7 ms·

You are going on an irrelevant tangent (whether people enjoying being creative - which is obviously true at least for some) instead of answering a very clear an

You are going on an irrelevant tangent (whether people enjoying being creative - which is obviously true at least for some) instead of answering a very clear and simple question: how, in your evolved and less broken universe, will talented people dedicate their life to produce something that society does not acknowledge or reward but simply appropriates.

Wissenschafter 3y ago
Should I be able to dedicate my life to some obscure thing that nobody cares to buy as a commodity? That argument is absurd, you don't HAVE to be an artist. You can be a talented person and dedicate your life to something else. Or you can be like everyone else and do it as a hobby in your time off because people don't find what you do creatively to be valuable. I demand I get paid for my playing video games, I think it's valuable and I dedicate my time to it, I deserve to be paid. Fucking ridiculous.
- xeckr 3y ago
  Do you listen to music?
csallen 3y ago
Why do we as a society need to answer that question? When automobiles were popularized, entire generations of families and people devoted to horsecraft suddenly found their business model obsolete. Did we as a society need to come together to ask how talented people in the horse industry might be able to continue to profitably dedicate their lives to that task? No, we just let the market figure it out, and allowed change to occur. Our take an alternate thought experiment. Imagine a world where recipes were patentable. The first person to make mac-and-cheese could patent that, claim ownership of mac-and-cheese, and ban every other person and restaurant from making and selling mac-and-cheese. There would, of course, be an entire industry devoted to this. There would be restaurant chains that own the idea of pizza, burgers, etc., and stop any and everyone else from making that. There would be small and boutique recipe crafters creating and profiting from their unique recipes, too. And of course, people in this industry would ferociously sue anyone who "stole" the recipes that they "owned." And they would ask the same questions you're asking: "What ever would we do in a world where recipe owners don't get to uniquely monopolize their creations because they're allowed to be appropriated by others?" And the answer is: that business model wouldn't simply exist, and the world would be just fine without it. It's not clear to me why any particular profession or business model needs to be protected into existence. The world will be just fine if some business model that always worked gradually ceases to become viable. I have sympathy for the people in those professions, but it happens all the time, and is a necessary consequence of technological innovation and progress. In the 1800s, the Luddites smashed up factory equipment and tried to make it illegal, because they wanted to protect labor jobs. Thankfully they lost, and now we have a world with better jobs, which they could not have imagined.
- xeckr 3y ago
  If a copy of someone's work is used to create a product (in this case, to train the GenAI), then it makes sense for the creator to receive some form of credit. Your car/horse example makes no sense in this context because the existence of cars is not predicated on the existence of horses. On the other hand, GenAI is not possible without the art that forms the training data.
  - csallen 3y ago
    That's not how it works, never has been how it works, and should not be how it works. For thousands of years, human workers and artists have trained themselves by looking at copies of other people's work, and used the ideas and inspiration the gain from that material to produce new works. Artists will literally sit down and copy another artist's work as part of training. This happens as a matter of course. Sometimes the new works produced after training are fresh and original. And just as often, they are derivative copycats (see: fan fiction, most clothing, most music, half the stuff on DeviantArt, etc.). The law is only concerned with a creator's output, not the input. If you produce and distribute something that's an obvious copy of someone else's work, that could be a copyright violation. However, if what you produce is sufficiently original, it's fair game, regardless of who you were inspired or trained by. The law does not require compensating or crediting those who inspired you or helped with training. Again, the law is only concerned with output, not with training, not with inspiration, not with input. What you are advocating for is a huge change. Would this change apply to humans who are learning/training by looking at and copying others' work? If so, that would be a nightmare. If not, why not? Why only apply it to AI? Because the AI is more efficient at it than humans? If that's your reason, could you justify it? New technology is always more efficient than the status quo. That's the entire point of new technology. Making laws to stop it accomplishes nothing except limiting technology in order to protect old jobs and business models. Why should we do that?
    - xeckr 3y ago
      Yes, of course I can justify applying a different standard to AI than to humans when it comes to the generation of art. Despite everything you said about humans copying the work of other humans, the fact is that humans are capable of producing new art without reference to prior art. You can prove this by considering the emergence of the very first cave paintings. On the other hand, GenAI like Stable Diffusion is capable of outputting art only if the following two conditions are met: 1. there is a prompt (and perhaps special configuration) made by the artist using the GenAI 2. there is training data (i.e. art made by prior artists) that makes the AI capable of translating the prompt into an image. Of course it is possible to create programs that output something that may be considered art without reference to the work of other people. However, without (2) GenAI specifically cannot exist, and so the people that make (2) possible are right to demand credit if their work is used in this context. Note that this says nothing about technological progress. If you train GenAI on material you have a right to use (e.g. art that is in the public domain, or copyrighted art that you have a license to use), then it's all good. The problem arises when you use a copy of someone's work in a process without their permission, when the law clearly says that the creator of that work has the legal right to decide how copies of that work are used (with the exception of "fair use").

Wissenschafter 3y ago

Should I be able to dedicate my life to some obscure thing that nobody cares to buy as a commodity? That argument is absurd, you don't HAVE to be an artist. You can be a talented person and dedicate your life to something else. Or you can be like everyone else and do it as a hobby in your time off because people don't find what you do creatively to be valuable. I demand I get paid for my playing video games, I think it's valuable and I dedicate my time to it, I deserve to be paid. Fucking ridiculous.

xeckr 3y ago
Do you listen to music?

csallen 3y ago

Why do we as a society need to answer that question? When automobiles were popularized, entire generations of families and people devoted to horsecraft suddenly found their business model obsolete. Did we as a society need to come together to ask how talented people in the horse industry might be able to continue to profitably dedicate their lives to that task? No, we just let the market figure it out, and allowed change to occur. Our take an alternate thought experiment. Imagine a world where recipes were patentable. The first person to make mac-and-cheese could patent that, claim ownership of mac-and-cheese, and ban every other person and restaurant from making and selling mac-and-cheese. There would, of course, be an entire industry devoted to this. There would be restaurant chains that own the idea of pizza, burgers, etc., and stop any and everyone else from making that. There would be small and boutique recipe crafters creating and profiting from their unique recipes, too. And of course, people in this industry would ferociously sue anyone who "stole" the recipes that they "owned." And they would ask the same questions you're asking: "What ever would we do in a world where recipe owners don't get to uniquely monopolize their creations because they're allowed to be appropriated by others?" And the answer is: that business model wouldn't simply exist, and the world would be just fine without it. It's not clear to me why any particular profession or business model needs to be protected into existence. The world will be just fine if some business model that always worked gradually ceases to become viable. I have sympathy for the people in those professions, but it happens all the time, and is a necessary consequence of technological innovation and progress. In the 1800s, the Luddites smashed up factory equipment and tried to make it illegal, because they wanted to protect labor jobs. Thankfully they lost, and now we have a world with better jobs, which they could not have imagined.

xeckr 3y ago
If a copy of someone's work is used to create a product (in this case, to train the GenAI), then it makes sense for the creator to receive some form of credit. Your car/horse example makes no sense in this context because the existence of cars is not predicated on the existence of horses. On the other hand, GenAI is not possible without the art that forms the training data.
- csallen 3y ago
  That's not how it works, never has been how it works, and should not be how it works. For thousands of years, human workers and artists have trained themselves by looking at copies of other people's work, and used the ideas and inspiration the gain from that material to produce new works. Artists will literally sit down and copy another artist's work as part of training. This happens as a matter of course. Sometimes the new works produced after training are fresh and original. And just as often, they are derivative copycats (see: fan fiction, most clothing, most music, half the stuff on DeviantArt, etc.). The law is only concerned with a creator's output, not the input. If you produce and distribute something that's an obvious copy of someone else's work, that could be a copyright violation. However, if what you produce is sufficiently original, it's fair game, regardless of who you were inspired or trained by. The law does not require compensating or crediting those who inspired you or helped with training. Again, the law is only concerned with output, not with training, not with inspiration, not with input. What you are advocating for is a huge change. Would this change apply to humans who are learning/training by looking at and copying others' work? If so, that would be a nightmare. If not, why not? Why only apply it to AI? Because the AI is more efficient at it than humans? If that's your reason, could you justify it? New technology is always more efficient than the status quo. That's the entire point of new technology. Making laws to stop it accomplishes nothing except limiting technology in order to protect old jobs and business models. Why should we do that?
  - xeckr 3y ago
    Yes, of course I can justify applying a different standard to AI than to humans when it comes to the generation of art. Despite everything you said about humans copying the work of other humans, the fact is that humans are capable of producing new art without reference to prior art. You can prove this by considering the emergence of the very first cave paintings. On the other hand, GenAI like Stable Diffusion is capable of outputting art only if the following two conditions are met: 1. there is a prompt (and perhaps special configuration) made by the artist using the GenAI 2. there is training data (i.e. art made by prior artists) that makes the AI capable of translating the prompt into an image. Of course it is possible to create programs that output something that may be considered art without reference to the work of other people. However, without (2) GenAI specifically cannot exist, and so the people that make (2) possible are right to demand credit if their work is used in this context. Note that this says nothing about technological progress. If you train GenAI on material you have a right to use (e.g. art that is in the public domain, or copyrighted art that you have a license to use), then it's all good. The problem arises when you use a copy of someone's work in a process without their permission, when the law clearly says that the creator of that work has the legal right to decide how copies of that work are used (with the exception of "fair use").