4 ms·

Why should LLM development proceed if the only way it can is by violating copyright?

by sanp 3y ago

cedws 3y ago
Well, like I said in another comment, some people believe we are on the brink of a new age of prosperity due to AI development. I'm not sure if I share that opinion - just playing devil's advocate.
j0hnyl 3y ago
Imo the world needs to find a way past the absurd notion of intellectual property.In a digital world where all collective knowledge is available at anyone's fingerprints ideas like copyright are anachronistic.
- appplication 3y ago
  Sure, I agree with you at a high level. But if the answer is that LLMs get a pass and the rest of us have to deal with DMCA takedown abuse, inaccessible geolocked content, and 7-figure legal penalties for getting caught downloading a $3.99-to-rent movie, then fuck that. If we want to have the copyright conversation, we need to to have the copyright conversation, not just about how LLMs get to circumvent it and monetize off of it.
  - glerk 3y ago
    There is no need for a “conversation”. The concept has simply become obsolete and these laws will cease to exist as they are unenforceable.
    - lacrimacida 3y ago
      They won’t cease to exist unless something happens to challenge them and render them unenforceable.
      - AmandaGretel 3y ago
        [flagged]
        chfalck 3y ago
        “User since December 2, 2023” checks out
      - glerk 3y ago
        Even if copyright laws are not explicitly repealed, the logistics of enforcing them are becoming unsustainable. This is already largely the case today with the pirate bay and libgen still up and running after all these years, but I expect it is only going to get worse. Anyone can run pre-trained models and make them spit out all kinds of copyrighted data. Anyone can train new models given access to enough data and compute. I just don't see a realistic way to force the toothpaste back in the tube.
- sumedh 3y ago
  > Imo the world needs to find a way past the absurd notion of intellectual property. Do you work for free?
  - j0hnyl 3y ago
    No and I agree that this is a question that needs to be answered in the "post copyright" world.
greenhexagon 3y ago
"Violating copyright" is a completely imaginary problem. We have a somewhat arbitrary set of laws, rules, guidelines and social norms about using existing ideas. American law for instance has limits on the duration of copyright before something becomes public domain, explicit exemptions for "fair use" for education, journalistic reporting, commentary, etc. If "copyright" is a problem in the way of training AI models, then we should all collectively vote for politicians who fix that problem by updating the laws to make the training explicitly allowed. Problem solved. (Alternatively, if you're evil, vote for politicians who will let the billionaires strengthen their domination and subjugation of the other 99.9999% of humans by making copyright laws even more in favor of TimeWarner-Disney-Miramax-FoxNews-Lockheed-GE or whatever the current conglomerate is).
- naet 3y ago
  It's not a completely imaginary problem or a problem only affecting big corporations. If I'm an individual writer or artist and my work gets fed into an LLM against my will it can seriously undercut the value of that work or discourage me from creating more. If you can just ask the LLM to give you the contents of my book you are less likely to buy it, and if you can just ask the image generator to generate an image in my unique style for free you won't want to buy my artwork. I think it makes perfect sense that a model needs a specific license to train on my work, especially if the model is run by a massive corporation making a profit off it, and the model after downloading a copy of my work and "training" can reproduce it verbatim on request.
  - gaganyaan 3y ago
    That's not what copyright is for. That's like saying "what if someone reads my book and I don't like them?" That sucks for you, but it's a personal problem unrelated to copyright.
  - greenhexagon 3y ago
    Do you think students should need a specific license to read a book? Do visitors to an art gallery need a specific license to look at paintings? Do audiences need specific licenses to watch a play? Those people will be influenced by what they've read/seen/heard and their own future writing/drawing/filming/acting/editing/playing might draw inspiration from what they've learned, and they might incorporate things they've learned into their own future work. Literally every book, song and work of art is "violating copyright" on the thousands of other works that the creator learned from while growing up, if we hold the same standard.
ComplexSystems 3y ago
Why should copyright law be as it is if it means we can't have artificial intelligence?
fbhabbed 3y ago
LLM development will proceed regardless in countries that don't give a damn about our vision of "copyright". It doesn't matter if you think copyright makes sense or not. In 20 years, some country will have its own giant LLM trained on copyrighted material and use this to boost their competitive advantage and technological power and development, perhaps so much that the advantage will be tremendous, while we'll stay the underdogs because "my copyrights".

Why should LLM development proceed if the only way it can is by violating copyright?

by sanp 3y ago

Why should LLM development proceed if the only way it can is by violating copyright?

Well, like I said in another comment, some people believe we are on the brink of a new age of prosperity due to AI development. I'm not sure if I share that opinion - just playing devil's advocate.

j0hnyl 3y ago

Imo the world needs to find a way past the absurd notion of intellectual property.In a digital world where all collective knowledge is available at anyone's fingerprints ideas like copyright are anachronistic.

appplication 3y ago
Sure, I agree with you at a high level. But if the answer is that LLMs get a pass and the rest of us have to deal with DMCA takedown abuse, inaccessible geolocked content, and 7-figure legal penalties for getting caught downloading a $3.99-to-rent movie, then fuck that. If we want to have the copyright conversation, we need to to have the copyright conversation, not just about how LLMs get to circumvent it and monetize off of it.
- glerk 3y ago
  There is no need for a “conversation”. The concept has simply become obsolete and these laws will cease to exist as they are unenforceable.
  - lacrimacida 3y ago
    They won’t cease to exist unless something happens to challenge them and render them unenforceable.
    - AmandaGretel 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - chfalck 3y ago
        “User since December 2, 2023” checks out
    - glerk 3y ago
      Even if copyright laws are not explicitly repealed, the logistics of enforcing them are becoming unsustainable. This is already largely the case today with the pirate bay and libgen still up and running after all these years, but I expect it is only going to get worse. Anyone can run pre-trained models and make them spit out all kinds of copyrighted data. Anyone can train new models given access to enough data and compute. I just don't see a realistic way to force the toothpaste back in the tube.
sumedh 3y ago
> Imo the world needs to find a way past the absurd notion of intellectual property. Do you work for free?
- j0hnyl 3y ago
  No and I agree that this is a question that needs to be answered in the "post copyright" world.

greenhexagon 3y ago

"Violating copyright" is a completely imaginary problem. We have a somewhat arbitrary set of laws, rules, guidelines and social norms about using existing ideas. American law for instance has limits on the duration of copyright before something becomes public domain, explicit exemptions for "fair use" for education, journalistic reporting, commentary, etc. If "copyright" is a problem in the way of training AI models, then we should all collectively vote for politicians who fix that problem by updating the laws to make the training explicitly allowed. Problem solved. (Alternatively, if you're evil, vote for politicians who will let the billionaires strengthen their domination and subjugation of the other 99.9999% of humans by making copyright laws even more in favor of TimeWarner-Disney-Miramax-FoxNews-Lockheed-GE or whatever the current conglomerate is).

naet 3y ago
It's not a completely imaginary problem or a problem only affecting big corporations. If I'm an individual writer or artist and my work gets fed into an LLM against my will it can seriously undercut the value of that work or discourage me from creating more. If you can just ask the LLM to give you the contents of my book you are less likely to buy it, and if you can just ask the image generator to generate an image in my unique style for free you won't want to buy my artwork. I think it makes perfect sense that a model needs a specific license to train on my work, especially if the model is run by a massive corporation making a profit off it, and the model after downloading a copy of my work and "training" can reproduce it verbatim on request.
- gaganyaan 3y ago
  That's not what copyright is for. That's like saying "what if someone reads my book and I don't like them?" That sucks for you, but it's a personal problem unrelated to copyright.
- greenhexagon 3y ago
  Do you think students should need a specific license to read a book? Do visitors to an art gallery need a specific license to look at paintings? Do audiences need specific licenses to watch a play? Those people will be influenced by what they've read/seen/heard and their own future writing/drawing/filming/acting/editing/playing might draw inspiration from what they've learned, and they might incorporate things they've learned into their own future work. Literally every book, song and work of art is "violating copyright" on the thousands of other works that the creator learned from while growing up, if we hold the same standard.

ComplexSystems 3y ago

Why should copyright law be as it is if it means we can't have artificial intelligence?

fbhabbed 3y ago

LLM development will proceed regardless in countries that don't give a damn about our vision of "copyright". It doesn't matter if you think copyright makes sense or not. In 20 years, some country will have its own giant LLM trained on copyrighted material and use this to boost their competitive advantage and technological power and development, perhaps so much that the advantage will be tremendous, while we'll stay the underdogs because "my copyrights".