4 ms·

I disagree: I think copyright law is wholly prepared. If some thing produces a copy of copyrighted material, without explicit approval of the copyright owner,

I disagree: I think copyright law is wholly prepared. If some thing produces a copy of copyrighted material, without explicit approval of the copyright owner, then it is infringing on the copyright. Where is the unprepared?

kranke155 2y ago
It's unprepared for the fact that you can now build thinking machines using these new techniques, and that governments will be reluctant to regulate them if they think it will give them issues in an AI race against strategic opponents. Of course it's doubtful that image and video gen AI are strategically important, but I trust the AI lobby to make sure that governments won't make that distinction.
- polotics 2y ago
  You wrote "thinking machines"? seriously? You do know that attention is all you need, right? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Is_All_You_Need https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Is_All_You_Need) Having a Generative Pretrained Transformer regurgitate pattern-matched input into mostly logical-appearing output does not make a thinking machine! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_pre-trained_transformer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_pre-trained_transfo...) case in point, look at this, and think: """ It's true that relying solely on attention mechanisms, while groundbreaking, doesn't equate to genuine thinking. These models, impressive as they are, essentially excel at sophisticated mimicry. They learn to identify patterns in vast amounts of data and reproduce them in a way that often seems intelligent. However, they lack true understanding, consciousness, or the ability to form original thoughts and intentions. The danger lies in anthropomorphizing these systems. We marvel at their ability to generate human-like text, translate languages, and even write different kinds of creative content, and we may be tempted to ascribe human-like qualities to them. But it's crucial to remember that beneath the surface lies a complex algorithm, not a conscious mind. While the "Attention is All You Need" paper revolutionized the field of natural language processing, it's important to maintain a critical perspective and acknowledge the limitations of current AI technology. The quest for true artificial intelligence, a machine capable of independent thought and understanding, remains an ongoing challenge. """ Maybe you were able to spot a pattern, no?
  - kranke155 2y ago
    I can spot a pattern that people who think AI should be able to violate copyright often anthropomorphize it as a silly defense. If you mean what I wrote, it's irrelevant what you call them. If governments think there is an AI race that they will lose if they enforce copyright, they won't enforce copyright.
    - polotics 2y ago
      ok, good point!
- ben_w 2y ago
  > Of course it's doubtful that image and video gen AI are strategically important, but I trust the AI lobby to make sure that governments won't make that distinction. I suspect otherwise. The use cases for image generators are much less obvious than for a personal assistant that's just as fluent in Chinese, international relations, hacking, military strategy, and speech writing… even when the current fluency of LLMs relative to government workers is somewhere between "mediocre" to "it'll do". I think big copyright owners, however, will probably make their own models. Disney etc. could very easily use their own content to (help) make as many more films as they want. Real human artists will be disempowered regardless of how the copyright stuff happens. Probably.
  - kranke155 2y ago
    I hope so, but big AI is banking on being able to use those models for everything.* Our "luck" is that Disney and other giant corporate copyright holders will indeed sue them to oblivion, or at least try. * Afaik image gen AI is one the few profitable use cases, with Midjourney apparently being profitable already.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Re image gen cost, by my estimate inference was $0.0001/image 2 years ago: https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2022/10/09-19.33.04.html https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2022/10/09-19.33.04.html I suspect that there are significantly better options than the thing which just happened to be accessible to me at the time, so I would say that quality, not cost, is the thing currently preventing feature length movies from being generated for less than the cost a movie theatre ticket.
pnut 2y ago
Looking at copyright law through the lens of "land grabbing output token sequences" diminishes its perception of long term viability to me. Generative computation is becoming reproducible at scale.

kranke155 2y ago

It's unprepared for the fact that you can now build thinking machines using these new techniques, and that governments will be reluctant to regulate them if they think it will give them issues in an AI race against strategic opponents. Of course it's doubtful that image and video gen AI are strategically important, but I trust the AI lobby to make sure that governments won't make that distinction.

polotics 2y ago
You wrote "thinking machines"? seriously? You do know that attention is all you need, right? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Is_All_You_Need https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Is_All_You_Need) Having a Generative Pretrained Transformer regurgitate pattern-matched input into mostly logical-appearing output does not make a thinking machine! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_pre-trained_transformer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_pre-trained_transfo...) case in point, look at this, and think: """ It's true that relying solely on attention mechanisms, while groundbreaking, doesn't equate to genuine thinking. These models, impressive as they are, essentially excel at sophisticated mimicry. They learn to identify patterns in vast amounts of data and reproduce them in a way that often seems intelligent. However, they lack true understanding, consciousness, or the ability to form original thoughts and intentions. The danger lies in anthropomorphizing these systems. We marvel at their ability to generate human-like text, translate languages, and even write different kinds of creative content, and we may be tempted to ascribe human-like qualities to them. But it's crucial to remember that beneath the surface lies a complex algorithm, not a conscious mind. While the "Attention is All You Need" paper revolutionized the field of natural language processing, it's important to maintain a critical perspective and acknowledge the limitations of current AI technology. The quest for true artificial intelligence, a machine capable of independent thought and understanding, remains an ongoing challenge. """ Maybe you were able to spot a pattern, no?
- kranke155 2y ago
  I can spot a pattern that people who think AI should be able to violate copyright often anthropomorphize it as a silly defense. If you mean what I wrote, it's irrelevant what you call them. If governments think there is an AI race that they will lose if they enforce copyright, they won't enforce copyright.
  - polotics 2y ago
    ok, good point!
ben_w 2y ago
> Of course it's doubtful that image and video gen AI are strategically important, but I trust the AI lobby to make sure that governments won't make that distinction. I suspect otherwise. The use cases for image generators are much less obvious than for a personal assistant that's just as fluent in Chinese, international relations, hacking, military strategy, and speech writing… even when the current fluency of LLMs relative to government workers is somewhere between "mediocre" to "it'll do". I think big copyright owners, however, will probably make their own models. Disney etc. could very easily use their own content to (help) make as many more films as they want. Real human artists will be disempowered regardless of how the copyright stuff happens. Probably.
- kranke155 2y ago
  I hope so, but big AI is banking on being able to use those models for everything.* Our "luck" is that Disney and other giant corporate copyright holders will indeed sue them to oblivion, or at least try. * Afaik image gen AI is one the few profitable use cases, with Midjourney apparently being profitable already.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Re image gen cost, by my estimate inference was $0.0001/image 2 years ago: https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2022/10/09-19.33.04.html https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2022/10/09-19.33.04.html I suspect that there are significantly better options than the thing which just happened to be accessible to me at the time, so I would say that quality, not cost, is the thing currently preventing feature length movies from being generated for less than the cost a movie theatre ticket.

pnut 2y ago

Looking at copyright law through the lens of "land grabbing output token sequences" diminishes its perception of long term viability to me. Generative computation is becoming reproducible at scale.