the use of a copyrighted work for machine learning, does not include procedures for gaining permission in advance from copyright holders. The article permits the use of copyrighted material such as text and images to train AI, regardless of whether the model is for commercial use. Under the current law, it is legal to train AI with copyrighted material even if the data was obtained illegally. The article contains a provision stating that such material cannot be used if it would “unreasonably prejudice the interests of the copyright owner,” but there are only limited examples provided to describe the “unreasonable prejudice.” https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d8b4ba7d-a764-4acd-adca-1b72a2f1aaa0 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d8b4ba7d-a764... Right now, Japanese copyright doesn't apply to training models. Could change in the future but the article isn't inaccurate.
- nologic01 3y ago
  How does the "Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights" message of the article square with your own source (thanx btw :-) > It will be suggested that the current Japanese Copyright Law will be reviewed based on the upcoming technologies and be revised to adjust to correctly protect the right holders and navigate future users of the AI and new technologies like AI
  - cthalupa 3y ago
    My reading is that people are suggesting that the copyright law be reviewed and changed, not that lawmakers are suggesting that they will change it. Lots of people are suggesting that the US and other western countries change the law as well, but we have yet to see much come from it. The general message seems to be that 'Under current laws Japan's government can't enforce copyright on training data', and I don't believe the line you're quoting changes that message in any significant way at current.
  - dooraven 3y ago
    Well they have to follow the current law right? Can't enforce copyright on something that doesn't apply, so currently saying they won't enforce copyright is an accurate statement. I don't think it will hold up in the long term though and the Copyright Act will get changed but right now it doesn't apply to training models.
stuckinhell 3y ago
There are no such thing as "AI bros", AI training costs millions of dollars. It's a very different field than cryptocurrency where mining could be done by individuals in the early days. You see corporate tactics being deployed in a wide variety of ways to secure a social, legal, and economic moats, since apparently they have limited technology only based moat. It's similar to how google files various amicus briefs against copyrights. Google v. Oracle (2020): This was a landmark case in which Google was a party. The case revolved around whether copyright protection extended to a software interface. Google argued that APIs, which allow different software programs to communicate with each other, should not be subject to copyright. Google filed an amicus brief in its own case, arguing that a decision in favor of Oracle would stifle innovation in the tech industry. Authors Guild v. Google (2015): This case involved Google's project to digitize millions of books from public and university libraries. The Authors Guild argued that Google was infringing on authors' copyrights. Google argued that its use of the books was fair use because it only showed snippets of the books in search results. Google filed an amicus brief in this case as well. Aereo Case (2014): Google filed an amicus brief in support of Aereo, a company that provided a service for streaming broadcast television over the internet. Broadcasters sued Aereo, arguing that the service infringed on their copyrights. Google argued that a ruling against Aereo could have broad implications for cloud storage services. Viacom v. YouTube (2012): In this case, Viacom sued YouTube, which is owned by Google, for copyright infringement. Google filed an amicus brief arguing that YouTube was protected by the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which protect service providers from liability for user-generated content. Big Tech is often against Copyrights because they believe they have the economic moat to beat other players.
- nologic01 3y ago
  > There are no such thing as "AI bros", AI training costs millions of dollars It is early days, in contrast with minting digital gold using software here the costs will come down. In any case not every "AI" model and application needs to pass Turing-test levels of language sophistry. While you are right that (large) corporate interests are (and will be) the main actors here, I would not underestimate "noise traders" and other useful fools. With AI mania reaching apoplectic levels there is a wide population of actors that want to somehow get into the game. The availability of open source AI models is an enabler in this respect, which may explain also the "leakage". Incidentally this issue is something the open source community needs to internalize and have a very clear position about.

walthamstow 3y ago

Not just crypto bros, this kind of thing is rife in politics too. Brexit is full of it. People pick one article about one minor thing in one niche area of the economy and use it to 'prove' their entire agenda.

Aachen 3y ago
Not just politics. I remember this being a realisation as a teenager, noticing that if you bring five reasons, the person you're talking to will refute a random one in a funny way and now the audience will decide you were wrong. Danny was the person who was absolutely the best at this. I should have written one of them down, as I can't even reproduce it but he'd use some logical fallacy to make his case which is, for me at least, super hard to then have to dive into "but that's not how the universe works" without having a 20 minute discussion about life and losing the audience plus the person I'm talking to. Meanwhile, what he said was funny as hell. Sure, anyone who understood the situation would understand this isn't a good reason, but you had to think about it (at least a little) before realising that. The "owww" moment removed any thinking brain cells from the audience. It was more impressive than frustrating to be honest, even being on the losing side every time. These days, politics and PR frustrate me because the tactics are no longer among 16 year old classmates but about things that actually matter. The methods haven't changed, only the importance of the argument.
- rowanG077 3y ago
  Yes. That's why debating is almost entirely about how charismatic you are and your debate skills rather then whether your point has merit. There is a good reason science types are generally considered bad debaters. Even though their points mostly align with reality.
- testermelon 3y ago
  In short, for most people HOW you say it is far more important than WHAT you’re saying.
- indy 3y ago
  whose Danny?
  - Aachen 3y ago
    Mine!
- gumballindie 3y ago
  > These days, politics and PR frustrate me because the tactics are no longer among 16 year old classmates but about things that actually matter. That’s because the audience is usually at the stage of a 16 year old, even if they are older. The aim of politics and pr are easily manipulated folks. You know, those referred to as the “the market” or “the electorate”.
- jtode 3y ago
  There's a name for this: The Gish Gallop. It was not invented but was the specialty of one Duane T. Gish, a creationist who specialized in "winning" debates with unsuspecting academics for a while until the community decided to stop playing chess with a pigeon.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  They should really teach rhetoric more in schools, so people are a bit more immune to the common tricks of the trade.
hutzlibu 3y ago
And before politics we had religion. This persons house, who disagrees about the right dogma X was struck by lightning, see this proofs he disobeyed (the) god(s). And X is the law. (ignoring the other people also struck by the lightning, or those who did not got hit)
nologic01 3y ago
Conflicting political or economic agendas and strategies to promote them are of-course the bread and butter of humanity. But we grossly under-estimated how out-of-control this game will become when transposed into the unified digital space comprising social media, blogs and online news outlets (the so-called echo-chamber), combined with invasive data mining techniques of online behavior, sentiment analysis, click farms and now, drum roll... infinite amounts of LLM generated junk. It is remarkable that people don't appreciate how broken the design that supposedly signifies "modernity" and opportunity.

dooraven 3y ago

The Japanese article does explicitly state it if you run it through a translator, and also this is from May 11 > Additionally, the group raised other issues that Article 30-4 of the Copyright Law, which permits the use of a copyrighted work for machine learning, does not include procedures for gaining permission in advance from copyright holders. The article permits the use of copyrighted material such as text and images to train AI, regardless of whether the model is for commercial use. Under the current law, it is legal to train AI with copyrighted material even if the data was obtained illegally. The article contains a provision stating that such material cannot be used if it would “unreasonably prejudice the interests of the copyright owner,” but there are only limited examples provided to describe the “unreasonable prejudice.” https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d8b4ba7d-a764-4acd-adca-1b72a2f1aaa0 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d8b4ba7d-a764... Right now, Japanese copyright doesn't apply to training models. Could change in the future but the article isn't inaccurate.

nologic01 3y ago
How does the "Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights" message of the article square with your own source (thanx btw :-) > It will be suggested that the current Japanese Copyright Law will be reviewed based on the upcoming technologies and be revised to adjust to correctly protect the right holders and navigate future users of the AI and new technologies like AI
- cthalupa 3y ago
  My reading is that people are suggesting that the copyright law be reviewed and changed, not that lawmakers are suggesting that they will change it. Lots of people are suggesting that the US and other western countries change the law as well, but we have yet to see much come from it. The general message seems to be that 'Under current laws Japan's government can't enforce copyright on training data', and I don't believe the line you're quoting changes that message in any significant way at current.
- dooraven 3y ago
  Well they have to follow the current law right? Can't enforce copyright on something that doesn't apply, so currently saying they won't enforce copyright is an accurate statement. I don't think it will hold up in the long term though and the Copyright Act will get changed but right now it doesn't apply to training models.

stuckinhell 3y ago

There are no such thing as "AI bros", AI training costs millions of dollars. It's a very different field than cryptocurrency where mining could be done by individuals in the early days. You see corporate tactics being deployed in a wide variety of ways to secure a social, legal, and economic moats, since apparently they have limited technology only based moat. It's similar to how google files various amicus briefs against copyrights. Google v. Oracle (2020): This was a landmark case in which Google was a party. The case revolved around whether copyright protection extended to a software interface. Google argued that APIs, which allow different software programs to communicate with each other, should not be subject to copyright. Google filed an amicus brief in its own case, arguing that a decision in favor of Oracle would stifle innovation in the tech industry. Authors Guild v. Google (2015): This case involved Google's project to digitize millions of books from public and university libraries. The Authors Guild argued that Google was infringing on authors' copyrights. Google argued that its use of the books was fair use because it only showed snippets of the books in search results. Google filed an amicus brief in this case as well. Aereo Case (2014): Google filed an amicus brief in support of Aereo, a company that provided a service for streaming broadcast television over the internet. Broadcasters sued Aereo, arguing that the service infringed on their copyrights. Google argued that a ruling against Aereo could have broad implications for cloud storage services. Viacom v. YouTube (2012): In this case, Viacom sued YouTube, which is owned by Google, for copyright infringement. Google filed an amicus brief arguing that YouTube was protected by the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which protect service providers from liability for user-generated content. Big Tech is often against Copyrights because they believe they have the economic moat to beat other players.

nologic01 3y ago
> There are no such thing as "AI bros", AI training costs millions of dollars It is early days, in contrast with minting digital gold using software here the costs will come down. In any case not every "AI" model and application needs to pass Turing-test levels of language sophistry. While you are right that (large) corporate interests are (and will be) the main actors here, I would not underestimate "noise traders" and other useful fools. With AI mania reaching apoplectic levels there is a wide population of actors that want to somehow get into the game. The availability of open source AI models is an enabler in this respect, which may explain also the "leakage". Incidentally this issue is something the open source community needs to internalize and have a very clear position about.