7 ms·

This seems like the inevitable outcome. Hosting pirated media for any purpose is going to draw moneyed attention, and doing so for a purpose as controversial as

This seems like the inevitable outcome. Hosting pirated media for any purpose is going to draw moneyed attention, and doing so for a purpose as controversial as AI training doesn't help. Multiple authors I follow have expressed their disapproval of their works being included in that dataset.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
There are enormous digital libraries being used for training where authors will have no recourse in preventing this from happening. To continue, those performing model generation just have to either avoid certain jurisdictions or not announce what they're doing. I am not unsympathetic to author feelings on the topic, but regulation in this regard moving faster than bits and compute will be challenging to say the least. For these small dataset amounts currently discussed (<1PB), the cost to geographically relocate is obviously trivial. TLDR Model training will go "dark" or underground, with models distributed like illicit content.
- artninja1988 3y ago
  I mean the pile, which books3 is only a subset of, is only about 850GB big. Raw text doesn't take up much space at all
  - truckerbill 3y ago
    got a mirror?
    - justinclift 3y ago
      This seems like it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37386478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37386478
      - crtasm 3y ago
        Or this direct download linked on the same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37386854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37386854
        toomuchtodo 3y ago
        One should be mindful to, in general, not touch anything with a public IP that leads back to them.
- NewbornKittens 3y ago
  I agree, realistically this is just going to make training sets less findable in mainstream knowledge, but I think writers being against it regardless makes sense on principle. I, too, would be pissed af if someone took say, my fingerprints, and started putting my fingerprints on random stuff and places where I wasn't.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  Would you even need to distribute the models that way? How would anyone know what you trained them on? Being able to occasionally emit a direct quote from a literary work doesn't tell you whether it was trained on the work itself or on various internet posts that have quoted from it, nor how the work was obtained. Is it illegal to train a model on a copy of a book that you own?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - __loam 3y ago
    If you get sued, the data you trained on could be subject to the discovery process.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      That's assuming you kept records of what you used, and that the person who trained the model is the same person distributing it, or that the former is even in your jurisdiction.
      - __loam 3y ago
        We're good as long as we outsource our abuses I guess.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        It not obvious that this even should be illegal, but a decent factor in determining that is whether making it illegal would even do any good. Unenforceable laws are all cost and no benefit.
      - Retric 3y ago
        The models themselves record the training data. ChatGPT is happy to spit out Albus Dumbledore when asked about a hypothetical magic school. If you don’t have the exact training dataset that’s not going to be an actual defense. The only protection is specific jurisdictions ruling this stuff is fair use, which is risky when you could be found liable in literally any country.
rg111 3y ago
This is bad for the small guys, though. Do you think that DeepMind, OpenAI, etc. don't have this dataset copied 10 times over? Think again!
- quonn 3y ago
  How is this different from running pirated software for example? Big business doesn‘t do it. And if they do they get fined heavily. Same should be true for illegal AI training data. Surely this is a problem that can be solved.
  - simbolit 3y ago
    Except big business does it all the time. Your parent comment mentioned OpenAI, who does it.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    > How is this different from running pirated software for example? Big business doesn‘t do it. All the current LLMs are trained on data scraped from random websites, with no regard for the website's copyright, aren't they? Presumably because these big businesses have a theory training an LLM is 'fair use'. Why wouldn't they treat books the same way they treat web pages?
    - __loam 3y ago
      I'm tired of tech companies abusing the public then asking for forgiveness.
      - disposition2 3y ago
        I agree and feel the same way. But it also feels like standing at the edge of the sea complaining about the tide coming in...I'm not sure there's really much that can / will be done about it.
        rpd9803 3y ago
startupsfail 3y ago
It is a very good question, what should be protected by copyright and what shouldn’t be. I understand that in Japan, for example, it is legal to apply deep analysis techniques, including deep learning and generative models to any data, regardless the copyright. I would guess that in Japan, they’ve looked at China, where copyrights are also not an issue. And decided that it’s a really bad idea to stop research because of copyrights and let China to be first at the AGI race. If a lot of time will get wasted on the GDPR and copyrights discussions in Europe and United States, instead of actually doing research, the democratic world will get behind. Giant corporations that are scrambling to keep R&D going are quite law-abiding actually. And are currently struggling, as most of the datasets out there can’t be used, due to unclear copyright and licensing regulations.
- dbtc 3y ago
  It's really too bad that human conflict in the form of an arms race is what's driving the development of these things.
- __loam 3y ago
  Looking to China for ethical business practice seems pretty bad to me. I don't think some imaginary race to agi is a good excuse for violating the rights of thousands of people. If you're getting value out of someone's data and they're not being compensated, some kind of shitty externality is happening. Hurting authors and artists to the point that they make fewer works that can be fed to the AI also hurts AI companies in the long run, and also it sucks a lot.
  - firecall 3y ago
    No one is looking to China for ethical business practice. Copyright ethics are something we have invented. China chooses not to follow western copyright regulations. That’s not unethical, to them anyway. Indeed, Copyright law was originally intended to allow people to legally copy things, not protect corporate interests for an eternity!
  - startupsfail 3y ago
    The question here could be who is first to AGI. If it is an authoritarian regime with leadership standing side by side with Putin, things would likely suck a lot more, even if we consider training neural networks from books (learning from books) to be a copyright violation.
almatabata 3y ago
I agree that this database looked blatantly illegal as the ones using it never actually bought the books. You can clearly sue them for counterfeiting. I still would like to see if legally a judge would consider the training illegal. I do not think this got tested and i would not consider the answer as clear cut. If a company buys a million ebooks, can it simply train an AI on it? If no employee reads the books and only the AI "reads" it you could argue that the company bought it only for a single reader/entity. They will probably need to update the copyright system to take this case into account. We will see in a few years how this plays out. In the end these authors will eventually lose their copyright after their death. And nothing will stop the AI training at that point. This only delays the inevitable by a few years. The public domain already has a lot of amazing books and resources. Google even has access to very rare books nobody else has access to digitally i think: https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/arts-culture/in-beginningbringing-scrolls-of-genesis/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/arts-culture/in-beg...

toomuchtodo 3y ago

There are enormous digital libraries being used for training where authors will have no recourse in preventing this from happening. To continue, those performing model generation just have to either avoid certain jurisdictions or not announce what they're doing. I am not unsympathetic to author feelings on the topic, but regulation in this regard moving faster than bits and compute will be challenging to say the least. For these small dataset amounts currently discussed (<1PB), the cost to geographically relocate is obviously trivial. TLDR Model training will go "dark" or underground, with models distributed like illicit content.

artninja1988 3y ago
I mean the pile, which books3 is only a subset of, is only about 850GB big. Raw text doesn't take up much space at all
- truckerbill 3y ago
  got a mirror?
  - justinclift 3y ago
    This seems like it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37386478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37386478
    - crtasm 3y ago
      Or this direct download linked on the same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37386854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37386854
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        One should be mindful to, in general, not touch anything with a public IP that leads back to them.
NewbornKittens 3y ago
I agree, realistically this is just going to make training sets less findable in mainstream knowledge, but I think writers being against it regardless makes sense on principle. I, too, would be pissed af if someone took say, my fingerprints, and started putting my fingerprints on random stuff and places where I wasn't.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
Would you even need to distribute the models that way? How would anyone know what you trained them on? Being able to occasionally emit a direct quote from a literary work doesn't tell you whether it was trained on the work itself or on various internet posts that have quoted from it, nor how the work was obtained. Is it illegal to train a model on a copy of a book that you own?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- __loam 3y ago
  If you get sued, the data you trained on could be subject to the discovery process.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    That's assuming you kept records of what you used, and that the person who trained the model is the same person distributing it, or that the former is even in your jurisdiction.
    - __loam 3y ago
      We're good as long as we outsource our abuses I guess.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        It not obvious that this even should be illegal, but a decent factor in determining that is whether making it illegal would even do any good. Unenforceable laws are all cost and no benefit.
    - Retric 3y ago
      The models themselves record the training data. ChatGPT is happy to spit out Albus Dumbledore when asked about a hypothetical magic school. If you don’t have the exact training dataset that’s not going to be an actual defense. The only protection is specific jurisdictions ruling this stuff is fair use, which is risky when you could be found liable in literally any country.

rg111 3y ago

This is bad for the small guys, though. Do you think that DeepMind, OpenAI, etc. don't have this dataset copied 10 times over? Think again!

quonn 3y ago
How is this different from running pirated software for example? Big business doesn‘t do it. And if they do they get fined heavily. Same should be true for illegal AI training data. Surely this is a problem that can be solved.
- simbolit 3y ago
  Except big business does it all the time. Your parent comment mentioned OpenAI, who does it.
- michaelt 3y ago
  > How is this different from running pirated software for example? Big business doesn‘t do it. All the current LLMs are trained on data scraped from random websites, with no regard for the website's copyright, aren't they? Presumably because these big businesses have a theory training an LLM is 'fair use'. Why wouldn't they treat books the same way they treat web pages?
  - __loam 3y ago
    I'm tired of tech companies abusing the public then asking for forgiveness.
    - disposition2 3y ago
      I agree and feel the same way. But it also feels like standing at the edge of the sea complaining about the tide coming in...I'm not sure there's really much that can / will be done about it.
      - rpd9803 3y ago

startupsfail 3y ago

It is a very good question, what should be protected by copyright and what shouldn’t be. I understand that in Japan, for example, it is legal to apply deep analysis techniques, including deep learning and generative models to any data, regardless the copyright. I would guess that in Japan, they’ve looked at China, where copyrights are also not an issue. And decided that it’s a really bad idea to stop research because of copyrights and let China to be first at the AGI race. If a lot of time will get wasted on the GDPR and copyrights discussions in Europe and United States, instead of actually doing research, the democratic world will get behind. Giant corporations that are scrambling to keep R&D going are quite law-abiding actually. And are currently struggling, as most of the datasets out there can’t be used, due to unclear copyright and licensing regulations.

dbtc 3y ago
It's really too bad that human conflict in the form of an arms race is what's driving the development of these things.
__loam 3y ago
Looking to China for ethical business practice seems pretty bad to me. I don't think some imaginary race to agi is a good excuse for violating the rights of thousands of people. If you're getting value out of someone's data and they're not being compensated, some kind of shitty externality is happening. Hurting authors and artists to the point that they make fewer works that can be fed to the AI also hurts AI companies in the long run, and also it sucks a lot.
- firecall 3y ago
  No one is looking to China for ethical business practice. Copyright ethics are something we have invented. China chooses not to follow western copyright regulations. That’s not unethical, to them anyway. Indeed, Copyright law was originally intended to allow people to legally copy things, not protect corporate interests for an eternity!
- startupsfail 3y ago
  The question here could be who is first to AGI. If it is an authoritarian regime with leadership standing side by side with Putin, things would likely suck a lot more, even if we consider training neural networks from books (learning from books) to be a copyright violation.

almatabata 3y ago

I agree that this database looked blatantly illegal as the ones using it never actually bought the books. You can clearly sue them for counterfeiting. I still would like to see if legally a judge would consider the training illegal. I do not think this got tested and i would not consider the answer as clear cut. If a company buys a million ebooks, can it simply train an AI on it? If no employee reads the books and only the AI "reads" it you could argue that the company bought it only for a single reader/entity. They will probably need to update the copyright system to take this case into account. We will see in a few years how this plays out. In the end these authors will eventually lose their copyright after their death. And nothing will stop the AI training at that point. This only delays the inevitable by a few years. The public domain already has a lot of amazing books and resources. Google even has access to very rare books nobody else has access to digitally i think: https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/arts-culture/in-beginningbringing-scrolls-of-genesis/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/arts-culture/in-beg...