10 ms·

You aren't software. The laws that apply to people reading and learning do not apply to software. Software isn't people. It can't be liable, it isn't taken to c

by tumult 3y ago

You aren't software. The laws that apply to people reading and learning do not apply to software. Software isn't people. It can't be liable, it isn't taken to court. It can't go to jail, it can't marry, it can't raise a family. Saying that you can legally learn from something by reading it and producing something else, and therefore so should software, is a non sequitur.

throwaway4aday 3y ago
I would not make that the foundation of my argument over the long term.
- tumult 3y ago
  Assuming that software won't receive legal personhood seems like a pretty good foundation. If that's no longer the case, you have much crazier things to worry about than copyright infringement.
ravenstine 3y ago
What makes humans special? Because they can marry and go to jail? That's not relevant, and what is relevant is the difference in outcome. If something takes in information, learns from it, and spits out information as a result of its learning, then why does the implementation matter at all? So what if it's software? That's the point. You're speaking as if it's a given that the issue comes down to software not being people, therefore society as a group should make software do whatever it wants even if it doesn't own that software. Not everyone is going to agree with that because it's not clear why, if something is wrong for software to do, it isn't also wrong for a human brain.
- tumult 3y ago
  > You're speaking as if it's a given that the issue comes down to software not being people, therefore society as a group can make software do whatever it wants even if it doesn't own it. Yes. It's an object or writing. Not a person. You're arguing for giving personhood to software right now and that's crazy.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    If we give personhood to software, wouldn't it mean that you cannot shutdown or delete it ever? You cannot destroy the equipment it is on? As clearly that would be murder. What would be your financial responsibility to keep AI running?
    - merrywhether 3y ago
      These are famously the types of questions surfaced in countless sci-fi books. And as long as humans don’t destroy themselves first, it is likely that we will have to address them eventually. In most stories it generally happens too late after some terrible war/conflict, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to tackle them proactively. And then maybe it’s not so weird to think about these concepts even if their realization isn’t imminent. Working backwards in such a framework would probably give much better laws for today.
    - ravenstine 3y ago
      This has nothing to do with personhood of software. Restricting the freedom of human beings, which includes the ones that run companies, based on the tool they choose to use, without the basis of obvious direct harm, is questionable. The fact that AI can operate autonomously is a side tangent; they are created by humans and, so far, their only proximal purpose is to serve humans.
    - filoleg 3y ago
      Corporate personhood is a thing in the US, and you are allowed to shutdown your company just fine.
  - shawnz 3y ago
    > You're arguing for giving personhood to software right now I'm not sure anyone in the thread is actually arguing that. I think what they are saying is that we should look at what behaviour is considered acceptable for humans in order to help us decide what behaviour is acceptable for the tools humans use.
    - 3y ago
- flappyeagle 3y ago
  The law is written for the benefit of humans, American law specifically for Americans. It is not written to benefit software. Humans are special
  - mdorazio 3y ago
    The massive body of corporate law shows how false this statement is.
    - zappb 3y ago
      Corporations are made up of people. LLMs are merely programs.
  - ravenstine 3y ago
    > The law is written for the benefit of humans And humans using AI as a tool changes this fact?
- NamTaf 3y ago
  Humans are special for two reasons: you can’t clone them infinitely, and they are time-bound. If I learn to write news articles by reading the NYT, I’m not then able to duplicate myself infinitely and fill every role at every news publisher. I am but one human, producing one human’s output and consuming one human’s space within whatever pursuit I undertake. Critically, I still leave room for others to do the same thing. Eventually I also die and then someone else can come along to replace me. I’m finite, AI is not. It doesn’t get used up or retire. If you consider that there’s a fixed amount of societal capacity for whatever undertaking is in question (news journalism, art generation, etc.) then as a human, I take up only a certain amount and only for a certain amount of time. I will never arbitrarily duplicate to produce the work of 10, 100, 1000, etc. humans. I will also shuffle on after about 50 years and someone else, having potentially learnt from me, can now gainfully exist within the world in my stead. The capacity for infinite commoditisation that AI brings is necessarily a critical distinction to humans when it comes to considering them performing equivalent functions. They must be treated differently.
  - mdorazio 3y ago
    > If I learn to write news articles by reading the NYT, I’m not then able to duplicate myself infinitely and fill every role at every news publisher. I am but one human, producing one human’s output and consuming one human’s space within whatever pursuit I undertake. Critically, I still leave room for others to do the same thing. This is a luddite argument that can equally apply to any automation. A robotic arm can be trained to do the same thing a human line worker does, but the robotic arm can be copied infinitely and work 24/7 leaving zero room for other humans to do the same thing. Should we ban robotic arms?
    - fullofideas 3y ago
      Like I say to my toddler, there is no need for rudeness to make a point. Nowhere did the poster say that is “sufficient” reason to ban ai. They were clarifying how software is different from humans and only that. You need to go up a couple of comments and combine this explanation with the other part of copyright infringement concerns to see why the “whole” thing is concerning for the news industry.
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  If you ask that, may I ask: What is the purpose of laws at all if humans aren't special? > If something takes in information, learns from it, and spits out information as a result of its learning, then why does the implementation matter at all? Yeah, so who cares if the implementation is human and if that implementation breaks? I really don't want to troll you, I believe it is worth it to point out the absurdity of the "humans aren't special" argument this way. Humans are not machines and machines don't have human rights.
- timeon 3y ago
  > What makes humans special? If we were so eager to give personhood to corporations and now to software can we finally give it to other animals as well?
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > If something takes in information, learns from it, and spits out information as a result of its learning, then why does the implementation matter at all? Legally, the implementation may not matter at all, but the scale does. The precedent is absolutely clear in legislation, for just about any category of crime or civil tort you can think of. Just one example: you get caught with a single joint (in a place where it isn't legal, of course) you're looking at a fine ... maybe. Most places have had exemptions for possession of a single joint. You get caught with 225 tons of weed all processed and packaged in a warehouse, you're going to jail! You need to justify why you believe that, in the case of LLMs and AIs, an exception should be made so that the scale is not considered. I haven't seen any justification why the justice system should make an exemption for LLMs when it comes to scale. Scale matters, and has matter in every modern 1st world jurisdiction going back hundreds of years. You want to overturn that? Provide an argument other than "If it doesn't matter when a single article is used to learn, it shouldn't matter when billions of words are used in the learning."
chii 3y ago
> therefore so should software, is a non sequitur. it's not. Why isn't photoshop being sued as copyright infringement? People can reproduce infringing works in it easily enough. How is pressing buttons in photoshop different to pressing buttons in chatGPT?
- dd82 3y ago
  It is exactly the same. You can absoutely be sued for copyright infringement in your example. https://www.adobe.com/legal/dmca.html https://www.adobe.com/legal/dmca.html Just because you produce an infringing work doesn't mean it will be discovered and then a legal case made.
  - m-s-y 3y ago
    Correct. But the person using the software is charged. Not the software itself. The NYT is trying to push liability onto the software (ChatGPT-cannot be sued) instead of the software’s users (you and me-can be sued). I feel this is the correct interpretation.
    - tumult 3y ago
      No. They are suing the people who made the software. They are not suing the software. You can't sue software. Software isn't a person.
      - filoleg 3y ago
        This is just pedantry. Would NYT be suing Adobe (the people who made the software), if one of their users utilized Photoshop to produce an image that violates copyright? I don’t think so.
        tumult 3y ago
        No. They would sue Adobe if Adobe put images that violate copyright into Photoshop and let users insert them from a dropdown menu. Your comparison is incorrect and bad.
fourside 3y ago
It’s puzzling to me why some people take it as a given that if a person is legally able to do A, then software should too. The capabilities of software are so different than that of a person that it seems reasonable to consider how the laws apply to software separately. A group of individuals could not absorb the NYT’s content nearly as fast as software can. Like, can we confidently say that laws around copyright and licensing would not have been written any differently had LLMs existed at the time? It’s not obvious to me that the answer is yes.
CivBase 3y ago
No it's not. The AI isn't the one publishing its works. If I write an article that is word-for-word the same as a Times article, I'm not liable for anything until I make it available to others. The means by which I wrote the article are irrelevant. This is the core of the issue. In this case, the "AI" is basically just a fancy writing tool for the publisher.
ericmay 3y ago
> You aren't software. The laws that apply to people reading and learning do not apply to software. If you're going to draw a sharp distinction between reading/words/people (software isn't people, etc.) and software I would argue that the legal and copyright considerations should be stronger for software, not weaker, precisely because of your argument.

by tumult 3y ago

throwaway4aday 3y ago

I would not make that the foundation of my argument over the long term.

tumult 3y ago
Assuming that software won't receive legal personhood seems like a pretty good foundation. If that's no longer the case, you have much crazier things to worry about than copyright infringement.

ravenstine 3y ago

What makes humans special? Because they can marry and go to jail? That's not relevant, and what is relevant is the difference in outcome. If something takes in information, learns from it, and spits out information as a result of its learning, then why does the implementation matter at all? So what if it's software? That's the point. You're speaking as if it's a given that the issue comes down to software not being people, therefore society as a group should make software do whatever it wants even if it doesn't own that software. Not everyone is going to agree with that because it's not clear why, if something is wrong for software to do, it isn't also wrong for a human brain.

tumult 3y ago
> You're speaking as if it's a given that the issue comes down to software not being people, therefore society as a group can make software do whatever it wants even if it doesn't own it. Yes. It's an object or writing. Not a person. You're arguing for giving personhood to software right now and that's crazy.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  If we give personhood to software, wouldn't it mean that you cannot shutdown or delete it ever? You cannot destroy the equipment it is on? As clearly that would be murder. What would be your financial responsibility to keep AI running?
  - merrywhether 3y ago
    These are famously the types of questions surfaced in countless sci-fi books. And as long as humans don’t destroy themselves first, it is likely that we will have to address them eventually. In most stories it generally happens too late after some terrible war/conflict, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to tackle them proactively. And then maybe it’s not so weird to think about these concepts even if their realization isn’t imminent. Working backwards in such a framework would probably give much better laws for today.
  - ravenstine 3y ago
    This has nothing to do with personhood of software. Restricting the freedom of human beings, which includes the ones that run companies, based on the tool they choose to use, without the basis of obvious direct harm, is questionable. The fact that AI can operate autonomously is a side tangent; they are created by humans and, so far, their only proximal purpose is to serve humans.
  - filoleg 3y ago
    Corporate personhood is a thing in the US, and you are allowed to shutdown your company just fine.
- shawnz 3y ago
  > You're arguing for giving personhood to software right now I'm not sure anyone in the thread is actually arguing that. I think what they are saying is that we should look at what behaviour is considered acceptable for humans in order to help us decide what behaviour is acceptable for the tools humans use.
  - 3y ago
flappyeagle 3y ago
The law is written for the benefit of humans, American law specifically for Americans. It is not written to benefit software. Humans are special
- mdorazio 3y ago
  The massive body of corporate law shows how false this statement is.
  - zappb 3y ago
    Corporations are made up of people. LLMs are merely programs.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  > The law is written for the benefit of humans And humans using AI as a tool changes this fact?
NamTaf 3y ago
Humans are special for two reasons: you can’t clone them infinitely, and they are time-bound. If I learn to write news articles by reading the NYT, I’m not then able to duplicate myself infinitely and fill every role at every news publisher. I am but one human, producing one human’s output and consuming one human’s space within whatever pursuit I undertake. Critically, I still leave room for others to do the same thing. Eventually I also die and then someone else can come along to replace me. I’m finite, AI is not. It doesn’t get used up or retire. If you consider that there’s a fixed amount of societal capacity for whatever undertaking is in question (news journalism, art generation, etc.) then as a human, I take up only a certain amount and only for a certain amount of time. I will never arbitrarily duplicate to produce the work of 10, 100, 1000, etc. humans. I will also shuffle on after about 50 years and someone else, having potentially learnt from me, can now gainfully exist within the world in my stead. The capacity for infinite commoditisation that AI brings is necessarily a critical distinction to humans when it comes to considering them performing equivalent functions. They must be treated differently.
- mdorazio 3y ago
  > If I learn to write news articles by reading the NYT, I’m not then able to duplicate myself infinitely and fill every role at every news publisher. I am but one human, producing one human’s output and consuming one human’s space within whatever pursuit I undertake. Critically, I still leave room for others to do the same thing. This is a luddite argument that can equally apply to any automation. A robotic arm can be trained to do the same thing a human line worker does, but the robotic arm can be copied infinitely and work 24/7 leaving zero room for other humans to do the same thing. Should we ban robotic arms?
  - fullofideas 3y ago
    Like I say to my toddler, there is no need for rudeness to make a point. Nowhere did the poster say that is “sufficient” reason to ban ai. They were clarifying how software is different from humans and only that. You need to go up a couple of comments and combine this explanation with the other part of copyright infringement concerns to see why the “whole” thing is concerning for the news industry.
moritzwarhier 3y ago
If you ask that, may I ask: What is the purpose of laws at all if humans aren't special? > If something takes in information, learns from it, and spits out information as a result of its learning, then why does the implementation matter at all? Yeah, so who cares if the implementation is human and if that implementation breaks? I really don't want to troll you, I believe it is worth it to point out the absurdity of the "humans aren't special" argument this way. Humans are not machines and machines don't have human rights.
timeon 3y ago
> What makes humans special? If we were so eager to give personhood to corporations and now to software can we finally give it to other animals as well?
lelanthran 3y ago
> If something takes in information, learns from it, and spits out information as a result of its learning, then why does the implementation matter at all? Legally, the implementation may not matter at all, but the scale does. The precedent is absolutely clear in legislation, for just about any category of crime or civil tort you can think of. Just one example: you get caught with a single joint (in a place where it isn't legal, of course) you're looking at a fine ... maybe. Most places have had exemptions for possession of a single joint. You get caught with 225 tons of weed all processed and packaged in a warehouse, you're going to jail! You need to justify why you believe that, in the case of LLMs and AIs, an exception should be made so that the scale is not considered. I haven't seen any justification why the justice system should make an exemption for LLMs when it comes to scale. Scale matters, and has matter in every modern 1st world jurisdiction going back hundreds of years. You want to overturn that? Provide an argument other than "If it doesn't matter when a single article is used to learn, it shouldn't matter when billions of words are used in the learning."

chii 3y ago

> therefore so should software, is a non sequitur. it's not. Why isn't photoshop being sued as copyright infringement? People can reproduce infringing works in it easily enough. How is pressing buttons in photoshop different to pressing buttons in chatGPT?

dd82 3y ago
It is exactly the same. You can absoutely be sued for copyright infringement in your example. https://www.adobe.com/legal/dmca.html https://www.adobe.com/legal/dmca.html Just because you produce an infringing work doesn't mean it will be discovered and then a legal case made.
- m-s-y 3y ago
  Correct. But the person using the software is charged. Not the software itself. The NYT is trying to push liability onto the software (ChatGPT-cannot be sued) instead of the software’s users (you and me-can be sued). I feel this is the correct interpretation.
  - tumult 3y ago
    No. They are suing the people who made the software. They are not suing the software. You can't sue software. Software isn't a person.
    - filoleg 3y ago
      This is just pedantry. Would NYT be suing Adobe (the people who made the software), if one of their users utilized Photoshop to produce an image that violates copyright? I don’t think so.
      - tumult 3y ago
        No. They would sue Adobe if Adobe put images that violate copyright into Photoshop and let users insert them from a dropdown menu. Your comparison is incorrect and bad.

fourside 3y ago

It’s puzzling to me why some people take it as a given that if a person is legally able to do A, then software should too. The capabilities of software are so different than that of a person that it seems reasonable to consider how the laws apply to software separately. A group of individuals could not absorb the NYT’s content nearly as fast as software can. Like, can we confidently say that laws around copyright and licensing would not have been written any differently had LLMs existed at the time? It’s not obvious to me that the answer is yes.

CivBase 3y ago

No it's not. The AI isn't the one publishing its works. If I write an article that is word-for-word the same as a Times article, I'm not liable for anything until I make it available to others. The means by which I wrote the article are irrelevant. This is the core of the issue. In this case, the "AI" is basically just a fancy writing tool for the publisher.

ericmay 3y ago

> You aren't software. The laws that apply to people reading and learning do not apply to software. If you're going to draw a sharp distinction between reading/words/people (software isn't people, etc.) and software I would argue that the legal and copyright considerations should be stronger for software, not weaker, precisely because of your argument.