5 ms·

What exactly is wrong with the statement he has made?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
elicksaur 2y ago
The article does a pretty good job outlining the actual legal rights of published content and how his statement is not supported by laws and precedent.
jprete 2y ago
The Verge quotes: "I think that with respect to content that’s already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the ‘90s has been that it is fair use. Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. That has been 'freeware,' if you like, that’s been the understanding." This statement is quite wrong. People have complained about content farms and plagiarists ripping off their content for ages. The only kinds of Web content I can think of where his statement could apply are open source software (for the more permissive licenses) and Stack Overflow posts. Almost everything else was posted with the intent of copyright.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  Open source software is posted with the intent of copyright. Copyright is what enforces the license, which is what makes it open source. For BSD/Apache2 etc the license still requires attribution.
- Forge36 2y ago
  While the intent of copyright is unknown, when it's unstated it can be changed later. The legal solution to this is licenses. A common curiosity to unstated intent is attribution. This is missing (and not currently possible) with many AI models today. The Internet is not detached from the rest of the world. Something with a license can appear there (with or without the holders knowledge) Note: Not intending to contradict you but elaborate on that last point as assuming intent is dangerous.
trueismywork 2y ago
Content on web eithout any copyright notice is by default "all rights reserved" content. So you cannot use it to produce new content, unless you can prove that the old content was never reproduced ever along all the invocation of the LLM
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  You can totally study it and learn from a bunch of content on the web and then create a new work having looked at other works before. My writing is influenced by lots of copyrighted work I’ve read already, there is no mental blockade going on when I write something. The only question is what does it mean when a machine does that instead? The old content can’t be reproduced by an LLM unless the content is provided as part of its prompt. At least, that’s what the AI companies claim and will have to show in court.
  - pdonis 2y ago
    > You can totally study it and learn from a bunch of content on the web and then create a new work having looked at other works before. But you don't do that by computing relative word frequencies in the content and then running an algorithm to generate further words with the same relative frequencies. When human efforts come too close to that it is called plagiarism. You don't get words from what you read and study, you get ideas, and ideas can't be copyrighted. You just have to express the ideas in your own words. > what does it mean when a machine does that instead? The machine is doing exactly the thing that, when human efforts come too close to doing it, is called plagiarism. The machine isn't operating with ideas; it doesn't even have a concept of "ideas". So it is not doing what you are doing--it is not taking ideas and expressing them in its own words. It's literally just shuffling the words.
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      > But you don't do that by computing relative word frequencies in the content a That's a lot of assumptions about human level intelligence. We do know that the more you read, the better you can write, and a lot of our text is "inspired" by words and styles that we read in the past. You claim this isn't an algorithm, I don't think we really know how human intelligence works. > You don't get words from what you read and study, you get ideas, and ideas can't be copyrighted. That's completely oblivious to how humans actually read and study, of course you get words, if you are lucky you might also get ideas, but at least you get words (assuming ideas aren't words to begin with). The government is eventually going to have to make a decision on this one way or the other, or we will just cede the whole of advancement to China (who won't bother with this debate and just do what works the best).

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

The article does a pretty good job outlining the actual legal rights of published content and how his statement is not supported by laws and precedent.

jprete 2y ago

The Verge quotes: "I think that with respect to content that’s already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the ‘90s has been that it is fair use. Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. That has been 'freeware,' if you like, that’s been the understanding." This statement is quite wrong. People have complained about content farms and plagiarists ripping off their content for ages. The only kinds of Web content I can think of where his statement could apply are open source software (for the more permissive licenses) and Stack Overflow posts. Almost everything else was posted with the intent of copyright.

yencabulator 2y ago
Open source software is posted with the intent of copyright. Copyright is what enforces the license, which is what makes it open source. For BSD/Apache2 etc the license still requires attribution.
Forge36 2y ago
While the intent of copyright is unknown, when it's unstated it can be changed later. The legal solution to this is licenses. A common curiosity to unstated intent is attribution. This is missing (and not currently possible) with many AI models today. The Internet is not detached from the rest of the world. Something with a license can appear there (with or without the holders knowledge) Note: Not intending to contradict you but elaborate on that last point as assuming intent is dangerous.

trueismywork 2y ago

Content on web eithout any copyright notice is by default "all rights reserved" content. So you cannot use it to produce new content, unless you can prove that the old content was never reproduced ever along all the invocation of the LLM

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
You can totally study it and learn from a bunch of content on the web and then create a new work having looked at other works before. My writing is influenced by lots of copyrighted work I’ve read already, there is no mental blockade going on when I write something. The only question is what does it mean when a machine does that instead? The old content can’t be reproduced by an LLM unless the content is provided as part of its prompt. At least, that’s what the AI companies claim and will have to show in court.
- pdonis 2y ago
  > You can totally study it and learn from a bunch of content on the web and then create a new work having looked at other works before. But you don't do that by computing relative word frequencies in the content and then running an algorithm to generate further words with the same relative frequencies. When human efforts come too close to that it is called plagiarism. You don't get words from what you read and study, you get ideas, and ideas can't be copyrighted. You just have to express the ideas in your own words. > what does it mean when a machine does that instead? The machine is doing exactly the thing that, when human efforts come too close to doing it, is called plagiarism. The machine isn't operating with ideas; it doesn't even have a concept of "ideas". So it is not doing what you are doing--it is not taking ideas and expressing them in its own words. It's literally just shuffling the words.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    > But you don't do that by computing relative word frequencies in the content a That's a lot of assumptions about human level intelligence. We do know that the more you read, the better you can write, and a lot of our text is "inspired" by words and styles that we read in the past. You claim this isn't an algorithm, I don't think we really know how human intelligence works. > You don't get words from what you read and study, you get ideas, and ideas can't be copyrighted. That's completely oblivious to how humans actually read and study, of course you get words, if you are lucky you might also get ideas, but at least you get words (assuming ideas aren't words to begin with). The government is eventually going to have to make a decision on this one way or the other, or we will just cede the whole of advancement to China (who won't bother with this debate and just do what works the best).