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If you read the PDF, you'd know that OpenAI admits they ARE actually copying his books, in order to train on them, and they are arguing that this is okay becaus

If you read the PDF, you'd know that OpenAI admits they ARE actually copying his books, in order to train on them, and they are arguing that this is okay because they don't want to have to obtain a legal copy of the work, because that would be too expensive. They are literally arguing they should be allowed to illegally download stuff so long as no human reads the downloaded work directly. To further your analogy, it would be like your prospective writer objecting to being arrested for stealing the books from the bookstore because he just wanted to become a better writer by studying them, not read them for entertainment purposes.

pests 3y ago
This reminds me of the Google Books lawsuit back in the 2010s. Google didn't ask permission from every copyright holder but was still allowed to scan books due to fair use.
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  This very lawsuit is referenced in OpenAI's memo as precedent > Perhaps the most compelling case on point is Authors Guild v. Google. There, search engine Google digitally scanned “tens of millions of books” without their authors’ permission for inclusion in a searchable digital database.
- ang_cire 3y ago
  The big difference is that Google legally obtained the copies of the books they scanned. OpenAI did not. Publicly-accessible != legal to download/ copy. The copyright infringement in Google's case was not illegally obtaining the original work, it was about the snippets they provided. In OpenAI's case, it is also about the illegal obtainment (downloading) of the original work, which they admit to in their brief, but argue shouldn't be illegal if they intend only to transform it. That element was not present in AGI v Google.
troupe 3y ago
If you are saying that they illegally obtained King's book, then the issue is the fact that the stole the book from somewhere. I don't disagree with your assessment there. But if they checked the book out from the library and let the LLM read it, the fact that it has read it shouldn't be any different than if you had read it as a human. If I break into the court house to let my child see the artwork in the public areas, the issue isn't whether my child can see, learn from, and copy the style of the artwork. The issue is that I broke into the court house instead of going in the front door when it was open to the public.
- ang_cire 3y ago
  > if they checked the book out from the library and let the LLM read it Did you know it's actually illegal to photocopy books you check out from the library? It's an illegal copy. That aside, the analogies between humans and ML models fall apart when you actually get into the details, which is why AI companies don't want that. Human brains don't have RAM and Disk storage that keep direct copies of works. Computers do. Human brains are not entirely deterministic calculators. Computers are. If you have all the state data of an AI model, you can know exactly what it will produce, and the input data is a necessary component of that state data, so it's not transformative in the same way as a human brain in the first place. 2 humans will not create the exact same output given a shared starting state in the way that 2 computers (AI models included) will. The only reason people falsely believe AI models are different is because no one actually traces through that state data, and there are enough pseudo-random variables involved and state-changes that they create the illusion of non-determinism, but that is, in point of fact, an illusion.
  - troupe 3y ago
    You are assuming that an LLM is saving a copy of the book it reads.
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      LLMs don't read, they are trained. Yes, training involves saving a copy of the training corpus.
    - denton-scratch 3y ago
      The LLM is the output of the training system; the LLM doesn't do the reading, the trainer does. The LLM doesn't "contain" a copy of the book. But some LLMs seem to be able to quote on demand from a wide range of literature; these models evidently do have some kind of memory, even if it's been distilled and blended and distilled again.
    - ang_cire 3y ago
      No, I am actually reading OpenAI's PDF linked here, where they say they make a copy of the online corpa to train on, right at the top of page 2: > By analyzing large corpora (which necessarily involves first making copies of the data to be analyzed Whether they retain that later is immaterial to whether copyright infringement occurred. Deleting a movie you illegally downloaded after you watch (train on) it doesn't make it legal.

pests 3y ago

This reminds me of the Google Books lawsuit back in the 2010s. Google didn't ask permission from every copyright holder but was still allowed to scan books due to fair use.

kelseyfrog 3y ago
This very lawsuit is referenced in OpenAI's memo as precedent > Perhaps the most compelling case on point is Authors Guild v. Google. There, search engine Google digitally scanned “tens of millions of books” without their authors’ permission for inclusion in a searchable digital database.
ang_cire 3y ago
The big difference is that Google legally obtained the copies of the books they scanned. OpenAI did not. Publicly-accessible != legal to download/ copy. The copyright infringement in Google's case was not illegally obtaining the original work, it was about the snippets they provided. In OpenAI's case, it is also about the illegal obtainment (downloading) of the original work, which they admit to in their brief, but argue shouldn't be illegal if they intend only to transform it. That element was not present in AGI v Google.

troupe 3y ago

If you are saying that they illegally obtained King's book, then the issue is the fact that the stole the book from somewhere. I don't disagree with your assessment there. But if they checked the book out from the library and let the LLM read it, the fact that it has read it shouldn't be any different than if you had read it as a human. If I break into the court house to let my child see the artwork in the public areas, the issue isn't whether my child can see, learn from, and copy the style of the artwork. The issue is that I broke into the court house instead of going in the front door when it was open to the public.

ang_cire 3y ago
> if they checked the book out from the library and let the LLM read it Did you know it's actually illegal to photocopy books you check out from the library? It's an illegal copy. That aside, the analogies between humans and ML models fall apart when you actually get into the details, which is why AI companies don't want that. Human brains don't have RAM and Disk storage that keep direct copies of works. Computers do. Human brains are not entirely deterministic calculators. Computers are. If you have all the state data of an AI model, you can know exactly what it will produce, and the input data is a necessary component of that state data, so it's not transformative in the same way as a human brain in the first place. 2 humans will not create the exact same output given a shared starting state in the way that 2 computers (AI models included) will. The only reason people falsely believe AI models are different is because no one actually traces through that state data, and there are enough pseudo-random variables involved and state-changes that they create the illusion of non-determinism, but that is, in point of fact, an illusion.
- troupe 3y ago
  You are assuming that an LLM is saving a copy of the book it reads.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    LLMs don't read, they are trained. Yes, training involves saving a copy of the training corpus.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    The LLM is the output of the training system; the LLM doesn't do the reading, the trainer does. The LLM doesn't "contain" a copy of the book. But some LLMs seem to be able to quote on demand from a wide range of literature; these models evidently do have some kind of memory, even if it's been distilled and blended and distilled again.
  - ang_cire 3y ago
    No, I am actually reading OpenAI's PDF linked here, where they say they make a copy of the online corpa to train on, right at the top of page 2: > By analyzing large corpora (which necessarily involves first making copies of the data to be analyzed Whether they retain that later is immaterial to whether copyright infringement occurred. Deleting a movie you illegally downloaded after you watch (train on) it doesn't make it legal.