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> Copyright, as defined in the U.S. Constitution, exists "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"[1]. I can think of no better modern example of "th
by klabb3 3y ago
> Copyright, as defined in the U.S. Constitution, exists "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"[1]. I can think of no better modern example of "the Progress of Science and useful Arts" than AI models themselves.
This makes no sense. Before AI, it’s clear that copyright itself restricts what can be done, in order to promote overall health of innovation. You can’t just say this is cool so therefore allowed, then there would never have been any copyright in the first place. You have to argue that the overall result will be better given the rules you propose.
Now, I’m no fan of copyright, but it is abundantly clear that the tech companies are able to capitalize on new tech disproportionately. Thus, it’s a transfer of privilege from the very many designers, artists, musicians, authors etc to whomever will dominate AI. That’s not good, simply because of the centralization.
Moreover, you can’t just look at the short term gains of AI models that can be produced with existing content. You need to include the change in incentives, when creators financial prospects are even more minuscule than today. Even if AI is all that matters, they still need training data, and that needs to come from somewhere.
- gaganyaan 3y agoAI is the innovation. Trying to misapply copyright here would retard the progress of science and useful arts, not promote them, because it would wrongly restrict that innovation. The answer to big tech corporations centralizing this is to fund it publically and make it available for free to everyone as a shared summation of our culture, not lobotomize ourselves just to profit a few old dinosaurs that are relying on an outdated idea of copyright.
- klabb3 3y ago> AI is the innovation. Yes, but it does not live in a vacuum. It’s power is derived from human creations and their labor, for now. When Spotify transformed the music industry, they could not simply claim innovation and be exempt. They had to negotiate with the dinosaurs and eventually it came through. The inertia is a feature, not a bug. We’re still dealing with the fallout of the social media and ad-tech transformations. Unintended side effects takes a lot of time to understand. > Trying to misapply copyright here would retard the progress of science and useful arts[…] How so? All of academia would be entirely exempt, and so would the hackers and tinkerers, etc. You’d only violate copyright if you sell the models or the works they produced. > The answer to big tech corporations centralizing this is to fund it publically and make it available for free Yeah but that won’t happen. Even if it does, we need something that works in the meantime.
- gaganyaan 3y ago> You’d only violate copyright if you sell the models or the works they produced That's not how copyright works. Academia would be able to claim fair use in expensive lawsuits. Hackers and tinkerers would be sued into submission exactly because it's a hobby that they won't risk jail for. People would be scared to work on anything related because of lawsuits threatening them with obscene amounts of money, and hence the retardation of science and the useful arts. Other countries would leapfrog the US, and it would be left behind, all so that a few people can continue extracting rent with their government-granted monopolies.