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Any time I see the phrase "democratize access," my spidey-sense starts tingling. It's almost never used to describe an action that's an unadulterated good for s

Any time I see the phrase "democratize access," my spidey-sense starts tingling. It's almost never used to describe an action that's an unadulterated good for society. It's USUALLY used to describe something sketchy at best, or even outright evil, with the justification that only "the bad guys" have access currently, and everything would be better if EVERYONE had access. Look, I get that unethical corporations using this pirated training data for their artist-usurpation machines is bad, right? But EVERYONE being able to dismiss the rights and wishes of current artists while they work to create artist-usurpation machines of their own? That's not any better! You don't need to "democratize access" to that!

lewhoo 3y ago
That's how I see it as well. To democratize art, music etc. now means to remove the skill component with the usage of all the work done so far. No one is actually prevented from pursuing those things and if you don't want your art to become training data you're ruining democratization and are somehow against the will of the people.
- __loam 3y ago
  The level of disrespect for artists I've seen here and on other forums with regards to this technology has been staggering. The entitlement for work you didn't do is so gross.
  - labster 3y ago
    As a fanfiction writer, I find the entitlement of authors and corporations over work that I created gross. I transformed their work into something else, advertising the original work and making a bigger market for it, and in exchange we get C&Ds and copyright claims. Someone writes a reskin of The Odyssey and then a corporation claims every derivative for 75 years.
    - __loam 3y ago
      I have a lot more sympathy for you than the corporate interests that are currently trying to profit off of your work without your knowledge.
gunshai 3y ago
Replace democratize with lower the barriers to entry. Yes it removes initial skill but typically doesn't remove the skill cap.
csh0 3y ago
I always took democratize access to X to mean “I would like to give many people the opportunity to give me lots of money by buying my product.”
- __loam 3y ago
  I saw a funny tweet recently from a guy who was spending $187 a month to not learn art. He was subscribed to like 9 different ai subscription services
  - artninja1988 3y ago
    If we are thinking of the same tweet, it was from an influencer who shows off these different tools on his YouTube channel. So of course he's subscribed to all of them. Quite the disingenuous framing
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    Unless he is in a third world country, the value of your time spent trying to 'learn art' would be much, much higher than that.
bartread 3y ago
I think this is an oversimplification. The concern about entrenching the positions of big tech companies is, I think, genuine, and I do believe it's important to find ways to foster competition and opportunity for smaller players. Possibly the law needs to evolve and/or there need to be licensing solutions for this content that work both for creators, and for those looking to train models (and, in some sense, licensing payments that are "means-tested").
CamperBob2 3y ago
Any time I see the phrase "democratize access," my spidey-sense starts tingling. Funny, I get the same tingling feeling when I see the phrase "restrict access." I guess it's an unreliable signal, huh.
crazygringo 3y ago
Funny, my reaction is the total opposite. Generally speaking, democratizing access is about removing monopoly power that extracts illegitimate rents -- and that tingles in a good way. Libraries have always been at the forefront of democratizing access, and hasn't that been an unadulterated good? Or whether it's community colleges that democratized access to higher ed, or the deregulation of air travel that democratized air travel through cheaper prices that made it more available to the masses, instead of artificially restricting routes. I can't think of a single example of "democratizing access" that is "sketchy at best" or "outright evil". They all seem pretty great to me! But I guess I'm also firmly on the side of AI training here -- I see no reason for additional compensation to authors/artists for training on their data, when anyone can go to a library or museum and then go and create their own works influenced by what they've seen. Who cares if I hire an expensive consultant who's read a lot of books at the library, or a cheap AI who's read a lot of books from Books3? Why would authors/artists deserve extra compensation for the latter but not the former? There's just no clear legal principle behind that.
- itsokimbatman 3y ago
  I mean that's part of the conversation that needs to be had. I would argue libraries are an unadulterated good, but it is generally considered at best unethical and at worst illegal to re-use content that isn't your own, at least without a proper citation. Then there's also the issue with things like art, music, and code. Where does the line fall with scraping Github, Soundcloud, DeviantArt, or Instagram and using things like that without permission? Most of the code on Github is open source, but there's a lot of difference between the GPL and BSD licenses.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    > but it is generally considered at best unethical and at worst illegal to re-use content that isn't your own, at least without a proper citation. No it's not at all, except in extremely limited circumstances. When George Lucas made Star Wars, did he cite all the Westerns and space opera serials and movies that influenced him? When you give a presentation at work on why you should move to a sharded database, do you cite the history of academic work on sharded databases? When you use Times New Roman in a document, do you cite the British newspaper The Times, or Robert Granjon's prior serif designs from the 1500's? Of course not. Legally, you can do whatever you want with ideas and styles and whatnot, which is what AI is about. Legally, you only run into problems when you reproduce sections of copyrighted works verbatim, without a license, in a manner that's not considered fair use. Your answer to "where does the line fall" is quite clear legally -- it's the line demarcated by fair use, which has nothing to do with licenses. AI doesn't change that.
kemitchell 3y ago
I've developed a similar mistrust of the term. Blogged about it a while back https://writing.kemitchell.com/2023/01/05/Type-Error-Democratizing https://writing.kemitchell.com/2023/01/05/Type-Error-Democra...
- artninja1988 3y ago
  >Equity and Concourse type by Matthew Butterick >The lawyer suing all the ai companies Yeah I see you are against giving everyone access to technology now

lewhoo 3y ago

That's how I see it as well. To democratize art, music etc. now means to remove the skill component with the usage of all the work done so far. No one is actually prevented from pursuing those things and if you don't want your art to become training data you're ruining democratization and are somehow against the will of the people.

__loam 3y ago
The level of disrespect for artists I've seen here and on other forums with regards to this technology has been staggering. The entitlement for work you didn't do is so gross.
- labster 3y ago
  As a fanfiction writer, I find the entitlement of authors and corporations over work that I created gross. I transformed their work into something else, advertising the original work and making a bigger market for it, and in exchange we get C&Ds and copyright claims. Someone writes a reskin of The Odyssey and then a corporation claims every derivative for 75 years.
  - __loam 3y ago
    I have a lot more sympathy for you than the corporate interests that are currently trying to profit off of your work without your knowledge.

gunshai 3y ago

Replace democratize with lower the barriers to entry. Yes it removes initial skill but typically doesn't remove the skill cap.

csh0 3y ago

I always took democratize access to X to mean “I would like to give many people the opportunity to give me lots of money by buying my product.”

__loam 3y ago
I saw a funny tweet recently from a guy who was spending $187 a month to not learn art. He was subscribed to like 9 different ai subscription services
- artninja1988 3y ago
  If we are thinking of the same tweet, it was from an influencer who shows off these different tools on his YouTube channel. So of course he's subscribed to all of them. Quite the disingenuous framing
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  Unless he is in a third world country, the value of your time spent trying to 'learn art' would be much, much higher than that.

bartread 3y ago

I think this is an oversimplification. The concern about entrenching the positions of big tech companies is, I think, genuine, and I do believe it's important to find ways to foster competition and opportunity for smaller players. Possibly the law needs to evolve and/or there need to be licensing solutions for this content that work both for creators, and for those looking to train models (and, in some sense, licensing payments that are "means-tested").

CamperBob2 3y ago

Any time I see the phrase "democratize access," my spidey-sense starts tingling. Funny, I get the same tingling feeling when I see the phrase "restrict access." I guess it's an unreliable signal, huh.

crazygringo 3y ago

Funny, my reaction is the total opposite. Generally speaking, democratizing access is about removing monopoly power that extracts illegitimate rents -- and that tingles in a good way. Libraries have always been at the forefront of democratizing access, and hasn't that been an unadulterated good? Or whether it's community colleges that democratized access to higher ed, or the deregulation of air travel that democratized air travel through cheaper prices that made it more available to the masses, instead of artificially restricting routes. I can't think of a single example of "democratizing access" that is "sketchy at best" or "outright evil". They all seem pretty great to me! But I guess I'm also firmly on the side of AI training here -- I see no reason for additional compensation to authors/artists for training on their data, when anyone can go to a library or museum and then go and create their own works influenced by what they've seen. Who cares if I hire an expensive consultant who's read a lot of books at the library, or a cheap AI who's read a lot of books from Books3? Why would authors/artists deserve extra compensation for the latter but not the former? There's just no clear legal principle behind that.

itsokimbatman 3y ago
I mean that's part of the conversation that needs to be had. I would argue libraries are an unadulterated good, but it is generally considered at best unethical and at worst illegal to re-use content that isn't your own, at least without a proper citation. Then there's also the issue with things like art, music, and code. Where does the line fall with scraping Github, Soundcloud, DeviantArt, or Instagram and using things like that without permission? Most of the code on Github is open source, but there's a lot of difference between the GPL and BSD licenses.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  > but it is generally considered at best unethical and at worst illegal to re-use content that isn't your own, at least without a proper citation. No it's not at all, except in extremely limited circumstances. When George Lucas made Star Wars, did he cite all the Westerns and space opera serials and movies that influenced him? When you give a presentation at work on why you should move to a sharded database, do you cite the history of academic work on sharded databases? When you use Times New Roman in a document, do you cite the British newspaper The Times, or Robert Granjon's prior serif designs from the 1500's? Of course not. Legally, you can do whatever you want with ideas and styles and whatnot, which is what AI is about. Legally, you only run into problems when you reproduce sections of copyrighted works verbatim, without a license, in a manner that's not considered fair use. Your answer to "where does the line fall" is quite clear legally -- it's the line demarcated by fair use, which has nothing to do with licenses. AI doesn't change that.

kemitchell 3y ago

I've developed a similar mistrust of the term. Blogged about it a while back https://writing.kemitchell.com/2023/01/05/Type-Error-Democratizing https://writing.kemitchell.com/2023/01/05/Type-Error-Democra...

artninja1988 3y ago
>Equity and Concourse type by Matthew Butterick >The lawyer suing all the ai companies Yeah I see you are against giving everyone access to technology now