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> 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

> 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
    Can you point me to where OpenAI admitted they illegally acquired copies of works for training data? I’ve always said “if you acquire the training data legally then all is fine”. I never asserted that anybody definitely did acquire it legally. If OpenAI torrented some books then they should be made to pay for those. Anyway at this point you’re being deliberately obtuse with your tirade about how a freely flowing exchange of ideas and culture (and tools that facilitate as much) does not progress humanity. No point in continuing to argue…
    - ang_cire 3y ago
      > Can you point me to where OpenAI admitted they illegally acquired copies of works for training data? Yes. It's on the first page of the linked PDF: > For this response, we draw on our experience in developing cutting-edge technical AI systems, including by the use of large, publicly available datasets that include copyrighted works. They then go on to try to claim this is just how everyone does it, as though that makes it okay, including making copies of the copyrighted works: > Modern AI systems require large amounts of data. For certain tasks, that data is derived from existing publicly accessible “corpora” (singular: “corpus”) of data that include copyrighted works. By analyzing large corpora (which necessarily involves first making copies of the data to be analyzed)... > at this point you’re being deliberately obtuse No, I just suspect we fundamentally disagree about the value and importance of many technologies.
      - dcow 3y ago
        Well I never argued that under the current rules OpenAI shouldn’t have to acquire an initial legal copy of copyrighted works, just like libraries do. So we agree. If I were OpenAI I’d argue that a corpus built for the training of an AI model is transformative since it doesn't detract commercially from the original works. No one wanting wanting to train a model would otherwise be using that text to read the book instead.
        ang_cire 3y ago
        You are misunderstanding the purpose of transformation as a Fair Use criteria; it's there to prevent using copyright claims to quash parody and critical (as in criticism) discussion of the copyrighted work, so for instance using copyright to attack a journalist who quotes shitty writing in a book review, or a comedian who alters a quote to make fun of a Disney character, etc. Not only is training ml models not a form of critical expression that enjoys 1A protection, but using the book itself to train a model isn't transformative; you didn't alter the book, you used the book verbatim to train on. That the model doesn't maintain the book doesn't matter; copyright doesn't only cover output (ie a derived work like said comedy skit), it also covers input (how the original work is obtained), and in this case they were not obtained legally (which means with a license for said use). > I’d argue that a corpus built for the training of an AI model is transformative since it doesn't detract commercially from the original works The reason OpenAI isn't arguing this is because they know that would be DOA. You cannot just package copyrighted works together or in a different way and claim that is transformative; there is actually direct case law about that because torrenters tried to claim exactly that, and lost. In fact, transformation is explicitly ruled in several cases to not apply to the entire original work being present.

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
  Can you point me to where OpenAI admitted they illegally acquired copies of works for training data? I’ve always said “if you acquire the training data legally then all is fine”. I never asserted that anybody definitely did acquire it legally. If OpenAI torrented some books then they should be made to pay for those. Anyway at this point you’re being deliberately obtuse with your tirade about how a freely flowing exchange of ideas and culture (and tools that facilitate as much) does not progress humanity. No point in continuing to argue…
  - ang_cire 3y ago
    > Can you point me to where OpenAI admitted they illegally acquired copies of works for training data? Yes. It's on the first page of the linked PDF: > For this response, we draw on our experience in developing cutting-edge technical AI systems, including by the use of large, publicly available datasets that include copyrighted works. They then go on to try to claim this is just how everyone does it, as though that makes it okay, including making copies of the copyrighted works: > Modern AI systems require large amounts of data. For certain tasks, that data is derived from existing publicly accessible “corpora” (singular: “corpus”) of data that include copyrighted works. By analyzing large corpora (which necessarily involves first making copies of the data to be analyzed)... > at this point you’re being deliberately obtuse No, I just suspect we fundamentally disagree about the value and importance of many technologies.
    - dcow 3y ago
      Well I never argued that under the current rules OpenAI shouldn’t have to acquire an initial legal copy of copyrighted works, just like libraries do. So we agree. If I were OpenAI I’d argue that a corpus built for the training of an AI model is transformative since it doesn't detract commercially from the original works. No one wanting wanting to train a model would otherwise be using that text to read the book instead.
      - ang_cire 3y ago
        You are misunderstanding the purpose of transformation as a Fair Use criteria; it's there to prevent using copyright claims to quash parody and critical (as in criticism) discussion of the copyrighted work, so for instance using copyright to attack a journalist who quotes shitty writing in a book review, or a comedian who alters a quote to make fun of a Disney character, etc. Not only is training ml models not a form of critical expression that enjoys 1A protection, but using the book itself to train a model isn't transformative; you didn't alter the book, you used the book verbatim to train on. That the model doesn't maintain the book doesn't matter; copyright doesn't only cover output (ie a derived work like said comedy skit), it also covers input (how the original work is obtained), and in this case they were not obtained legally (which means with a license for said use). > I’d argue that a corpus built for the training of an AI model is transformative since it doesn't detract commercially from the original works The reason OpenAI isn't arguing this is because they know that would be DOA. You cannot just package copyrighted works together or in a different way and claim that is transformative; there is actually direct case law about that because torrenters tried to claim exactly that, and lost. In fact, transformation is explicitly ruled in several cases to not apply to the entire original work being present.