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This is a lot of text just to say, "I care more about ML systems getting better than I do about whether they do so ethically". > people who illegally (ftfy) us

This is a lot of text just to say, "I care more about ML systems getting better than I do about whether they do so ethically". > people who illegally (ftfy) use copyrighted works to create a product Yes, this is something that most people who aren't illegalists agree is wrong. > that provides value to society This is just wholesale coolaid. AI is a tool. The tool doesn't provide value, only the use of a tool does, when that use is positive. The use can also be negative. This case is not about the legal permissibility of using copyrighted works to train AI. That is a misrepresentation. This case is about the legal permissibility of using copyrighted works, against the wishes of the works' creators, to train AI, which is clearly wrong. "What do a few individual humans matter versus the advancement of humanity?" is an argument that has been invoked many times, by the evilest people.

dcow 3y ago
Thats not my argument and if you really interpreted my comment as such we are probably at an impasse. If I write a poem and you buy a copy and feed it to your LLM and make a billion dollars I don’t think I’m innately, ethically, or fairly entitled to a single dollar of that money. I think you’re within your rights to do that since you paid me fairly for the copy and my understanding is that you can use that copy as you see fit because you own it. I fundamentally don’t think you understand the role that ideas and the derived creative expressions thereof play in society. For humanity to progress ideas must flow freely. Attempting to put roadblocks in front of the free exchange of ideas is the evil profit grabbing motive at work. The reality is that any one individual is not entitled to collective royalties from the commons just because they voiced an idea. In my opinion that’s whats poisonous about this whole thing.
- ang_cire 3y ago
  > and you buy a copy This is the step that OpenAI and other companies are missing. They didn't pay for the content they are using. > For humanity to progress ideas must flow freely. AI models are not and will never progress humanity. The ability to have a computer write, draw, or vocalize for you does not change you. You are fundamentally misunderstanding machine learning. It's just fancy python code that approximates a derived pattern. Nothing less, nothing more.
  - dcow 3y ago
    > This is the step that OpenAI and other companies are missing. They didn't pay for the content they are using. Where's the evidence that OpenAI pirated all the content they trained models on and didn't access it normally just like everyone else? It's quite the allegation that OpenAI torrented `all-media-archive.xz` to train their model. > It's just fancy python code that approximates a derived pattern. Nothing less, nothing more. You are sorely mistaken if you think that's all that people are throwing billions of dollars behind. Did the steam engine progress humanity? Did the internet progress humanity? Obviously LLMs themselves aren't autonomously progressing humanity. But what they do as a tool to democratize (hopefully we make sure it's democratized) cheap expression already is pushing us forward and creating new space for humans to imagine and express new content that we've never seen before. You'd have to be blind or ignorant to not see that. Just go join MidJourney's Discord and see for yourself. And it's not just art. More and more people with less knowledge of high computer science are able to complete simple scripting level tasks with the help of LLMs. Even experienced professionals are accelerating their development flows and productivity by leveraging AI to skip a lot of the mundane exploratory/discovery level research that comes before diving into a task. I personally know people who use AI code tools in their workflows today.
    - ang_cire 3y ago
      > Where's the evidence that OpenAI pirated all the content they trained models on and didn't access it normally just like everyone else? It's quite the allegation that OpenAI torrented `all-media-archive.xz` to train their model. This shows a fundamental lack of understanding of copyright law on your part. Getting a PDF of The Shining by googling/ web scraping, versus getting a PDF of it by torrenting, does not make obtaining the PDF any more legal. Publicly-accessible != legal to download. Only the grant of permission by the copyright owner or a licensed distributor(when talking about digital copies) gives you the right to obtain a copy. There is substantial evidence (which OpenAI freely admits to) that they downloaded copies of copyrighted works without permission by the copyright holders. That makes it copyright infringement. > Did the steam engine progress humanity? Did the internet progress humanity? Not in the least bit. Caveman hit caveman with stick progressing to caveman hit caveman with nuke is not a progression of humanity. Trains and the internet did not make humans any better than before, they just consolidated power into certain groups. Mistaking technological progress with social or certainly evolutionary progress is why people roll their eyes at techbros. "Cavemen stop hitting each other" is progressing humanity, and that won't be a result of technology. > You are sorely mistaken if you think that's all that people are throwing billions of dollars behind. I know exactly what I'm talking about, and that is exactly what ML is. And if your only argument is, "surely people wouldn't sink millions of dollars into something unless it was revolutionary!" you've never dealt with corporate software licensing and development. People pay Splunk billions of dollars to run regex on their logs that they could write themselves. People pay billions of dollars for (F)OSS just to have proserv support contracts they never use. Billions of dollars are wasted every day across the world for B2B cruft. ML is cool and all, but it's just code. Code running on a computer. Code you can run on your home pc. It's not magic, or inscrutable, or greater than the sum of its parts. Data go in, data come out, same as every other program.

dcow 3y ago

Thats not my argument and if you really interpreted my comment as such we are probably at an impasse. If I write a poem and you buy a copy and feed it to your LLM and make a billion dollars I don’t think I’m innately, ethically, or fairly entitled to a single dollar of that money. I think you’re within your rights to do that since you paid me fairly for the copy and my understanding is that you can use that copy as you see fit because you own it. I fundamentally don’t think you understand the role that ideas and the derived creative expressions thereof play in society. For humanity to progress ideas must flow freely. Attempting to put roadblocks in front of the free exchange of ideas is the evil profit grabbing motive at work. The reality is that any one individual is not entitled to collective royalties from the commons just because they voiced an idea. In my opinion that’s whats poisonous about this whole thing.

ang_cire 3y ago
> and you buy a copy This is the step that OpenAI and other companies are missing. They didn't pay for the content they are using. > For humanity to progress ideas must flow freely. AI models are not and will never progress humanity. The ability to have a computer write, draw, or vocalize for you does not change you. You are fundamentally misunderstanding machine learning. It's just fancy python code that approximates a derived pattern. Nothing less, nothing more.
- dcow 3y ago
  > This is the step that OpenAI and other companies are missing. They didn't pay for the content they are using. Where's the evidence that OpenAI pirated all the content they trained models on and didn't access it normally just like everyone else? It's quite the allegation that OpenAI torrented `all-media-archive.xz` to train their model. > It's just fancy python code that approximates a derived pattern. Nothing less, nothing more. You are sorely mistaken if you think that's all that people are throwing billions of dollars behind. Did the steam engine progress humanity? Did the internet progress humanity? Obviously LLMs themselves aren't autonomously progressing humanity. But what they do as a tool to democratize (hopefully we make sure it's democratized) cheap expression already is pushing us forward and creating new space for humans to imagine and express new content that we've never seen before. You'd have to be blind or ignorant to not see that. Just go join MidJourney's Discord and see for yourself. And it's not just art. More and more people with less knowledge of high computer science are able to complete simple scripting level tasks with the help of LLMs. Even experienced professionals are accelerating their development flows and productivity by leveraging AI to skip a lot of the mundane exploratory/discovery level research that comes before diving into a task. I personally know people who use AI code tools in their workflows today.
  - ang_cire 3y ago
    > Where's the evidence that OpenAI pirated all the content they trained models on and didn't access it normally just like everyone else? It's quite the allegation that OpenAI torrented `all-media-archive.xz` to train their model. This shows a fundamental lack of understanding of copyright law on your part. Getting a PDF of The Shining by googling/ web scraping, versus getting a PDF of it by torrenting, does not make obtaining the PDF any more legal. Publicly-accessible != legal to download. Only the grant of permission by the copyright owner or a licensed distributor(when talking about digital copies) gives you the right to obtain a copy. There is substantial evidence (which OpenAI freely admits to) that they downloaded copies of copyrighted works without permission by the copyright holders. That makes it copyright infringement. > Did the steam engine progress humanity? Did the internet progress humanity? Not in the least bit. Caveman hit caveman with stick progressing to caveman hit caveman with nuke is not a progression of humanity. Trains and the internet did not make humans any better than before, they just consolidated power into certain groups. Mistaking technological progress with social or certainly evolutionary progress is why people roll their eyes at techbros. "Cavemen stop hitting each other" is progressing humanity, and that won't be a result of technology. > You are sorely mistaken if you think that's all that people are throwing billions of dollars behind. I know exactly what I'm talking about, and that is exactly what ML is. And if your only argument is, "surely people wouldn't sink millions of dollars into something unless it was revolutionary!" you've never dealt with corporate software licensing and development. People pay Splunk billions of dollars to run regex on their logs that they could write themselves. People pay billions of dollars for (F)OSS just to have proserv support contracts they never use. Billions of dollars are wasted every day across the world for B2B cruft. ML is cool and all, but it's just code. Code running on a computer. Code you can run on your home pc. It's not magic, or inscrutable, or greater than the sum of its parts. Data go in, data come out, same as every other program.