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> When someone reads a book, watches a video, or attends a live training, the copyright holder gets paid That's what copyright holders would like - hence why t

> When someone reads a book, watches a video, or attends a live training, the copyright holder gets paid That's what copyright holders would like - hence why they try to restrict the licences so much these days. It isn't the case. Many individuals can read, watch and listen to a work where only one payment has been made. But really all the AI bots are doing is reading, watching and listening to the content and remembering it in pretty much the same way as a person does. Is an artist who has listened to a bazillion blues numbers and then constructs a new song based upon what they have heard and ingested in violation of copyright? If not, then neither is AI. It's just a probability matrix, not a replica. If the AI people have paid the correct fee to listen, watch or read the material and then sell what they remember it is no different from any trained professional. The contract has been fulfilled. The problem we have is that copyright holders have been dining off past glories for too long, and have gained the power to embed that rent for way longer than is sensible. What AI does is make those copyrights rot faster as it has a better memory than most people. That's good for society, because it forces copyright holders to produce more new stuff if they want to maintain their income. A rebalancing away from rent seekers towards regular producers would be good for everybody.

nicbou 2y ago
In your last paragraph, are artists rent seekers and large companies that train AI producers? This is not how I feel when Google inserts its AI between my website and its readers.
- CaptainFever 2y ago
  What if we flip the dynamics: a hobbyist training a LoRA on Disney movies? This is just an appeal to... well, "big = bad". I believe what GP meant by rent-seekers are copyright holders who expect to own information for a hundred years, including all derivatives of it. It could be Disney, it could be an "original character do not steal" artist, and it could be "don't train on our AI" OpenAI. While regular producers would be those who use free licenses, or at least are OK with derivatives.
  - nicbou 2y ago
    OP makes a fair legal argument, but if anything it might mean that the laws are not in line with reality. Laws are made for man, not the other way around. From my perspective as someone who lives from putting information on the internet, all of these people are rent seekers. By that I mean that they insert themselves between me and my audience to derive a profit. And they deny me income and credit in the process. I create the bulk of the value and put in the bulk of the labour. They swoop in and take everything. It's especially frustrating that creators are still expected to create things and feed the AI that claims to replace them. It's a slap in the face that not only they strip you of an audience, an income or even credit, but they also expect you to keep creating without any of that. The problem with the "it's learning just like a human" argument is that it never accounts for the superhuman scale at which it's done. Humans rarely read every single book, and they rarely repeat the information to billions. Put plainly, I don't want to be the anonymous labour behind another person's profit. No legal argument will make this sort of future attractive to me.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
      Damn right. Put another way: a language model only needs to be fed data (and compute) but a human needs to eat actual food to be able to generate that data in the first place. So if big tech corps want their models trained, then should pay the people who generate the data. Wtf is it with people asking how they get to make money if they're not allowed to take away all of yours?
    - radarsat1 2y ago
      So, I generally agree with you, but my question to you is how do I square that with thinking this technology is legitimately amazing and I want to see more of it and use it? Do you forsee any future in which creators are happy and this technology gets to exist? You mention getting paid, this might be part of it, but (a) how do you manage payments when so many sources contribute such a small proportion of the input and (b) would this actually solve the problem or would creators continue to object despite getting paid according to their representation in the dataset? I imagine that you will answer that (a) is "their problem" so feel free to focus on (b).
CaptainFever 2y ago
> If the AI people have paid the correct fee to listen, watch or read the material and then sell what they remember it is no different from any trained professional. The contract has been fulfilled. I'd like to point out that this is indeed how it works legally in Singapore already. If you have legal access to a copy of the material, you can do various things such as make backup copies, and yes, train AI on it. This excludes pirated or hacked materials. And the owner is not allowed to stop you by using a TOS. It's the same for the EU, but over there they allow TOS exclusions for commercial training.

nicbou 2y ago

In your last paragraph, are artists rent seekers and large companies that train AI producers? This is not how I feel when Google inserts its AI between my website and its readers.

CaptainFever 2y ago
What if we flip the dynamics: a hobbyist training a LoRA on Disney movies? This is just an appeal to... well, "big = bad". I believe what GP meant by rent-seekers are copyright holders who expect to own information for a hundred years, including all derivatives of it. It could be Disney, it could be an "original character do not steal" artist, and it could be "don't train on our AI" OpenAI. While regular producers would be those who use free licenses, or at least are OK with derivatives.
- nicbou 2y ago
  OP makes a fair legal argument, but if anything it might mean that the laws are not in line with reality. Laws are made for man, not the other way around. From my perspective as someone who lives from putting information on the internet, all of these people are rent seekers. By that I mean that they insert themselves between me and my audience to derive a profit. And they deny me income and credit in the process. I create the bulk of the value and put in the bulk of the labour. They swoop in and take everything. It's especially frustrating that creators are still expected to create things and feed the AI that claims to replace them. It's a slap in the face that not only they strip you of an audience, an income or even credit, but they also expect you to keep creating without any of that. The problem with the "it's learning just like a human" argument is that it never accounts for the superhuman scale at which it's done. Humans rarely read every single book, and they rarely repeat the information to billions. Put plainly, I don't want to be the anonymous labour behind another person's profit. No legal argument will make this sort of future attractive to me.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
    Damn right. Put another way: a language model only needs to be fed data (and compute) but a human needs to eat actual food to be able to generate that data in the first place. So if big tech corps want their models trained, then should pay the people who generate the data. Wtf is it with people asking how they get to make money if they're not allowed to take away all of yours?
  - radarsat1 2y ago
    So, I generally agree with you, but my question to you is how do I square that with thinking this technology is legitimately amazing and I want to see more of it and use it? Do you forsee any future in which creators are happy and this technology gets to exist? You mention getting paid, this might be part of it, but (a) how do you manage payments when so many sources contribute such a small proportion of the input and (b) would this actually solve the problem or would creators continue to object despite getting paid according to their representation in the dataset? I imagine that you will answer that (a) is "their problem" so feel free to focus on (b).

CaptainFever 2y ago

> If the AI people have paid the correct fee to listen, watch or read the material and then sell what they remember it is no different from any trained professional. The contract has been fulfilled. I'd like to point out that this is indeed how it works legally in Singapore already. If you have legal access to a copy of the material, you can do various things such as make backup copies, and yes, train AI on it. This excludes pirated or hacked materials. And the owner is not allowed to stop you by using a TOS. It's the same for the EU, but over there they allow TOS exclusions for commercial training.