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> But I can't even get cartoons to most people for free now, without doing unpaid work for the profit-making companies who own the most use channels of communic

> But I can't even get cartoons to most people for free now, without doing unpaid work for the profit-making companies who own the most use channels of communication This is the sticking point for me. OpenAI isn't a profit-making company, but it's certainly a valuable company. A valuable company that is built from the work of content others created without transferring any value back to them. Regardless of legalities, that's wrong to me. Put it this way - you remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from OpenAIs training, what value does OpenAI's products have? If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can't use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content.

larrik 3y ago
I thought this was more of a reference to Facebook, etc. I could be wrong, though, it's pretty vague.
- Ardon 3y ago
  I think it it's a reference to the media landscape, Facebook and OpenAI inclusive.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- fouc 3y ago
  Yes, OP knows that the quote is referring to platforms/media channels like youtube/facebook/google, etc. But it's also referring to profit-making companies on the internet, like OpenAI.
robertlagrant 3y ago
It would be good to see how much it changes if you only include work that is public domain.
- notpachet 3y ago
  Any prompt response longer than 30 characters inevitably devolves into verbatim passages from The Iliad.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    I could get on board with this.
- realusername 3y ago
  If that includes a drastic revamp of copyright laws to increase the public domain, why not. I don't see why Disney or Universal would be more legitimate than OpenAI to profit from stuff made from now dead authors 60 years ago. Both seems as legitimate.
pushedx 3y ago
This was a reference to Instagram, et. al., where distributing your illustrations there implicitly allows thier Ad machine to profit from your work
- idopmstuff 3y ago
  This seems like a strange criticism to me - if you're posting your illustrations on social media, it's presumably because you feel that you're getting value out of doing so. Who cares if they're also getting value out of you doing it, particularly when that value comes at no cost to you? If you sell your art, then art marketplaces and printers and shipping services all profit from your work, but I don't imagine she's complaining about that. What's the difference? In all of those cases, as with social media, companies are making money from your work in return for providing a useful service to you (and one you don't have to use if you don't think it's useful).
  - ska 3y ago
    > Who cares if they're also getting value out of you doing it, The author, presumably. > particularly when that value comes at no cost to you? Who would (has) argued that there is a cost. > in return for providing a useful service to you (and one you don't have to use if you don't think it's useful). I think they agree with you, and are making the claim that since they choose not to use the service (considering it exploitative), it is getting increasingly difficult to distribute their work in a way they find ethical. I'm not sure I agree with their arguments completely, but they aren't really "strange" as you suggest.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - pushedx 3y ago
    > Who cares if they're getting value out if it. Perhaps your artwork has an anti-capitalist message, and you do not want it to appear anywhere near an Ad for the latest beauty cream. In the early days of the Internet, there were places to promote a webcomic with no commerical interest, like usenet and forums, and it was typical to visit an artist's website directly. These days, the average new Internet user might not even be aware of the concept that an artist can have their own website, and own the user experience of visitng that website from end to end. Web design in the early 2000s had a lot of creativity and easter eggs built into the experience of navigating the pages themselves. An artist absolutely has the right to not want to upload their creative work (which takes days and weeks to produce), onto a bland social media site with it's own terms and conditions with regard how that content is treated and monetized. Places like Instagram are bleak compared to what was pushing creative boundaries of the web in the mid to late 2000s. Sure, there are still fun websites like this but they are difficult to find (what happened to StumbleUpon?)
ben_w 3y ago
> Put it this way - you remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from OpenAIs training, what value does OpenAI have? What you probably get is a LLM that can perfectly understand well written text as you might find on Wikipedia, but which would struggle severely with colloquial language of the kind found on Reddit and Twitter. > then it should give some of that value back to the content. That's literally built into their corporate rules for how to take investment money, and when those rules were written they were criticised because people didn't think they'd ever grow enough for it to matter.
- caconym_ 3y ago
  > That's literally built into their corporate rules for how to take investment money, and when those rules were written they were criticised because people didn't think they'd ever grow enough for it to matter. How is OpenAI compensating the owners of IP they trained their models on? Or is that not what you mean? It's certainly how I read the part of the GP comment you quoted.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    So far, looks like funding a UBI study. As the IP owners are approximately "everyone" in law, UBI is kinda the only way to compensate all the IP owners. https://openai.com/our-structure https://openai.com/our-structure
    - edc117 3y ago
      Good catch, hadn't seen that. So the researchers, shareholders, and leadership of OpenAI will be happy to give up being ridiculously wealthy so they can be only moderately wealthy, and everyone else gets a basic income? I'm also just skeptical of UBI in general, I suppose - 'free' money tends to just inflate everything to account for it, and it still won't address scarcity issues for limited physical assets like land/property. I've love to be wrong about both of these things.
      - ben_w 3y ago
make3 3y ago
that's arguably true for humans learning from the content as well
sandworm101 3y ago
>> If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can't use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content. But we are allowed to use copyrighted content. We are not allowed to copy copyrighted content. We are allowed to view and consume it, to be influenced by it, and under many circumstances even outright copy it. If one doesn't want anyone to see/consume or be influenced by one's copyrighted work, then lock it in a box and don't show it to anyone. I have some, but diminishing sympathy for artists screaming about how AI generates images too similar to their work. Yes, the output does look very similar to your work. But if I take your work and compare it to the millions of other people's work, I'd bet I can find some preexisting human-made art that also looks similar to your stuff too. This is why clothing doesn't qualify for copyright. No matter how original you think your clothing seems, someone in the last many thousands of years of fashion has done it before. Visual art may be approaching a similar point. No matter how original you think your drawings are, someone out there has already done something similar. They may not have created exactly the same image, but neither does AI literally copy images. That reality doesn't kill visual arts as it didn't kill off the fashion industry.
- Osmose 3y ago
  Because we are humans and our capability of abusing those rights is limited. The scale and speed at which LLMs can abuse copyrighted work to threaten the livelihoods of the authors of those works is reason enough to consider it unethical.
  - visarga 3y ago
    Writing good text with LLM is actually slow and takes a lot of fixing.
  - unfamiliar 3y ago
    I don’t think it is. What you describe is similar to any other industry disruption, and I don’t think those are unethical. I’d actually argue that preventing disruption is often (not always) unethical, because you artificially prolong an inefficient or inferior alternative.
ta8645 3y ago
> Regardless of legalities, that's wrong to me. I see it differently. To me, if you post your work online as an artist, it's really there for everyone to view and be inspired by. As long as nobody copies it verbatim, don't think you've been hurt by any other usage. If another artist views it, and is inspired by it... so be it. If an AI views it, and is inspired by it, again, no harm done.
- jsonjason 3y ago
  > nobody copies it verbatim This is not really how copyright works. > an AI views it, and is inspired by it, This is a misleading anthropomorphization of how AI works.
- tapoxi 3y ago
  AI doesn't get inspired. It's not human. It adds everything about it to its endless stream of levers to pull, and if you pull the right ones, it will just give you the source verbatim as proven by the NYT lawsuit filing where it was just outputting unaltered copywritten NYT article text.
  - PretzelPirate 3y ago
    > as proven by the NYT lawsuit filing I would be careful in asserting that it's proven until the evidence is heard in court and we have all the data.
    - kevingadd 3y ago
      You can look at the filing yourself. It is unambiguous.
      - ShamelessC 3y ago
        It’s unambiguous about repeating articles of NY times pieces with hallucinations interwoven occasionally. This isn’t nearly as strong of an argument.
  - 3y ago
karaterobot 3y ago
Agreed with the overall sentiment, but let's be clear. OpenAI is currently a (capped) for-profit company. They are partnered with Microsoft, a for-profit company. They commercially license their products. They provide services to for-profit companies. The existential crisis of the last six months of the company seems to have been over moving in the direction of being more profit-oriented, and one side clearly won that battle. OpenAI may soon be getting contracts with the defense department, after silently revoking their promise not to. Describing them as a non-profit company is de facto untrue, regardless of their nominal governance structure, and describing them (or them describing themselves) as a non-profit feels like falling for a sleight of hand trick at this point.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nmz 3y ago
It would be nice if you used a label you had to pay a fee for whoever owns the label, if you don't want to pay a fee to the owners of an artstyle, then you can always use public domain works. Hell, this might be even better for public domain works and restoration if a small fee went to them as well.
- idle_zealot 3y ago
  > owners of an artstyle I hope I never have to live in a world where such a thing exists.
teaearlgraycold 3y ago
I wonder if AI shrinks the economy. Not that such a metric is the most important ruler by which to measure goodness, but it would be ironic to have a massive tech company that produces less value than it removes from the world.
- lacrimacida 3y ago
  In a way it will remove value but in a way it will add value back in terms of an avalanche of derivative junk, lacking authenticity and context. If you find value in memes for example there will be a lot of that type of content in the future.
consumer451 3y ago
I really haven't liked the crypto bros == AI bros memes, but in this way I do see the similarity. As in: we will change the world, all that is required is that we throw away all previous protections! The ends justify the means! I do see a much more beneficial trajectory for LLMs vs cryptocurrencies, but yeah, this is gross and unfair. Note: as the days go on, I continue to realize the pitfalls of Utilariansim. I do miss the simplicity, but nope.
bawolff 3y ago
> Put it this way - you remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from OpenAIs training, what value does OpenAI's products have? If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can't use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content Couldn't we say the same thing about search engines? What value would google have without content to search for? Is the conclusion we should make search engines pay royalities? That seems unfeasible at google scale. Should google just be straight up illegal? That also seems like a bad outcome; i like search engines i am glad they exist. I guess i'm left with - i don't like this argument because of what it would imply for other projects if you follow the logic to its natural conclusion.
- tedivm 3y ago
  Search engines don't replicate the content, they index and point to it. When search engines have been caught replicating content they have been sued or had to work out licenses.
  - bawolff 3y ago
    I mean, generative AI basically involves turning content into vectors in order to try and find related content. If that's not an index structure i don't know what is.
    - kelnos 3y ago
      The technical definition of how something works is often irrelevant in the eyes of the law. What matters is the output, and its effects. The output of a search engine is nothing like the output of generative AI.
    - godelski 3y ago
      Most ML are certainly compression systems, as you imply. But reproduction and redistribution of copyright material is quite different than generating a service that allows someone to find said material. The question about caching is a different one, but I doubt it falls under the same intent, as Google is incentivized to cache content to better facilitate the search __and redirection__ service, not to facilitate distribution.
shadowgovt 3y ago
> A valuable company that is built from the work of content others created without transferring any value back to them. But they are free to use the fruits of the model, same as anyone else. I suppose the difference is they don't care; they already have the talent to transform their labor into visual art, so what use do they have for a visual-art-generation machine? I find strong parallels in the building of web crawlers and search indexers, except... Perhaps the indexers provided more universal, symmetrical value. It's hard to make the case that someone crawled and added to a search index doesn't derive value from that strong, healthy index being searchable (even librarians and news reporters thrive on having data indexed and reachable; the index is a force-multiplier, it's not "stealing their labor" by crawling their sub-indexing work and agglomerating it into a bigger index, nor is it cheapening the value of their information-sorting-and-sifting skills when the machine sorts and sifts). So perhaps there is a dimension of symmetry here where the give-and-take aspect of what is created breaks. Much like the rich don't have to care whether it's legal to sleep under a bridge, artists don't have to care whether a machine can do 60% of the work of getting to a reasonable visual representation of an idea. No, more than that: it's harmful to them if it's legal to sleep under the bridge. They'd be landlords in this analogy, crying to the city that because people can sleep under bridges the value of the houses they maintain has dropped.
- skydhash 3y ago
  No one wants to live under the bridge even if it was perfectly legal.
- dazed_confused 3y ago
  Or they lost means of income? Like is this a difficult concept? Livelihoods will most likely be lost and probably never really coming back. Sure we can say industries change; however, we had protections in place to prevent artists losing money due to people copying… A company has said “screw the rules, here’s a supercharged printer.”
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Imagine someone came up with a way to print houses for nearly-free. Anyone needs shelter? Bam, instant house. Landlords would lose income left and right. The relevant question is: would society stop the building of these free houses to protect the interest of the landlords? (Now, take that analogy and throw it in the trash. ;) Housing is essential; art is fundamentally a luxury good. If we want to, we can have a society that protects profit-making on luxury goods and profit-making on necessities differently. "Someone is losing income, therefore this change is bad" is too simple a rule to build a healthy society upon, but a reasonable person can conclude "Artists are losing their livelihoods, therefore this change is bad").
cmiles74 3y ago
OpenAI is very much a for-profit company with the same incentives to make money as every other US for-profit company. I understand that there's another company that is a non-profit and that company bosses the for-profit company. In my opinion, that's more of a footnote in their governance story, it doesn't make OpenAI a non-profit. Their website says... "A new for-profit subsidiary would be formed, capable of issuing equity to raise capital and hire world class talent, but still at the direction of the Nonprofit. Employees working on for-profit initiatives were transitioned over to the new subsidiary." https://openai.com/our-structure https://openai.com/our-structure
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  They might be a for-profit company, but I don't believe they have made a profit. I wasn't even thinking of the murkey non-profit status.
  - jrflowers 3y ago
    This is an important distinction. The difference between making a boatload of money on the cheap and making a boatload of money after spending an even bigger amount should matter to this cartoonist becau
  - bink 3y ago
    They have over a billion dollars in revenue per year. They aren't making a profit because they're reinvesting all of that money into growing the company.
  - godelski 3y ago
    > but I don't believe they have made a profit Wrong way to evaluate and you're missing the complaint from the artists. It doesn't matter what the company makes or loses, it matters if people end up with money in their pockets. I don't know ML counts as derivative or not, but I don't think that's important here. Regardless it is a fact that an artist does work, that work isn't paid for, and then that work is used by someone else in some way to sell a product. The complaint is specifically that they have no control over deciding if their work can be used in that way or not. At the end of the day, everyone working at OpenAI ends up with lots of money in their pockets. Regardless of the company profits or revenue, this money is connected to the work that these artists do, who do not make any or any substantial amounts of money. That's the underlying issue and we must read between the lines a bit to understand the difference between a specific point and the general thesis. Also, remember Stability does have revenue as well. OpenAI is being pointed at because they are top dog, but it's not like there aren't others doing the same thing. So even a very specific justification may not refute the original complaint.
j0hnyl 3y ago
I think a model that would make more sense is to punish bad behavior in the form of infringement, so if someone monetizes an AI output that infringes on someone's copyright/trademark, then go after that person. Otherwise we are going to be completely stuck for the sake of some kind of outdated mentality around intellectual property.
xyproto 3y ago
If you remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from a human's training, what value does the human have, in connection with work? When is AI good enough that the contents it contains can be comparable to human brain content, copyright wise? And conversely, now that we can read signals from neurons in a human brain, and create images from dreams and audio from thoughts, would not that also break the copyright of the content?
- inference-lord 3y ago
  There is absolutely zero comparison between living in the world and experiencing it, and building a model, loading in copyrighted, carefully curated material and then charging for the outputs of said model without paying royalties. It's hard to even believe people can't understand the difference. The fact is, the majority of people do not want to steal others work for profit, and for those bottom feeders that do, there are lass to discourage such behavior and to protect the original producer. If these models were trained on creative commons licensed material only, then you'd have a leg to stand on. I even had to pay for my tuition, and textbook material. Even if some portion of my knowledge comes from osmosis, I have still contributed at some stage to access training material. When I was 16, I wanted to learn to code, do you know what I did? I went and purchased coding books because even at 16, I understood that it was the right thing to do. To pay the author for the privilege of accessing their work. How basic can one get? Would you like it if I broke into your house and used your things without asking you? Because that's about what's happening her for professionals.
  - xyproto 3y ago
    Yes. Copyright is just like stealing a car, and not at all like sharing information, and you wouldn't steal a car, right?
realusername 3y ago
That's not enough to say that, all companies are benefiting of what has been made before, nothing exists in a vaccum. AI adds into the current landscape.
richardw 3y ago
I keep thinking: this is what eg Google has done all along. The content it uses to train models and present the answers to us absolutely belongs to others, but you try get any content (eg maps data) out of it for free at scale. But the business model emerged and delivered value to us while enough that we didn’t consider asking for money for our content. We like being searched and linked to. Less so Google snippets presented to users without the users landing on our site. Even less so generated without any interaction. But it’s all still all our content.
WhitneyLand 3y ago
If you take away all music created by black people what value do The Rolling Stones have? I don't know yet exactly how this compares, I’m trying to think it all through. AI has different levels - output can be loosely inspired by, style cloning, or near exact reproductions of specific work.
thereddaikon 3y ago
The only way I see this working with out current economics and IP law is if the people training models license the work they are using. And a traditional license wouldn't do, it would have to be one specific to training AI models. As to the question of worth, obviously OpenAI's models have value without the training data. Just having a collection of images does not make a trained AI. But the total value of the system is a combination of that model and the training data.
ChatGTP 3y ago
In my opinion, the play is thus, steal everything, build the models, then: * People won't notice, or the majority will forget (doesn't seem to be happening). * Raise enough money that you can smash anyone who complains in court. * Make a model good enough that can generate synthetic data and then claim new models aren't trained on anyone's data. * All of the above. Anyway, I 100% agree with you, the value is in the content that everyone has produced for , they're repackaging and reselling it in a different format.
moi2388 3y ago
It basically just looked at them. It’s absolutely preposterous that you can own a painting, thereby claiming nobody is allowed to draw that anymore, and now people can’t even look at your shitty drawing without paying? Then don’t put it online in the first place.. Seriously the audacity of these so called artists.. just because I sang a song one day does not mean I am entitled to own it and force people to pay me to be allowed to sing it. That’s absolutely insane.
tekknik 3y ago
This goes for your knowledge as well, as AI fundamentally doesn’t learn any different than humans do. If you remove all knowledge gained from learning from or copying others works, what value do you provide? Nothing on this planet can learn without copying something else. So if we open the can of worms for AI, we should do the same for humans and require paying royalties to those who taught you.

larrik 3y ago

I thought this was more of a reference to Facebook, etc. I could be wrong, though, it's pretty vague.

Ardon 3y ago
I think it it's a reference to the media landscape, Facebook and OpenAI inclusive.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fouc 3y ago
Yes, OP knows that the quote is referring to platforms/media channels like youtube/facebook/google, etc. But it's also referring to profit-making companies on the internet, like OpenAI.

robertlagrant 3y ago

It would be good to see how much it changes if you only include work that is public domain.

notpachet 3y ago
Any prompt response longer than 30 characters inevitably devolves into verbatim passages from The Iliad.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  I could get on board with this.
realusername 3y ago
If that includes a drastic revamp of copyright laws to increase the public domain, why not. I don't see why Disney or Universal would be more legitimate than OpenAI to profit from stuff made from now dead authors 60 years ago. Both seems as legitimate.

pushedx 3y ago

This was a reference to Instagram, et. al., where distributing your illustrations there implicitly allows thier Ad machine to profit from your work

idopmstuff 3y ago
This seems like a strange criticism to me - if you're posting your illustrations on social media, it's presumably because you feel that you're getting value out of doing so. Who cares if they're also getting value out of you doing it, particularly when that value comes at no cost to you? If you sell your art, then art marketplaces and printers and shipping services all profit from your work, but I don't imagine she's complaining about that. What's the difference? In all of those cases, as with social media, companies are making money from your work in return for providing a useful service to you (and one you don't have to use if you don't think it's useful).
- ska 3y ago
  > Who cares if they're also getting value out of you doing it, The author, presumably. > particularly when that value comes at no cost to you? Who would (has) argued that there is a cost. > in return for providing a useful service to you (and one you don't have to use if you don't think it's useful). I think they agree with you, and are making the claim that since they choose not to use the service (considering it exploitative), it is getting increasingly difficult to distribute their work in a way they find ethical. I'm not sure I agree with their arguments completely, but they aren't really "strange" as you suggest.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pushedx 3y ago
  > Who cares if they're getting value out if it. Perhaps your artwork has an anti-capitalist message, and you do not want it to appear anywhere near an Ad for the latest beauty cream. In the early days of the Internet, there were places to promote a webcomic with no commerical interest, like usenet and forums, and it was typical to visit an artist's website directly. These days, the average new Internet user might not even be aware of the concept that an artist can have their own website, and own the user experience of visitng that website from end to end. Web design in the early 2000s had a lot of creativity and easter eggs built into the experience of navigating the pages themselves. An artist absolutely has the right to not want to upload their creative work (which takes days and weeks to produce), onto a bland social media site with it's own terms and conditions with regard how that content is treated and monetized. Places like Instagram are bleak compared to what was pushing creative boundaries of the web in the mid to late 2000s. Sure, there are still fun websites like this but they are difficult to find (what happened to StumbleUpon?)

ben_w 3y ago

> Put it this way - you remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from OpenAIs training, what value does OpenAI have? What you probably get is a LLM that can perfectly understand well written text as you might find on Wikipedia, but which would struggle severely with colloquial language of the kind found on Reddit and Twitter. > then it should give some of that value back to the content. That's literally built into their corporate rules for how to take investment money, and when those rules were written they were criticised because people didn't think they'd ever grow enough for it to matter.

caconym_ 3y ago
> That's literally built into their corporate rules for how to take investment money, and when those rules were written they were criticised because people didn't think they'd ever grow enough for it to matter. How is OpenAI compensating the owners of IP they trained their models on? Or is that not what you mean? It's certainly how I read the part of the GP comment you quoted.
- ben_w 3y ago
  So far, looks like funding a UBI study. As the IP owners are approximately "everyone" in law, UBI is kinda the only way to compensate all the IP owners. https://openai.com/our-structure https://openai.com/our-structure
  - edc117 3y ago
    Good catch, hadn't seen that. So the researchers, shareholders, and leadership of OpenAI will be happy to give up being ridiculously wealthy so they can be only moderately wealthy, and everyone else gets a basic income? I'm also just skeptical of UBI in general, I suppose - 'free' money tends to just inflate everything to account for it, and it still won't address scarcity issues for limited physical assets like land/property. I've love to be wrong about both of these things.
    - ben_w 3y ago

make3 3y ago

that's arguably true for humans learning from the content as well

sandworm101 3y ago

>> If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can't use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content. But we are allowed to use copyrighted content. We are not allowed to copy copyrighted content. We are allowed to view and consume it, to be influenced by it, and under many circumstances even outright copy it. If one doesn't want anyone to see/consume or be influenced by one's copyrighted work, then lock it in a box and don't show it to anyone. I have some, but diminishing sympathy for artists screaming about how AI generates images too similar to their work. Yes, the output does look very similar to your work. But if I take your work and compare it to the millions of other people's work, I'd bet I can find some preexisting human-made art that also looks similar to your stuff too. This is why clothing doesn't qualify for copyright. No matter how original you think your clothing seems, someone in the last many thousands of years of fashion has done it before. Visual art may be approaching a similar point. No matter how original you think your drawings are, someone out there has already done something similar. They may not have created exactly the same image, but neither does AI literally copy images. That reality doesn't kill visual arts as it didn't kill off the fashion industry.

Osmose 3y ago
Because we are humans and our capability of abusing those rights is limited. The scale and speed at which LLMs can abuse copyrighted work to threaten the livelihoods of the authors of those works is reason enough to consider it unethical.
- visarga 3y ago
  Writing good text with LLM is actually slow and takes a lot of fixing.
- unfamiliar 3y ago
  I don’t think it is. What you describe is similar to any other industry disruption, and I don’t think those are unethical. I’d actually argue that preventing disruption is often (not always) unethical, because you artificially prolong an inefficient or inferior alternative.

ta8645 3y ago

> Regardless of legalities, that's wrong to me. I see it differently. To me, if you post your work online as an artist, it's really there for everyone to view and be inspired by. As long as nobody copies it verbatim, don't think you've been hurt by any other usage. If another artist views it, and is inspired by it... so be it. If an AI views it, and is inspired by it, again, no harm done.

jsonjason 3y ago
> nobody copies it verbatim This is not really how copyright works. > an AI views it, and is inspired by it, This is a misleading anthropomorphization of how AI works.
tapoxi 3y ago
AI doesn't get inspired. It's not human. It adds everything about it to its endless stream of levers to pull, and if you pull the right ones, it will just give you the source verbatim as proven by the NYT lawsuit filing where it was just outputting unaltered copywritten NYT article text.
- PretzelPirate 3y ago
  > as proven by the NYT lawsuit filing I would be careful in asserting that it's proven until the evidence is heard in court and we have all the data.
  - kevingadd 3y ago
    You can look at the filing yourself. It is unambiguous.
    - ShamelessC 3y ago
      It’s unambiguous about repeating articles of NY times pieces with hallucinations interwoven occasionally. This isn’t nearly as strong of an argument.
- 3y ago

karaterobot 3y ago

Agreed with the overall sentiment, but let's be clear. OpenAI is currently a (capped) for-profit company. They are partnered with Microsoft, a for-profit company. They commercially license their products. They provide services to for-profit companies. The existential crisis of the last six months of the company seems to have been over moving in the direction of being more profit-oriented, and one side clearly won that battle. OpenAI may soon be getting contracts with the defense department, after silently revoking their promise not to. Describing them as a non-profit company is de facto untrue, regardless of their nominal governance structure, and describing them (or them describing themselves) as a non-profit feels like falling for a sleight of hand trick at this point.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nmz 3y ago

It would be nice if you used a label you had to pay a fee for whoever owns the label, if you don't want to pay a fee to the owners of an artstyle, then you can always use public domain works. Hell, this might be even better for public domain works and restoration if a small fee went to them as well.

idle_zealot 3y ago
> owners of an artstyle I hope I never have to live in a world where such a thing exists.

teaearlgraycold 3y ago

I wonder if AI shrinks the economy. Not that such a metric is the most important ruler by which to measure goodness, but it would be ironic to have a massive tech company that produces less value than it removes from the world.

lacrimacida 3y ago
In a way it will remove value but in a way it will add value back in terms of an avalanche of derivative junk, lacking authenticity and context. If you find value in memes for example there will be a lot of that type of content in the future.

consumer451 3y ago

I really haven't liked the crypto bros == AI bros memes, but in this way I do see the similarity. As in: we will change the world, all that is required is that we throw away all previous protections! The ends justify the means! I do see a much more beneficial trajectory for LLMs vs cryptocurrencies, but yeah, this is gross and unfair. Note: as the days go on, I continue to realize the pitfalls of Utilariansim. I do miss the simplicity, but nope.

bawolff 3y ago

> Put it this way - you remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from OpenAIs training, what value does OpenAI's products have? If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can't use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content Couldn't we say the same thing about search engines? What value would google have without content to search for? Is the conclusion we should make search engines pay royalities? That seems unfeasible at google scale. Should google just be straight up illegal? That also seems like a bad outcome; i like search engines i am glad they exist. I guess i'm left with - i don't like this argument because of what it would imply for other projects if you follow the logic to its natural conclusion.

tedivm 3y ago
Search engines don't replicate the content, they index and point to it. When search engines have been caught replicating content they have been sued or had to work out licenses.
- bawolff 3y ago
  I mean, generative AI basically involves turning content into vectors in order to try and find related content. If that's not an index structure i don't know what is.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    The technical definition of how something works is often irrelevant in the eyes of the law. What matters is the output, and its effects. The output of a search engine is nothing like the output of generative AI.
  - godelski 3y ago
    Most ML are certainly compression systems, as you imply. But reproduction and redistribution of copyright material is quite different than generating a service that allows someone to find said material. The question about caching is a different one, but I doubt it falls under the same intent, as Google is incentivized to cache content to better facilitate the search __and redirection__ service, not to facilitate distribution.

shadowgovt 3y ago

> A valuable company that is built from the work of content others created without transferring any value back to them. But they are free to use the fruits of the model, same as anyone else. I suppose the difference is they don't care; they already have the talent to transform their labor into visual art, so what use do they have for a visual-art-generation machine? I find strong parallels in the building of web crawlers and search indexers, except... Perhaps the indexers provided more universal, symmetrical value. It's hard to make the case that someone crawled and added to a search index doesn't derive value from that strong, healthy index being searchable (even librarians and news reporters thrive on having data indexed and reachable; the index is a force-multiplier, it's not "stealing their labor" by crawling their sub-indexing work and agglomerating it into a bigger index, nor is it cheapening the value of their information-sorting-and-sifting skills when the machine sorts and sifts). So perhaps there is a dimension of symmetry here where the give-and-take aspect of what is created breaks. Much like the rich don't have to care whether it's legal to sleep under a bridge, artists don't have to care whether a machine can do 60% of the work of getting to a reasonable visual representation of an idea. No, more than that: it's harmful to them if it's legal to sleep under the bridge. They'd be landlords in this analogy, crying to the city that because people can sleep under bridges the value of the houses they maintain has dropped.

skydhash 3y ago
No one wants to live under the bridge even if it was perfectly legal.
dazed_confused 3y ago
Or they lost means of income? Like is this a difficult concept? Livelihoods will most likely be lost and probably never really coming back. Sure we can say industries change; however, we had protections in place to prevent artists losing money due to people copying… A company has said “screw the rules, here’s a supercharged printer.”
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  Imagine someone came up with a way to print houses for nearly-free. Anyone needs shelter? Bam, instant house. Landlords would lose income left and right. The relevant question is: would society stop the building of these free houses to protect the interest of the landlords? (Now, take that analogy and throw it in the trash. ;) Housing is essential; art is fundamentally a luxury good. If we want to, we can have a society that protects profit-making on luxury goods and profit-making on necessities differently. "Someone is losing income, therefore this change is bad" is too simple a rule to build a healthy society upon, but a reasonable person can conclude "Artists are losing their livelihoods, therefore this change is bad").

cmiles74 3y ago

OpenAI is very much a for-profit company with the same incentives to make money as every other US for-profit company. I understand that there's another company that is a non-profit and that company bosses the for-profit company. In my opinion, that's more of a footnote in their governance story, it doesn't make OpenAI a non-profit. Their website says... "A new for-profit subsidiary would be formed, capable of issuing equity to raise capital and hire world class talent, but still at the direction of the Nonprofit. Employees working on for-profit initiatives were transitioned over to the new subsidiary." https://openai.com/our-structure https://openai.com/our-structure

madeofpalk 3y ago
They might be a for-profit company, but I don't believe they have made a profit. I wasn't even thinking of the murkey non-profit status.
- jrflowers 3y ago
  This is an important distinction. The difference between making a boatload of money on the cheap and making a boatload of money after spending an even bigger amount should matter to this cartoonist becau
- bink 3y ago
  They have over a billion dollars in revenue per year. They aren't making a profit because they're reinvesting all of that money into growing the company.
- godelski 3y ago
  > but I don't believe they have made a profit Wrong way to evaluate and you're missing the complaint from the artists. It doesn't matter what the company makes or loses, it matters if people end up with money in their pockets. I don't know ML counts as derivative or not, but I don't think that's important here. Regardless it is a fact that an artist does work, that work isn't paid for, and then that work is used by someone else in some way to sell a product. The complaint is specifically that they have no control over deciding if their work can be used in that way or not. At the end of the day, everyone working at OpenAI ends up with lots of money in their pockets. Regardless of the company profits or revenue, this money is connected to the work that these artists do, who do not make any or any substantial amounts of money. That's the underlying issue and we must read between the lines a bit to understand the difference between a specific point and the general thesis. Also, remember Stability does have revenue as well. OpenAI is being pointed at because they are top dog, but it's not like there aren't others doing the same thing. So even a very specific justification may not refute the original complaint.

j0hnyl 3y ago

I think a model that would make more sense is to punish bad behavior in the form of infringement, so if someone monetizes an AI output that infringes on someone's copyright/trademark, then go after that person. Otherwise we are going to be completely stuck for the sake of some kind of outdated mentality around intellectual property.

xyproto 3y ago

If you remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from a human's training, what value does the human have, in connection with work? When is AI good enough that the contents it contains can be comparable to human brain content, copyright wise? And conversely, now that we can read signals from neurons in a human brain, and create images from dreams and audio from thoughts, would not that also break the copyright of the content?

inference-lord 3y ago
There is absolutely zero comparison between living in the world and experiencing it, and building a model, loading in copyrighted, carefully curated material and then charging for the outputs of said model without paying royalties. It's hard to even believe people can't understand the difference. The fact is, the majority of people do not want to steal others work for profit, and for those bottom feeders that do, there are lass to discourage such behavior and to protect the original producer. If these models were trained on creative commons licensed material only, then you'd have a leg to stand on. I even had to pay for my tuition, and textbook material. Even if some portion of my knowledge comes from osmosis, I have still contributed at some stage to access training material. When I was 16, I wanted to learn to code, do you know what I did? I went and purchased coding books because even at 16, I understood that it was the right thing to do. To pay the author for the privilege of accessing their work. How basic can one get? Would you like it if I broke into your house and used your things without asking you? Because that's about what's happening her for professionals.
- xyproto 3y ago
  Yes. Copyright is just like stealing a car, and not at all like sharing information, and you wouldn't steal a car, right?

realusername 3y ago

That's not enough to say that, all companies are benefiting of what has been made before, nothing exists in a vaccum. AI adds into the current landscape.

richardw 3y ago

I keep thinking: this is what eg Google has done all along. The content it uses to train models and present the answers to us absolutely belongs to others, but you try get any content (eg maps data) out of it for free at scale. But the business model emerged and delivered value to us while enough that we didn’t consider asking for money for our content. We like being searched and linked to. Less so Google snippets presented to users without the users landing on our site. Even less so generated without any interaction. But it’s all still all our content.

WhitneyLand 3y ago

If you take away all music created by black people what value do The Rolling Stones have? I don't know yet exactly how this compares, I’m trying to think it all through. AI has different levels - output can be loosely inspired by, style cloning, or near exact reproductions of specific work.

thereddaikon 3y ago

The only way I see this working with out current economics and IP law is if the people training models license the work they are using. And a traditional license wouldn't do, it would have to be one specific to training AI models. As to the question of worth, obviously OpenAI's models have value without the training data. Just having a collection of images does not make a trained AI. But the total value of the system is a combination of that model and the training data.

ChatGTP 3y ago

In my opinion, the play is thus, steal everything, build the models, then: * People won't notice, or the majority will forget (doesn't seem to be happening). * Raise enough money that you can smash anyone who complains in court. * Make a model good enough that can generate synthetic data and then claim new models aren't trained on anyone's data. * All of the above. Anyway, I 100% agree with you, the value is in the content that everyone has produced for , they're repackaging and reselling it in a different format.

moi2388 3y ago

It basically just looked at them. It’s absolutely preposterous that you can own a painting, thereby claiming nobody is allowed to draw that anymore, and now people can’t even look at your shitty drawing without paying? Then don’t put it online in the first place.. Seriously the audacity of these so called artists.. just because I sang a song one day does not mean I am entitled to own it and force people to pay me to be allowed to sing it. That’s absolutely insane.

tekknik 3y ago

This goes for your knowledge as well, as AI fundamentally doesn’t learn any different than humans do. If you remove all knowledge gained from learning from or copying others works, what value do you provide? Nothing on this planet can learn without copying something else. So if we open the can of worms for AI, we should do the same for humans and require paying royalties to those who taught you.