4 ms·

This is good, and this is inevitable. Creators have control of their copyright, which should include permissions to be used in AI training.

Kim_Bruning 3y ago
Authors currently don't control who or what reads their works, of course. Personally I currently feel that (at life +70 years) the copyright pendulum has gone too far towards the rights of publishers (not necessarily authors) as is. That said, I'm open to good arguments to change my mind. Why do you feel that authors should be given this additional right to control what is used for AI training? What would be the public good or public trade-off here?
- ghaff 3y ago
  And they don’t control fair use or promulgating the ideas in the book. That Wikipedia article summarizing the key contents in an editor’s own words? Perfectly legit. What copyright buys is that no one else can distribute verbatim copies of large amounts of your work. But a lot of other uses are allowed.
  - freejazz 3y ago
    Copyright indisputably covers more than the verbatim reprinting of a book
    - ghaff 3y ago
      For example? It covers the expression of ideas. Which in the case of a book is mostly the text as written. And, yes, doing some substitution of character names etc. may still violate copyright but you certainly can’t keep me from writing an article about the main points you make in your book.
- rendall 3y ago
  > What would be the public good or public trade-off here? Consider the aesthetic landscape where creators do not have control over whether their work is used to train an AI versus one where they do. It's hard to predict with certainty, but my model is this: No control: Anyone's work is fair game to be trained. If I want to make a prompt of "A graphic novel in the visual style of Moebius, written by Stephen King, set in Westeros" I can get something based on King and Martin's actual words and Moebius' actual drawings, without compensating them. Neat! However, potential new novelists see that quality novels can just be churned out for free or low cost and so, actually sitting down to write a new novel becomes a niche, geek thing to do. There's no money in it. These new novels just get thrown into the ml bin, fodder for the next version. With control: novelists and other creators know they can make money from their work because they can make business decisions about how and when their work trains a model. We all get to see more new, professional quality creativity. Those who want to read Conan as written by Lord Dunsany can still see that, since those works are in the public domain.
- harlanji 3y ago
  Training AI feels inherently commercial with intent to commercially distribute, which seems to be licensed specially in most domains. In a sense it's like driving down the highway with a duffel bag of cannabis flower in a state where possessing and traveling with few ounces is no problem--something commercial is probably happening. Why is that prohibited? Perhaps another debate, but just trying to connect the implied intent aspect. If an AI were being trained for strictly academic reasons then I'd agree with fair use and that type of arguments. But if the AI itself has a subscription fee, then whoever is subscribing is also probably using the work for real or anticipated commercial gain. Hence investing money. True that hobbyists spend money with no intention to gain commercially, and we may do that at a higher than average rate as tech workers because we have usually have a decent amount of excess money from our work. But money is pretty scarce to most people and businesses with set non-investment budgets, so if they're spending it on AI there's little doubt it's with commercial intent. So in conclusion, I do think there's both merit to the authors' case related to intent to commercialize and room for doing unlicensed non-commercial AI training.
amanaplanacanal 3y ago
“Should include” is exactly not the way the law works.
gaganyaan 3y ago
What is inevitable is that copyright is dead. Do you think China will respect western copyrights? They already don't. People would just use LLMs hosted elsewhere. This is a good thing. We're going to see an explosion of indie games, movies, and more that never could've been made before by a single, dedicated person.

Kim_Bruning 3y ago

Authors currently don't control who or what reads their works, of course. Personally I currently feel that (at life +70 years) the copyright pendulum has gone too far towards the rights of publishers (not necessarily authors) as is. That said, I'm open to good arguments to change my mind. Why do you feel that authors should be given this additional right to control what is used for AI training? What would be the public good or public trade-off here?

ghaff 3y ago
And they don’t control fair use or promulgating the ideas in the book. That Wikipedia article summarizing the key contents in an editor’s own words? Perfectly legit. What copyright buys is that no one else can distribute verbatim copies of large amounts of your work. But a lot of other uses are allowed.
- freejazz 3y ago
  Copyright indisputably covers more than the verbatim reprinting of a book
  - ghaff 3y ago
    For example? It covers the expression of ideas. Which in the case of a book is mostly the text as written. And, yes, doing some substitution of character names etc. may still violate copyright but you certainly can’t keep me from writing an article about the main points you make in your book.
rendall 3y ago
> What would be the public good or public trade-off here? Consider the aesthetic landscape where creators do not have control over whether their work is used to train an AI versus one where they do. It's hard to predict with certainty, but my model is this: No control: Anyone's work is fair game to be trained. If I want to make a prompt of "A graphic novel in the visual style of Moebius, written by Stephen King, set in Westeros" I can get something based on King and Martin's actual words and Moebius' actual drawings, without compensating them. Neat! However, potential new novelists see that quality novels can just be churned out for free or low cost and so, actually sitting down to write a new novel becomes a niche, geek thing to do. There's no money in it. These new novels just get thrown into the ml bin, fodder for the next version. With control: novelists and other creators know they can make money from their work because they can make business decisions about how and when their work trains a model. We all get to see more new, professional quality creativity. Those who want to read Conan as written by Lord Dunsany can still see that, since those works are in the public domain.
harlanji 3y ago
Training AI feels inherently commercial with intent to commercially distribute, which seems to be licensed specially in most domains. In a sense it's like driving down the highway with a duffel bag of cannabis flower in a state where possessing and traveling with few ounces is no problem--something commercial is probably happening. Why is that prohibited? Perhaps another debate, but just trying to connect the implied intent aspect. If an AI were being trained for strictly academic reasons then I'd agree with fair use and that type of arguments. But if the AI itself has a subscription fee, then whoever is subscribing is also probably using the work for real or anticipated commercial gain. Hence investing money. True that hobbyists spend money with no intention to gain commercially, and we may do that at a higher than average rate as tech workers because we have usually have a decent amount of excess money from our work. But money is pretty scarce to most people and businesses with set non-investment budgets, so if they're spending it on AI there's little doubt it's with commercial intent. So in conclusion, I do think there's both merit to the authors' case related to intent to commercialize and room for doing unlicensed non-commercial AI training.

amanaplanacanal 3y ago

“Should include” is exactly not the way the law works.

gaganyaan 3y ago

What is inevitable is that copyright is dead. Do you think China will respect western copyrights? They already don't. People would just use LLMs hosted elsewhere. This is a good thing. We're going to see an explosion of indie games, movies, and more that never could've been made before by a single, dedicated person.