3 ms·

The problem with likening taking other people's work as training data and reproducing it with an LLM to ripping a CD and sharing the files is the direction of p

The problem with likening taking other people's work as training data and reproducing it with an LLM to ripping a CD and sharing the files is the direction of power imbalance. In the music analogy, the "owner" of the original content whose copyright is being potentially infringed is a megacorporation making billions of dollars every quarter, with more lawyers than God. The person potentially infringing that copyright is you. It's me. It's random people everywhere. In the LLM case, the "owner" of the original content whose copyright is being potentially infringed is you. It's me. It's Neil Gaiman. It's Toby Fox. It's not just anybody, it's everybody. The entity potentially infringing that copyright is a megacorporation making billions of dollars every quarter, with more lawyers than God. I hope this makes clear why I think one is a problem and the other isn't.

shkkmo 3y ago
You're making huge assumptions there. Specifically that LLMs are only trained by megacorps (not currently true) or that copyright is only held by individuals (also not currently true.) Besides those mistaken assumptions, I think you have thr copyright issue exactly backwards. Let's imagine the court decides that any computer processing of a work (that isn't intended to help present that work in a licensed manner) requires a special ML license from a each copyright holder. This automatically creates a huge moat for all the large AI companies that can afford that licensing and maybe even negotiate LLM exclusivity. Now you've created an even larger power imbalance by putting this domninant new technology into the control of large corporations. Additionally, legal disputes around copyright already tend to predominantly favor those with large legal budgets. Who is going to be more successful in finding and suing LLMs that use unlicensed content? It's going to be the large megacorp copyright holders. CoughDisneyCough.

shkkmo 3y ago

You're making huge assumptions there. Specifically that LLMs are only trained by megacorps (not currently true) or that copyright is only held by individuals (also not currently true.) Besides those mistaken assumptions, I think you have thr copyright issue exactly backwards. Let's imagine the court decides that any computer processing of a work (that isn't intended to help present that work in a licensed manner) requires a special ML license from a each copyright holder. This automatically creates a huge moat for all the large AI companies that can afford that licensing and maybe even negotiate LLM exclusivity. Now you've created an even larger power imbalance by putting this domninant new technology into the control of large corporations. Additionally, legal disputes around copyright already tend to predominantly favor those with large legal budgets. Who is going to be more successful in finding and suing LLMs that use unlicensed content? It's going to be the large megacorp copyright holders. CoughDisneyCough.