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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

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).
    - pdonis 2y ago
      > That's a lot of assumptions about human level intelligence. I disagree, but I doubt we're going to get anywhere by discussing it. It seems to me that you are either seriously undervaluing human intelligence, or seriously overvaluing LLMs.
      - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
        I just know that we don’t actually know. We assume we are special, but we could just be stringing words together based on what we experienced and learned with what we remember for prompting.
        pdonis 2y ago
        There's a lot we don't know about the details of how our brains work, but we do know that our brains are connected to the external world in a huge number of ways that LLMs are not. The only connections to the external world that LLMs have are their training data and the prompts they are given. That is an incredibly paltry level of connection compared with the connections that our brains have. Those connections make a huge difference. As AI technology evolves, I would expect that the connections AIs have with the external world will become much more extensive, and that will make a huge difference as well. But current LLMs simply don't have that, and it shows.
    - dse1982 2y ago
      It is absurd to act as if machines would do the same as human brains if you don’t even know what human brains do.

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).
  - pdonis 2y ago
    > That's a lot of assumptions about human level intelligence. I disagree, but I doubt we're going to get anywhere by discussing it. It seems to me that you are either seriously undervaluing human intelligence, or seriously overvaluing LLMs.
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      I just know that we don’t actually know. We assume we are special, but we could just be stringing words together based on what we experienced and learned with what we remember for prompting.
      - pdonis 2y ago
        There's a lot we don't know about the details of how our brains work, but we do know that our brains are connected to the external world in a huge number of ways that LLMs are not. The only connections to the external world that LLMs have are their training data and the prompts they are given. That is an incredibly paltry level of connection compared with the connections that our brains have. Those connections make a huge difference. As AI technology evolves, I would expect that the connections AIs have with the external world will become much more extensive, and that will make a huge difference as well. But current LLMs simply don't have that, and it shows.
  - dse1982 2y ago
    It is absurd to act as if machines would do the same as human brains if you don’t even know what human brains do.