6 ms·

There is a very real risk that we end up with an inferior product cannibalizing a superior one and driving it out of business. Moreover, AI would seem to be ev

by akolbe 3y ago

There is a very real risk that we end up with an inferior product cannibalizing a superior one and driving it out of business. Moreover, AI would seem to be even more susceptible to capture and manipulation than conventional media. When it's a question of guiding thought I prefer the humanities to tech. (Same with art.)

awesomeMilou 3y ago
> we end up with an inferior product cannibalizing a superior one and driving it out of business. In case that print is meant by inferior product: The same argument could've been brought up for Napster, where traditional distribution via CD printing through music labels are the inferior product driving the superior one out of business. Or rather it's big labels suing Napster out of business. I also hold a dislike for the copyright lobby, but this matter is serious. The question of whether the training of LLM's with copyrighted data is a legitimate one, as OpenAI did not just use contributions from large media outlets like NYT but capitalized on small contributions from individual contributors. A ruling in favor of copyright would force OpenAI to shut down - but given their impressive demo of the tech, I hope we'd see more open and accessible versions of these models emerge. As impressive as ChatGPT is, I dislike having my access to information governed by some large corporate entity. I also dislike a company directly capitalizing on my contributions without my explicit consent.
- aa1234556 3y ago
  [dead]
- traveler01 3y ago
  For me the question is highly debatable. As far as I'm aware the training of AI works by crawling various content from the Internet, so they're using a product, which are NY articles to train an AI, meaning they're using their content to help creating a product. But in this sense, shouldn't they be suing Google as well? Since Google as a search engine, also crawls the web and shows their articles in their search results, usually it may even use them for those quick answers features. My 5 cents on this are that NY Times noticed OpenAI has deep pockets, they may have ground to sue and decides to try their look in order to get some quick easy money. Now, I don't know if what OpenAI is doing with ChatGPT does not fall under fair use.
  - notahacker 3y ago
    News organizations in other jurisdictions already have achieved settlements with Google (which has much deeper pockets than OpenAI) But there's a fairly obvious difference in use between using content to index it and point to it and generate revenue for it and using content to generate alternative content...
    - traveler01 3y ago
      If you're using their content to generate more content, doesn't it fall under fair use?
      - awesomeMilou 3y ago
        In the case of Google, merely indexing content is not considered fair use. It's a double edged sword, as media outlets have realized, after all Google is responsible for a larger part of the success of these publications. But in Germany for example, Google News basicially just copypasted articles into their service, and monetizing it without involving the publishers. That doesn't qualify as transformative even under their own rules (see the YouTube TOS and copyright enforcement system).
        akolbe 3y ago
        The trend with Google and other search engines over the past ten years has been for them to incorporate more and more content on their own pages. It's hard to remember that not so long ago Google search results pages were just lists of web pages bereft of any other content. Today, if you Google for a song lyric, that lyric appears in Google. You get a tiny grey source link to Musixmatch or whatever but why would anyone bother to go there if you have the complete lyric right there on the page you are looking at? More and more content real estate has appeared on search engines' pages. Answer boxes answering questions, again with a source link few people will use, and of course the large Knowledge Graph panel filled with Wikipedia content (written by volunteers and monetised by the world's richest tech companies). The result is that it's tech companies and their platforms that make most of the money off content (YouTube is another example). They are the oil companies of today, and like the latter use all sorts of lobbying to make sure things are organised to their advantage. For all the ingenuity and usability they offer, they behave at least in part like parasites. They should be forced to spread the wealth round a bit more.
- bmitc 3y ago
  > A ruling in favor of copyright would force OpenAI to shut down - but given their impressive demo of the tech Who cares? If they want data, they can pay for it.
  - deelly 3y ago
    Or at least ask before scrapping/reading it.
    - bomewish 3y ago
      If it’s on the open internet then why should they have to do that? How is openai training on articles fundamentally different from the wayback machine storing them? They’re just getting stored in a different form.
      - morelisp 3y ago
        Copyright law includes many exceptions explicitly for libraries.
        FrustratedMonky 3y ago
        Copywrite law doesn't ban people from reading the source altogether. That is what is being proposed, ban AI from being allowed to 'read' the content. The real argument is how does a human brain aggregate knowledge and then profit from it, and is it really that different from an AI model aggregating knowledge. They both read in data, perform calculations on the data, and spit out something.
        Filligree 3y ago
        Why should it be okay for humans to make a profit off of reading copyrighted content, though?
        FrustratedMonky 3y ago
throwaway290 3y ago
Cannibalizing is a good description, the inferior product basically only exists thanks to the superior one (remove training data and it's nothing) but also threatens to eliminate it...
onetokeoverthe 3y ago
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by akolbe 3y ago

awesomeMilou 3y ago

> we end up with an inferior product cannibalizing a superior one and driving it out of business. In case that print is meant by inferior product: The same argument could've been brought up for Napster, where traditional distribution via CD printing through music labels are the inferior product driving the superior one out of business. Or rather it's big labels suing Napster out of business. I also hold a dislike for the copyright lobby, but this matter is serious. The question of whether the training of LLM's with copyrighted data is a legitimate one, as OpenAI did not just use contributions from large media outlets like NYT but capitalized on small contributions from individual contributors. A ruling in favor of copyright would force OpenAI to shut down - but given their impressive demo of the tech, I hope we'd see more open and accessible versions of these models emerge. As impressive as ChatGPT is, I dislike having my access to information governed by some large corporate entity. I also dislike a company directly capitalizing on my contributions without my explicit consent.

aa1234556 3y ago
[dead]
traveler01 3y ago
For me the question is highly debatable. As far as I'm aware the training of AI works by crawling various content from the Internet, so they're using a product, which are NY articles to train an AI, meaning they're using their content to help creating a product. But in this sense, shouldn't they be suing Google as well? Since Google as a search engine, also crawls the web and shows their articles in their search results, usually it may even use them for those quick answers features. My 5 cents on this are that NY Times noticed OpenAI has deep pockets, they may have ground to sue and decides to try their look in order to get some quick easy money. Now, I don't know if what OpenAI is doing with ChatGPT does not fall under fair use.
- notahacker 3y ago
  News organizations in other jurisdictions already have achieved settlements with Google (which has much deeper pockets than OpenAI) But there's a fairly obvious difference in use between using content to index it and point to it and generate revenue for it and using content to generate alternative content...
  - traveler01 3y ago
    If you're using their content to generate more content, doesn't it fall under fair use?
    - awesomeMilou 3y ago
      In the case of Google, merely indexing content is not considered fair use. It's a double edged sword, as media outlets have realized, after all Google is responsible for a larger part of the success of these publications. But in Germany for example, Google News basicially just copypasted articles into their service, and monetizing it without involving the publishers. That doesn't qualify as transformative even under their own rules (see the YouTube TOS and copyright enforcement system).
      - akolbe 3y ago
        The trend with Google and other search engines over the past ten years has been for them to incorporate more and more content on their own pages. It's hard to remember that not so long ago Google search results pages were just lists of web pages bereft of any other content. Today, if you Google for a song lyric, that lyric appears in Google. You get a tiny grey source link to Musixmatch or whatever but why would anyone bother to go there if you have the complete lyric right there on the page you are looking at? More and more content real estate has appeared on search engines' pages. Answer boxes answering questions, again with a source link few people will use, and of course the large Knowledge Graph panel filled with Wikipedia content (written by volunteers and monetised by the world's richest tech companies). The result is that it's tech companies and their platforms that make most of the money off content (YouTube is another example). They are the oil companies of today, and like the latter use all sorts of lobbying to make sure things are organised to their advantage. For all the ingenuity and usability they offer, they behave at least in part like parasites. They should be forced to spread the wealth round a bit more.
bmitc 3y ago
> A ruling in favor of copyright would force OpenAI to shut down - but given their impressive demo of the tech Who cares? If they want data, they can pay for it.
- deelly 3y ago
  Or at least ask before scrapping/reading it.
  - bomewish 3y ago
    If it’s on the open internet then why should they have to do that? How is openai training on articles fundamentally different from the wayback machine storing them? They’re just getting stored in a different form.
    - morelisp 3y ago
      Copyright law includes many exceptions explicitly for libraries.
      - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
        Copywrite law doesn't ban people from reading the source altogether. That is what is being proposed, ban AI from being allowed to 'read' the content. The real argument is how does a human brain aggregate knowledge and then profit from it, and is it really that different from an AI model aggregating knowledge. They both read in data, perform calculations on the data, and spit out something.
        Filligree 3y ago
        Why should it be okay for humans to make a profit off of reading copyrighted content, though?
        FrustratedMonky 3y ago

throwaway290 3y ago

Cannibalizing is a good description, the inferior product basically only exists thanks to the superior one (remove training data and it's nothing) but also threatens to eliminate it...

onetokeoverthe 3y ago

[dead]