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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-seek

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).
  - nicbou 2y ago
    My main gripe is that we were never given the chance to opt out. This is where I would start. I don't think that there's a perfect solution and I agree that the technology is amazing. I just wish that we didn't deny the impact of taking work from creators while denying them the rewards.
    - radarsat1 2y ago
      I guess part of my issue with the argument is that creators seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to put their work out into the public, but then they want to also control what people can do with it. These two themes, although I can see the need and logic for them, seem to be totally antithetical on a practical basis. In some sense art creation is, indeed, a risk.. you put something out there, and then you hope it is perceived well, and hope that it isn't abused. That's what makes making art such a difficult thing.. you are putting something out there, a piece of yourself.. but not acknowledging the associated risks, that someone might hate it, that someone might not understand it, or indeed that someone might "sample" your work into a new context, is being totally disingenuous with yourself as an artist. Of course I have no issue with the idea that artists should be fairly compensated, and the whole legal idea of copyright exists exactly for that, and I'm incredibly interested to see how this whole thing plays out in the legal sense. But I have to say that I'm not entirely convinced that using publicly available sources for training AI, that don't explicitly come with copyright terms that forbid it, is in any sense unethical, because I think it's entirely possible that it may end up being considered fair use. Artists want to get paid, yes, but the whole "I didn't get to opt out" argument doesn't really sit well with me, because the degree of post-publication "control" being implicitly demanded in that argument doesn't seem to be very balanced. In fact you did get to opt out, software for example comes with extensive legal documents describing exactly how derivative works can use it, but books and photos generally don't, and maybe in the future they will have to, but the idea that retroactively interpreting the role of copyright on existing works to include special considerations for AI just doesn't seem that obvious. You might not like that you published work in a way that someone was able to use it in a way that you disapprove of, without explicitly forbidding said usage, but the fact is that you did. The rest is for the courts to sort out. And I think it could go either way.

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).
- nicbou 2y ago
  My main gripe is that we were never given the chance to opt out. This is where I would start. I don't think that there's a perfect solution and I agree that the technology is amazing. I just wish that we didn't deny the impact of taking work from creators while denying them the rewards.
  - radarsat1 2y ago
    I guess part of my issue with the argument is that creators seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to put their work out into the public, but then they want to also control what people can do with it. These two themes, although I can see the need and logic for them, seem to be totally antithetical on a practical basis. In some sense art creation is, indeed, a risk.. you put something out there, and then you hope it is perceived well, and hope that it isn't abused. That's what makes making art such a difficult thing.. you are putting something out there, a piece of yourself.. but not acknowledging the associated risks, that someone might hate it, that someone might not understand it, or indeed that someone might "sample" your work into a new context, is being totally disingenuous with yourself as an artist. Of course I have no issue with the idea that artists should be fairly compensated, and the whole legal idea of copyright exists exactly for that, and I'm incredibly interested to see how this whole thing plays out in the legal sense. But I have to say that I'm not entirely convinced that using publicly available sources for training AI, that don't explicitly come with copyright terms that forbid it, is in any sense unethical, because I think it's entirely possible that it may end up being considered fair use. Artists want to get paid, yes, but the whole "I didn't get to opt out" argument doesn't really sit well with me, because the degree of post-publication "control" being implicitly demanded in that argument doesn't seem to be very balanced. In fact you did get to opt out, software for example comes with extensive legal documents describing exactly how derivative works can use it, but books and photos generally don't, and maybe in the future they will have to, but the idea that retroactively interpreting the role of copyright on existing works to include special considerations for AI just doesn't seem that obvious. You might not like that you published work in a way that someone was able to use it in a way that you disapprove of, without explicitly forbidding said usage, but the fact is that you did. The rest is for the courts to sort out. And I think it could go either way.