3 ms·

How is a human reading a book in any way related or comparable to a machine ingesting millions of books per day with the goal of stealing their content and repl

by bakugo 2y ago

How is a human reading a book in any way related or comparable to a machine ingesting millions of books per day with the goal of stealing their content and replacing them?

ysofunny 2y ago
it's comparable exactly in the way 0.001% can be compared to 10^100 humans learning is the old-school digital copying. computers simply do it much faster, but it's the same basic phenomenon consider one teacher and one student. first there is one idea in one head but then the idea is in two heads. now add book technology1 the teacher writes the book once, a thousand students read it. the idea has gone from being in one head (book author) onto most of the book readers!
- somenameforme 2y ago
  > humans learning is the old-school digital copying. computers simply do it much faster, but it's the same basic phenomenon Train an LLM on the state of human knowledge 100,000 years ago - language had yet to be invented and bleeding edge technology was 'poke them with the pointy side.' It's not going to be able to do or output much of anything, and it's going to be stuck in that state for perpetuity until somebody gives it something new to parrot. Yet somehow humans went from that exact starting to state to putting a man on the Moon. Human intelligence, and elaborate auto-complete systems, are not the same thing, or even remotely close to the same thing.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    > bleeding edge technology was 'poke them with the pointy side.' Relevant: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/rise-of-the-machines https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/rise-of-the-machines
- dasil003 2y ago
  > humans learning is the old-school digital copying. computers simply do it much faster, but it's the same basic phenomenon This is dangerous framing because it papers over the significant material differences between AI training and human learning and the outcomes they lead to. We all have a collective interest in the well-being of humanity, and human learning is the engine of our prosperity. Each individual has agency, and learning allows them to conceive of new possibilities and form new connections with other humans. While primarily motivated by self interest, there is natural collective benefit that emerges since our individual power is limited, and cooperation is necessary to achieve our greatest works. AI on the other hand, is not a human with interests, it's an enormously powerful slave that serves those with the deep pockets to train them. It can siphon up and generate massive profits from remixing the entire history of human creativity and knowledge creation without giving anything back to society. It's novelty and scale makes it hard for our legal and societal structures to grapple with—hence all the half-baked analogies—but the impact that it is having will change the social fabric as we know it. Mechanistic arguments about very narrow logical equivalence between human and AI training does nothing but support the development of an AI oligarchy that will surely emerge if human value is not factored in to how we think about AI regulation.
  - ysofunny 2y ago
    you're reading what I say in the worst possible light if anything, the parallel I draw between AI learning and humans learning is all the opposite of narrow and logical... in my intent, the analogy is loose and poetic, not mechanistic and exact. AI are tools, if AI are enslaving is because there are human actors (I hope....) deciding to enslave other humans, not because of anything inherent to training (if AI; learning if humans) but what I really think is that there are collections of rules (people "just doing their jobs") all collectively but disjointedly deciding that it makes the most sense to utilize AI technology to ensalve other humans because the data models indicate greater profit that way.
    - dasil003 2y ago
      Your response is fair and I hope you didn't take my message personally. I agree with you, AI is just a tool same as countless others that can be used for good or evil.
supriyo-biswas 2y ago
Because humans cannot reasonably memorize and recall thousands of articles and books in the same way, and because humans are entitled to certain rights and privileges that computer systems are not. (If we are to argue the latter point then it would also raise interesting implications; are we denying freedom of expression to a LLM when we fine-tune it or stop its generation?)
JoosToopit 2y ago
Directly. What if while reading you make notes - are you strealing content? If yes - should then people be forbidden from taking notes? How does writing down a note onto a piece of paper differ from writing it into your memory?
- wonnage 2y ago
  The nice thing about law as opposed to programming is that legal scholars have long realized it's impossible to cover every possible edge case in writing so judges exist to interpret the law So they could easily decide logically unsound things that make pedants go nuts, like taking notes, or even an AI system that automatically takes notes, could be obvious fair use, while recording the exact same strings for training AI are not.
  - ysofunny 2y ago
    > The nice thing about law as opposed to programming in programming that is called "Undefined behavior"

by bakugo 2y ago

How is a human reading a book in any way related or comparable to a machine ingesting millions of books per day with the goal of stealing their content and replacing them?

ysofunny 2y ago

it's comparable exactly in the way 0.001% can be compared to 10^100 humans learning is the old-school digital copying. computers simply do it much faster, but it's the same basic phenomenon consider one teacher and one student. first there is one idea in one head but then the idea is in two heads. now add book technology1 the teacher writes the book once, a thousand students read it. the idea has gone from being in one head (book author) onto most of the book readers!

somenameforme 2y ago
> humans learning is the old-school digital copying. computers simply do it much faster, but it's the same basic phenomenon Train an LLM on the state of human knowledge 100,000 years ago - language had yet to be invented and bleeding edge technology was 'poke them with the pointy side.' It's not going to be able to do or output much of anything, and it's going to be stuck in that state for perpetuity until somebody gives it something new to parrot. Yet somehow humans went from that exact starting to state to putting a man on the Moon. Human intelligence, and elaborate auto-complete systems, are not the same thing, or even remotely close to the same thing.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > bleeding edge technology was 'poke them with the pointy side.' Relevant: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/rise-of-the-machines https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/rise-of-the-machines
dasil003 2y ago
> humans learning is the old-school digital copying. computers simply do it much faster, but it's the same basic phenomenon This is dangerous framing because it papers over the significant material differences between AI training and human learning and the outcomes they lead to. We all have a collective interest in the well-being of humanity, and human learning is the engine of our prosperity. Each individual has agency, and learning allows them to conceive of new possibilities and form new connections with other humans. While primarily motivated by self interest, there is natural collective benefit that emerges since our individual power is limited, and cooperation is necessary to achieve our greatest works. AI on the other hand, is not a human with interests, it's an enormously powerful slave that serves those with the deep pockets to train them. It can siphon up and generate massive profits from remixing the entire history of human creativity and knowledge creation without giving anything back to society. It's novelty and scale makes it hard for our legal and societal structures to grapple with—hence all the half-baked analogies—but the impact that it is having will change the social fabric as we know it. Mechanistic arguments about very narrow logical equivalence between human and AI training does nothing but support the development of an AI oligarchy that will surely emerge if human value is not factored in to how we think about AI regulation.
- ysofunny 2y ago
  you're reading what I say in the worst possible light if anything, the parallel I draw between AI learning and humans learning is all the opposite of narrow and logical... in my intent, the analogy is loose and poetic, not mechanistic and exact. AI are tools, if AI are enslaving is because there are human actors (I hope....) deciding to enslave other humans, not because of anything inherent to training (if AI; learning if humans) but what I really think is that there are collections of rules (people "just doing their jobs") all collectively but disjointedly deciding that it makes the most sense to utilize AI technology to ensalve other humans because the data models indicate greater profit that way.
  - dasil003 2y ago
    Your response is fair and I hope you didn't take my message personally. I agree with you, AI is just a tool same as countless others that can be used for good or evil.

supriyo-biswas 2y ago

Because humans cannot reasonably memorize and recall thousands of articles and books in the same way, and because humans are entitled to certain rights and privileges that computer systems are not. (If we are to argue the latter point then it would also raise interesting implications; are we denying freedom of expression to a LLM when we fine-tune it or stop its generation?)

JoosToopit 2y ago

Directly. What if while reading you make notes - are you strealing content? If yes - should then people be forbidden from taking notes? How does writing down a note onto a piece of paper differ from writing it into your memory?

wonnage 2y ago
The nice thing about law as opposed to programming is that legal scholars have long realized it's impossible to cover every possible edge case in writing so judges exist to interpret the law So they could easily decide logically unsound things that make pedants go nuts, like taking notes, or even an AI system that automatically takes notes, could be obvious fair use, while recording the exact same strings for training AI are not.
- ysofunny 2y ago
  > The nice thing about law as opposed to programming in programming that is called "Undefined behavior"