5 ms·

That was the accusation, and it was misplaced here. So we agree, this is a smear campaign in this case, not a sensible reaction to a reasonable application of m

That was the accusation, and it was misplaced here. So we agree, this is a smear campaign in this case, not a sensible reaction to a reasonable application of machine algorithms. The idea that counting adverbs is steal their work to the point they won't want to publish anymore is clearly FUD. As my remark made clear.

palata 3y ago
> The idea that counting adverbs is steal their work to the point they won't want to publish anymore is clearly FUD. I did not mean that, I am genuinely not sure if you rephrased my point to make it sound wrong or if you missed it. My point was that, IMO, it does not matter to the other whether counting adverbs is stealing their work or not. Probably if you counted them manually they would be fine (and most likely they were fine before generative AI). What matters to them is that generative AI is trained from their copyrighted material, and they fear it (I would, too). The day people stop reading my blog because they can just ask ChatGPT and will get something generated (partly) from my material without any kind of attribution, I can promise you I will stop my blog.
- TimPC 3y ago
  If you want to be a pitchfork mob against generative AI at least understand whether AI is generative or not? Seems like a reasonably low bar. This was non-generative AI, it didn't produce content it output metrics and labelled some existing content.
  - palata 3y ago
    What makes you think that I don't understand whether AI is generative or not? What I said was that for artists who are complaining about their copyright being abused, it does not matter. 10 years ago they were not complaining, because AIs looking like ChatGPT (to users who see it as a black box) did not exist (or were not remotely as powerful). And I understand that. It is not their job to learn how the black box works. What they see is that "machine learning models" (which they probably call "AI" now), which are complete black boxes to them (and that's justified: engineers who train them also don't know exactly what they do, but rather test their model on some dataset and judge it from there). And those black boxes are being trained from their copyrighted work and have the potential to generate a ton of money which they will never see. You can go and say "you guys should learn how the technology works instead of complaining", but let's be honest: probably you are not an expert in AI yourself, and anyway why would the artists have to care? It is a totally legit question that they have: "Why can engineers take my copyrighted work, run it through an algorithm that does stuff no algorithm has done in history at a scale never seen before, make money out of it, and not even consider that maybe they are abusing my IP?". Before dismissing the artists, you should try to understand their point of view.
    - skjoldr 3y ago
      > It is not their job to learn how the black box works If you have not learned the basics of how something works, you have no right for your opinion on it to be considered valid. Period. Invalid opinions do harm to democracy and endanger our way of life.
      - palata 3y ago
        > you have no right for your opinion on it to be considered valid. Period. That is so wrong it is actually dangerous. Do I need to understand how a nuclear bomb works for my opinion on it to be considered valid? Obviously not. I only need to understand the consequences of it. It does not matter at all how it works, if I am against the fact that it will kill a whole lot of people. > Invalid opinions do harm to democracy and endanger our way of life. And engineers have done much, much more to endanger most living animals (including humans) than authors and artists: technology is the reason for the mass extinction we are currently living, and the problems that are coming with climate change. Maybe it's important to start thinking about the consequences of what you do, not only the technicalities of how you do it. And maybe it's high time you start listening to people who are able to think about the consequences of what you do (maybe they understand that better than you do, ever thought of that?), even if they don't know how to do it.
        jsnell 3y ago
        You can of course have any opinion you want. But this is not just about the authors having an opinion. It's about them starting a harassment campaign based on just faulty facts and making no attempt at verifying them. If we work from the nuclear bomb analogy, you certainly don't need to be a nuclear physicist to protest nuclear bombs. You just need to have some a reasonably correct high level understanding of the impact of a nuclear bomb. But that's not what is happening here. This is more like storming the Belgian embassy to stop Belgium from using their nuclear arsenal to trigger a chain reaction in the atmosphere: totally detached from reality in every aspect. As far as I can tell from your messages on this, you think that the harassment was entirely justified. Is that correct?
- ineedasername 3y ago
  This project was not generative AI. Comments are saying this project, which is not at all similar to generative ai, seemed to be okay. But you keep replying to say essentially “but if it was generative ai then authors have a legitimate reason to be angry”. There is no need to shoehorn that debate into this particular situation, and I see no merit in defending authors that had a knee jerk reaction to this project on the grounds that they have reasonable fears about other types of projects.
  - palata 3y ago
    I think it is not completely off topic. Here is how I see it: Engineers tend to globally think that LLMs are not really a problem for copyright holders. At least those who develop LLMs pretty clearly don't give a damn. And on top of that, it is in their interest to not be constrained by copyrights. If this is my feeling (that engineers globally don't care about copyright holders), then it seems reasonable to me that non-engineers could feel the same. That sounds fair, doesn't it? So those people start speaking up when they see a situation where they feel like "it is happening". And because they don't really know the technology, it is hard for them to know if this particular case is a problem or not. And they can't really trust engineers to tell them, because engineers built LLMs in the first place, and really it does not seem like they care about copyright holders. Finally, engineers see this reaction from authors, and instead of trying to understand where they come from, they dismiss their opinion. Which probably will reinforce the feeling that engineers don't remotely understand the concerns of those people, and keep building their AI-powered laundering machines. Again, engineers working on those technologies in big companies have absolutely no interest in even considering that it is a problem. Because they get a big salary to help their big company get more profitable, even if it kills many jobs and is a net loss for society (because they benefit from that).
    - ineedasername 3y ago
      To rephrase in my own understanding of what you wrote: 1) Some engineers (or more broadly, software developers) do not respect copyright 2) Therefore you reasonably are skeptical of projects related to material under copyright. 3) It is not always obvious if a project is respectful of copyright. Now, applying these #1,#2,#3 you believe they justify the outrage for this particular project. I disagree, because outrage combined with a lack of understanding (#3) is pretty much my definition of a knee-jerk reaction and vastly counterproductive to the interests of copyright holders because it will make the dismissiveness you predict a self-fulfilling prophecy.

palata 3y ago

> The idea that counting adverbs is steal their work to the point they won't want to publish anymore is clearly FUD. I did not mean that, I am genuinely not sure if you rephrased my point to make it sound wrong or if you missed it. My point was that, IMO, it does not matter to the other whether counting adverbs is stealing their work or not. Probably if you counted them manually they would be fine (and most likely they were fine before generative AI). What matters to them is that generative AI is trained from their copyrighted material, and they fear it (I would, too). The day people stop reading my blog because they can just ask ChatGPT and will get something generated (partly) from my material without any kind of attribution, I can promise you I will stop my blog.

TimPC 3y ago
If you want to be a pitchfork mob against generative AI at least understand whether AI is generative or not? Seems like a reasonably low bar. This was non-generative AI, it didn't produce content it output metrics and labelled some existing content.
- palata 3y ago
  What makes you think that I don't understand whether AI is generative or not? What I said was that for artists who are complaining about their copyright being abused, it does not matter. 10 years ago they were not complaining, because AIs looking like ChatGPT (to users who see it as a black box) did not exist (or were not remotely as powerful). And I understand that. It is not their job to learn how the black box works. What they see is that "machine learning models" (which they probably call "AI" now), which are complete black boxes to them (and that's justified: engineers who train them also don't know exactly what they do, but rather test their model on some dataset and judge it from there). And those black boxes are being trained from their copyrighted work and have the potential to generate a ton of money which they will never see. You can go and say "you guys should learn how the technology works instead of complaining", but let's be honest: probably you are not an expert in AI yourself, and anyway why would the artists have to care? It is a totally legit question that they have: "Why can engineers take my copyrighted work, run it through an algorithm that does stuff no algorithm has done in history at a scale never seen before, make money out of it, and not even consider that maybe they are abusing my IP?". Before dismissing the artists, you should try to understand their point of view.
  - skjoldr 3y ago
    > It is not their job to learn how the black box works If you have not learned the basics of how something works, you have no right for your opinion on it to be considered valid. Period. Invalid opinions do harm to democracy and endanger our way of life.
    - palata 3y ago
      > you have no right for your opinion on it to be considered valid. Period. That is so wrong it is actually dangerous. Do I need to understand how a nuclear bomb works for my opinion on it to be considered valid? Obviously not. I only need to understand the consequences of it. It does not matter at all how it works, if I am against the fact that it will kill a whole lot of people. > Invalid opinions do harm to democracy and endanger our way of life. And engineers have done much, much more to endanger most living animals (including humans) than authors and artists: technology is the reason for the mass extinction we are currently living, and the problems that are coming with climate change. Maybe it's important to start thinking about the consequences of what you do, not only the technicalities of how you do it. And maybe it's high time you start listening to people who are able to think about the consequences of what you do (maybe they understand that better than you do, ever thought of that?), even if they don't know how to do it.
      - jsnell 3y ago
        You can of course have any opinion you want. But this is not just about the authors having an opinion. It's about them starting a harassment campaign based on just faulty facts and making no attempt at verifying them. If we work from the nuclear bomb analogy, you certainly don't need to be a nuclear physicist to protest nuclear bombs. You just need to have some a reasonably correct high level understanding of the impact of a nuclear bomb. But that's not what is happening here. This is more like storming the Belgian embassy to stop Belgium from using their nuclear arsenal to trigger a chain reaction in the atmosphere: totally detached from reality in every aspect. As far as I can tell from your messages on this, you think that the harassment was entirely justified. Is that correct?
ineedasername 3y ago
This project was not generative AI. Comments are saying this project, which is not at all similar to generative ai, seemed to be okay. But you keep replying to say essentially “but if it was generative ai then authors have a legitimate reason to be angry”. There is no need to shoehorn that debate into this particular situation, and I see no merit in defending authors that had a knee jerk reaction to this project on the grounds that they have reasonable fears about other types of projects.
- palata 3y ago
  I think it is not completely off topic. Here is how I see it: Engineers tend to globally think that LLMs are not really a problem for copyright holders. At least those who develop LLMs pretty clearly don't give a damn. And on top of that, it is in their interest to not be constrained by copyrights. If this is my feeling (that engineers globally don't care about copyright holders), then it seems reasonable to me that non-engineers could feel the same. That sounds fair, doesn't it? So those people start speaking up when they see a situation where they feel like "it is happening". And because they don't really know the technology, it is hard for them to know if this particular case is a problem or not. And they can't really trust engineers to tell them, because engineers built LLMs in the first place, and really it does not seem like they care about copyright holders. Finally, engineers see this reaction from authors, and instead of trying to understand where they come from, they dismiss their opinion. Which probably will reinforce the feeling that engineers don't remotely understand the concerns of those people, and keep building their AI-powered laundering machines. Again, engineers working on those technologies in big companies have absolutely no interest in even considering that it is a problem. Because they get a big salary to help their big company get more profitable, even if it kills many jobs and is a net loss for society (because they benefit from that).
  - ineedasername 3y ago
    To rephrase in my own understanding of what you wrote: 1) Some engineers (or more broadly, software developers) do not respect copyright 2) Therefore you reasonably are skeptical of projects related to material under copyright. 3) It is not always obvious if a project is respectful of copyright. Now, applying these #1,#2,#3 you believe they justify the outrage for this particular project. I disagree, because outrage combined with a lack of understanding (#3) is pretty much my definition of a knee-jerk reaction and vastly counterproductive to the interests of copyright holders because it will make the dismissiveness you predict a self-fulfilling prophecy.