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I am OK with AI being allowed to train on publicly accessible data, I'm not sure I see a big difference between me reading something publicly accessible versus

I am OK with AI being allowed to train on publicly accessible data, I'm not sure I see a big difference between me reading something publicly accessible versus a computer program reading the data. I do think however that we are mostly ignoring cases where the AI literally does plagiarize the training data. I've seen some very egregious examples of Chat GPT "generating" code that is line-by-line copied from Open Source code and could be in violation of licenses, and Chat GPT does not cite the original source. You ask Chat GPT to write something relatively simple and the output looks OK, but you ask it to do something very specific and it seems to like to spit back a copy of OSS code that someone already wrote.

dheera 3y ago
> I do think however that we are mostly ignoring cases where the AI literally does plagiarize the training data. So just punish the AI just like you would punish a human? Take it to court, have it respond before a judge, if it loses it will be subject to having GPUs taken out.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  Yes I think that's fine. So OpenAI is more or less safe, but it also means that nobody can really use copilot without a fairly huge legal risk. Probably solvable though. Can't be that hard to do a fuzzy search of the training set for similar code.
  - dheera 3y ago
    The point I was trying to illustrate is that our legal system needs to change from one that is focused on punishment to one that is focused on rectifying the problem, for non-violent, reversible crimes like plaigarism. When the legal system can make that change, it becomes a non-issue.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- almatabata 3y ago
  You make the key error of giving the AI personal rights and responsibilities. As it currently stands it has no sense of individuality and does whatever users tell it to do. If it reproduced a copyrighted material i would expect either OpenAI or the user to bear the responsibility. The user if he published the result and OpenAI for generating it. If the AI could chose to refuse a prompt out of its own volition you could make that argument. At the moment however OpenAI and the user set the limits on what the output gets used for.
  - dheera 3y ago
    The point I was trying to illustrate is that we're applying an antiquated system of justice to a new world. That antiquated system focuses on blame and punishment, instead of solutions. If we focus on solutions, it doesn't matter who is responsible for reproducing copyrighted material. If we stop thinking about blaming and focus on solutions, those solutions could include (a) giving fair credit or payment to the creator of material (b) continued training of the algorithm to be more creative and not spit out copyrighted material verbatim. If a high school student plaigarizes, do you: (a) spank them and put them under detention, or (b) give them pathways to discover their own form of creativity and preferred form of expression so that they have no interest in plaigarizing? Most people of the past do (a) but I'd say (b) is much more constructive, effective, and beneficial to society. Now with that in mind, and getting off the blaming psychology of the past, how do you implement (b) with an AI? You add loss functions that are specifically discourage plaigarism, loss functions that reward creativity, etc. and retrain. Now we're talking.
    - almatabata 3y ago
      Ok so you would argue if the AI gets caught reproducing copyrighted material the company should get time to re-train the AI instead of getting sued to hell?
      - dheera 3y ago
        Yes, 100%. That's how we advance science as fast as possible. Focus on fixes, not suing.
bugglebeetle 3y ago
I have seen this as well and have been able to Google the source, but people seem to like to pretend this never happens.
umvi 3y ago
The efficiency of computers makes people nervous: - If I put a digital camera in a school classroom connected to a microchip and use facial recognition to automatically get class attendance, that is dystopian and scary - If I put a biological camera in a school classroom connected to a lossy neural network and use facial recognition to manually get class attendance, that is normal and ok What's the difference? In one case we "feel better" because unlike a computer it is difficult/impossible to move/copy memory out of the human brain. If we ever developed a technique to losslessly extract memories from the human brain, then people would feel very nervous about that tech since it could make anyone eidetic which could infringe on their privacy, etc.
- m4rtink 3y ago
  If you want to spy in this way, you need to hire a lot of expensive humans. If you want to spy using camera and computer, it would hardly cost anything, so you can put it everywhere and destroy privacy forever. That's why people don't like it.
almatabata 3y ago
I think if they admit to using books3 they will inevitably lose on the basis that they used pirated material. For their case to stand they have to prove that they legally purchased the material which i assume they did not. I do not have a law degree but as far as i know most countries outlaw downloading copyrighted material from unauthorized sources. Of course no one has the resources to go after random people but i think they will go after openai if they admit to using books3. It is one thing to argue that training on purchased material is fair use. But that is not what they did. I can see why open source projects do not have the money to purchase the books to do the training. But multi billion companies should definitely pay to own the books.

dheera 3y ago

> I do think however that we are mostly ignoring cases where the AI literally does plagiarize the training data. So just punish the AI just like you would punish a human? Take it to court, have it respond before a judge, if it loses it will be subject to having GPUs taken out.

IshKebab 3y ago
Yes I think that's fine. So OpenAI is more or less safe, but it also means that nobody can really use copilot without a fairly huge legal risk. Probably solvable though. Can't be that hard to do a fuzzy search of the training set for similar code.
- dheera 3y ago
  The point I was trying to illustrate is that our legal system needs to change from one that is focused on punishment to one that is focused on rectifying the problem, for non-violent, reversible crimes like plaigarism. When the legal system can make that change, it becomes a non-issue.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
almatabata 3y ago
You make the key error of giving the AI personal rights and responsibilities. As it currently stands it has no sense of individuality and does whatever users tell it to do. If it reproduced a copyrighted material i would expect either OpenAI or the user to bear the responsibility. The user if he published the result and OpenAI for generating it. If the AI could chose to refuse a prompt out of its own volition you could make that argument. At the moment however OpenAI and the user set the limits on what the output gets used for.
- dheera 3y ago
  The point I was trying to illustrate is that we're applying an antiquated system of justice to a new world. That antiquated system focuses on blame and punishment, instead of solutions. If we focus on solutions, it doesn't matter who is responsible for reproducing copyrighted material. If we stop thinking about blaming and focus on solutions, those solutions could include (a) giving fair credit or payment to the creator of material (b) continued training of the algorithm to be more creative and not spit out copyrighted material verbatim. If a high school student plaigarizes, do you: (a) spank them and put them under detention, or (b) give them pathways to discover their own form of creativity and preferred form of expression so that they have no interest in plaigarizing? Most people of the past do (a) but I'd say (b) is much more constructive, effective, and beneficial to society. Now with that in mind, and getting off the blaming psychology of the past, how do you implement (b) with an AI? You add loss functions that are specifically discourage plaigarism, loss functions that reward creativity, etc. and retrain. Now we're talking.
  - almatabata 3y ago
    Ok so you would argue if the AI gets caught reproducing copyrighted material the company should get time to re-train the AI instead of getting sued to hell?
    - dheera 3y ago
      Yes, 100%. That's how we advance science as fast as possible. Focus on fixes, not suing.

bugglebeetle 3y ago

I have seen this as well and have been able to Google the source, but people seem to like to pretend this never happens.

umvi 3y ago

The efficiency of computers makes people nervous: - If I put a digital camera in a school classroom connected to a microchip and use facial recognition to automatically get class attendance, that is dystopian and scary - If I put a biological camera in a school classroom connected to a lossy neural network and use facial recognition to manually get class attendance, that is normal and ok What's the difference? In one case we "feel better" because unlike a computer it is difficult/impossible to move/copy memory out of the human brain. If we ever developed a technique to losslessly extract memories from the human brain, then people would feel very nervous about that tech since it could make anyone eidetic which could infringe on their privacy, etc.

m4rtink 3y ago
If you want to spy in this way, you need to hire a lot of expensive humans. If you want to spy using camera and computer, it would hardly cost anything, so you can put it everywhere and destroy privacy forever. That's why people don't like it.

almatabata 3y ago

I think if they admit to using books3 they will inevitably lose on the basis that they used pirated material. For their case to stand they have to prove that they legally purchased the material which i assume they did not. I do not have a law degree but as far as i know most countries outlaw downloading copyrighted material from unauthorized sources. Of course no one has the resources to go after random people but i think they will go after openai if they admit to using books3. It is one thing to argue that training on purchased material is fair use. But that is not what they did. I can see why open source projects do not have the money to purchase the books to do the training. But multi billion companies should definitely pay to own the books.