5 ms·
Is that wrong?
by kshmir 2y ago
Is that wrong?
- ronsor 2y agoI find it slightly annoying and dishonest to present it as a moral position, but overall it's nothing that other businesses haven't already been doing. It's just not a big deal.
- camillomiller 2y agoBut it IS a moral question. As it is IMMORAL to just go and steal content to train AI and then let the lawyers to take csre of it later
- ronsor 2y agoAI is not "stealing content" and it is not immoral. This is literally the same line from record companies and Hollywood during the 80s and 90s, and they were rightfully mocked then. It is baffling how so many people are just repeating it now.
- bugglebeetle 2y agoYes, illustrators are notorious IP rentiers like the Hollywood studios and the RIAA. It’s the tech billionaires that are the victims of their vile, unjust monopoly tactics. These are coherent thoughts that demonstrate why it’s a good idea to argue from analogies.
- ronsor 2y agoI'm not praising tech billionaires, nor am I attacking RIAA/Hollywood or online artists as entities. Please don't start crafting strawmen. I'm criticizing the "stealing" argument because I don't find it logically sound; it doesn't matter who's saying it. I am still more than willing to have a civil debate around the argument itself. Why is it stealing to analyze images? I would be more convinced if AI used a fixed database during generation, or if it was considered a standard, acceptable practice to reproduce training data as "new" generations.
- bugglebeetle 2y agoYou don’t find the stealing argument logically sound because you immediately frame the theft as “analyzing” to suit your own narrative and then demand people engage with it, while proceeding to make further spurious claims like… > I would be more convinced if AI used a fixed database during generation Wow, I didn’t know that model weights, an elaborately compressed form of their training data, rewrote themselves every time they were invoked. Or that it’s only theft if I stole data from a fixed database to build my own service.
- ronsor 2y agoAI training is literally analyzing. That is how it works. Properly trained models (i.e., ones that aren't overparameterized or overfit) do not just "elaborately compress" training data as this is not possible. For example, you cannot compress 1 billion images into 1 billion parameters, and expect to retrieve them later. If objective facts are "my own narrative", then no rational discussion can occur.
- bugglebeetle 2y agoOh well, you should tell the folks at DeepMind and Meta about these objective facts then so they don’t waste any more time doing research: https://arxiv.org/html/2309.10668v2 https://arxiv.org/html/2309.10668v2 Maybe apply for a job there too, since you’re obviously so far ahead of everyone in understanding this problem space.
- YurgenJurgensen 2y agoYou absolutely can compress a subset of a billion images into a billion parameters if you throw out all but a thousand. Is it no longer copyright infringement if you also run enough irrelevant data through your algorithm alongside the images you’re stealing?
- YurgenJurgensen 2y agoDon’t mind me, I’m just going to ‘analyse’ this UHD movie and produce a 480p video file in a different codec whose bits are almost entirely unlike those in the original and throws out almost all the information from the original. I’ll put it on a RAID array with thousands of others, mangling the bits of the ‘analysis’ even further. The right ‘prompt’ may cause the model to produce some imagery very similar to some of its ‘training data’ however. You can use whatever weasel words you want, but bits go in and fewer derivative bits come out in both cases.
- ben_w 2y agoI've noticed the same. I think the actual reason behind is similar in both cases, something like "this is theft because it means I won't get paid" — which isn't really how that works but also explains Musk's X advertising lawsuit. Like your respondant, I find the artists more sympathetic despite finding the argument itself bad.
- ronsor 2y agoIn general, I think the coming replacement of many jobs is a serious issue for society and one that deserves serious attention. That said, the intellectually dishonest arguments irk me to no end and I'm simply tired of them. The artists upset over AI are more sympathetic than the RIAA (It's really quite hard not to be), but this stuff really wears at my sympathy. And, unfortunately, it's impossible to actually tackle any issues unless without moving past the bad arguments.
- ben_w 2y ago> That said, the intellectually dishonest arguments irk me to no end and I'm simply tired of them. I, too, get annoyed by People Who Are Wrong On The Internet; I'm trying to become more stoic, as I don't want to end up like my father. I don't know if this will pass, or if the pro/anti AI split is going to be as permanent as the economic left/right split, or the libertarian/authoratarian split.
- spondylosaurus 2y agoI don't know if "theft because I'm not getting paid" describes artists' sentiment so much as "theft because someone else is making money on a tool that's 'using' my work/labor". Which I still think is an argument that requires opening a Pandora's box of IP law that should not be opened (because in the long run it won't benefit non-corporate artists anyway), but...
- YurgenJurgensen 2y agoIt’s not baffling at all if you consider the point of copyright in the first place. That is, to promote the progress of useful arts and sciences. One does, and one does not.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoYup. Generative AI is the useful part of "useful arts and sciences". 99%+ of content that goes into training those models is, on its own, useless and worthless, and the greatest value by far it can bring to society is to be part of the training dataset. That also applies to art that may have had some value when published, but now languishes in obscurity - AI is giving it a second life, a way to benefit society far more than originally did. So yeah, if we're going by the (idealized version of) intent of copyright, it stands strongly on the side of AI. EDIT: And before someone complains that SOTA models are trained and owned by private parties -- copyright is "promoting the progress of useful arts and sciences" by literally giving private parties a monopoly to make money off art as an incentive.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago> This is literally the same line from record companies and Hollywood during the 80s and 90s, and they were rightfully mocked then. It is baffling how so many people are just repeating it now. The difference with AI is that AI takes a 100% bit for bit copy and uses it, rather than humans who just use their impression to be inspired.
- eesmith 2y agoBill Hicks, quoting https://www.quotes.net/mquote/978640 https://www.quotes.net/mquote/978640 with original video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaD8y-CGhMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaD8y-CGhMw : > By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. [audience laughs and claps] ... there's no rationalization for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, okay? Kill yourself, seriously. You're the ruiner of all things good, seriously. ... > I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke..." there's no joke here whatsoever. ... I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." [audience laughs] Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking evil scumbags. > "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research. Huge market. He's doing a good thing." Goddammit, I'm not doing that, you scumbags. Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet! > "Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market. Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web.
- unraveller 2y agoIt's just not convincing. When your tools start moral posturing instead of building great software that gets out of the way it's all down hill.
- dtn 2y agoAu contraire, when your tools add the Hot New Thing for the sake of it, rather than any coherent product strategy- that's when things go downhill.
- ronsor 2y agoI don't think they disagree with not adding AI features. I think they disagree with the moral posturing. It would have been different if the devs simply said "We aren't adding AI features since we don't think it's actually that useful."
- intended 2y agoProcreate is awesome though. I wish their redo and undo shortcuts were used everywhere
- watwut 2y agoThat is how we got open source in the first place. Just because you disagree with said moral stance does not mean it is against software development.