6 ms·

> Before I begin I would like to credit the thousands or millions of unknown artists, coders and writers upon whose work the Large Language Models(LLMs) are tra

> Before I begin I would like to credit the thousands or millions of unknown artists, coders and writers upon whose work the Large Language Models(LLMs) are trained, often without due credit or compensation I like this. If we insist on pushing forward with GenAI we should probably at least make some digital or physical monument like "The Tomb of the Unknown Creator". Cause they sure as sh*t ain't gettin paid. RIP.

model-15-DAV 2y ago
This seems as useless as land-acknowledgements; "Hey look we took your stuff and are not paying you for it, and we are still profiting from it!!"
- 8note 2y ago
  both this and land acknowledgements are making sure people are keeping those people in mind. that makes it harder to keep justifying screwing over those people.
  - mvdtnz 2y ago
    I've seen lots of land acknowledgements from people who own land. Never once seen one put their money where their mouth is.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
qntmfred 2y ago
I was once a top 1% stack overflow user. I didn't start contributing to make money, just to share information and learn from each other. that can and should also be good enough for the AI era.
- o11c 2y ago
  There's a difference between "I'm willing to exert myself to help people" and "I'm willing to exert myself so that somebody else can slap their name on my effort and make money, then deny me the right to do the same to them". Also, at a social level - the worst kind of user has always been a help vampire, and LLMs are really good at increasing the number of help vampires.
  - lmz 2y ago
    > Also, at a social level - the worst kind of user has always been a help vampire, and LLMs are really good at increasing the number of help vampires. Maybe we should hype up LLMs more so the help vampires and LLMs can keep each other busy?
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    An ungodly amount of paid software is built on the back free stack exchange answers. Complaining about lack of compensation for answers that ultimately lead to revenue was just as valid 20 years ago as today.
- fennecs 2y ago
  Not sure that’s quite equivalent; Megacorp scraping the entire internet vs individuals sharing knowledge on a platform are a completely different scale.
- sdesol 2y ago
  > I didn't start contributing to make money Your intentions might not have been to make money, but you were creating social credit that could be redeemed for a higher and better paying job. With GitHub, Stack Overflow, etc., you are adding to your resume, but with AI, you literally get nothing in return for contributing.
  - 8note 2y ago
    that social credit remains though? you can still point at your history of answers for how well you understand the thing, and how well you can communicate that knowledge. a portfolio is still a portfolio
    - sdesol 2y ago
      With StackOverflow, GitHub, etc. you would likely have people reach out to you for opportunities. With AI, if you contribute to StackOverflow and if it gets picked up by AI, people may or may not know.
      - CamperBob2 2y ago
        That's a very small price to pay for what we all stand to gain. I pay for o1-pro cheerfully, but I wouldn't pay anything at all for Stack Overflow. ChatGPT certainly generates its share of BS, but I have yet to have a question rejected because somebody who was using a different language or OS asked about something vaguely similar 8 years ago.
        sdesol 2y ago
        > That's a very small price to pay for what we all stand to gain. Sure, if AI was made free for everybody (or only be charged for cost to run). With Stack Overflow, GitHub and others, there is a mutual understanding that contributing can benefit the contributor. What is the incentive to continue contributing if the social agreement is, you get to help define a statistical weight for the next token and nobody will know? I think the future business model may require AI companies to pay people to contribute, or it might not be a technology roadblock, but rather a data roadblock that prevents further advancement.
- deathanatos 2y ago
  > I was once a top 1% stack overflow user. So am I. > I didn't start contributing to make money, just to share information and learn from each other. that can and should also be good enough for the AI era. Sure; my content was contributed under CC-BY-SA, and if AI honors the rather simple terms of that license, then it's also good enough for the AI era, just as I had the same expectations of human consumers.
- formerlurker 2y ago
  I wonder what would happen if we purposely start polluting the training data? It may be too late for older technology but technology is always changing. If this is a way for me to protect my job and increase my value I actually consider doing this.
- AtlasBarfed 2y ago
  The billionaires thank you for your generosity
weitendorf 2y ago
I don't know if I would ever be able to get over the absurdity of a Statement of Country for internet posters
- upghost 2y ago
  Okay maybe maybe but hear me out -- it would be hilarious if this started happening often enough that the LLMs started echoing it XD. That would certainly cause some legal headaches.
- Modified3019 2y ago
  Huh. Well today I learned that was a thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_acknowledgement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_acknowledgement
  - nameless_me 2y ago
    Land acknowledgements are common in Canada especially in provinces that did not sign treaties with indigenous people prior to taking their land.
Yehoshaphat 2y ago
That quote reads like a land acknowledgement.
- swyx 2y ago
  performative wokeness. the main factor is whether you are using it or not. let's not claim OP is a better person because they said grace before sinning like the rest of us
  - Abishek_Muthian 2y ago
    I agree, I'm not claiming to be a better person for giving credit where it's due; It's just my habit. I stayed away from using LLMs for a long time but then came a point when it became a disadvantage to not use one, especially as a person belonging to disadvantaged section of the society I'm forced use any & all forms of technology which helps me & others like me to have some equity.
    - upghost 2y ago
      Hey Abishek I really did not mean to derail the comments with my offhand observation. I actually really liked the attribution and it did not strike me as a (as I've come to learn the term) "land acknowledgement". It came across as sincere. Besides I don't want a land acknowledgement, I want a statue!!
      - Abishek_Muthian 2y ago
        Not at all. I really like constructive criticism of HN, may be the way I wrote it came off as insincere to some but I credit even the memes I share on social media.
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  It certainly has the same insincere vibe about it.
WillAdams 2y ago
Why can't we train a model only on public domain materials and if anything is copyright only on materials where the rights-owners have granted permission?
- slyall 2y ago
  Because copyright last for 75+ years so there is relatively little that is public domain. Why should training be subject to copyright? (and at what stages of the process). People learn most of what they know from copyright media, giving copyright owners more control over that might be a bad idea But AI companies are paying content owners for for access recently (partially to reduce legal risk, partially to get access to material not publicly available) but then giving deep-pocket Incumbent a monopoly might be a bad idea.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    Because training intrinsically involves making a copy. Perhaps requiring that deep-pocket companies actually compensate copyright holders would be a starting point for a fairer system?
    - ticulatedspline 2y ago
      Mostly I see two outcomes. Either the holders "lose" and it basically follows "human" rules meaning you can train a model on any (legally obtained) material but there's restrictions on use and regurgitation. I say "human" rules because that's basically how people work. Any artist or writer worth their salt has been trained on gobs of copyrighted material, and you can totally hire people to use their knowledge to violate copyright now. the other option is the holders "win" and these models must only be trained on owned material, in which case the market will collapse into a handful of models controlled by companies that already own huge swaths of intellectual property. basically think DisneyDiffusion or RandomHouse-LLM. Nobody is getting paid more but it's all above board since it's been trained on all the data they have rights to. You might see some holders benefit if they have a particularly large and useful dataset, like Reddit or the Wall Street Journal.

model-15-DAV 2y ago

This seems as useless as land-acknowledgements; "Hey look we took your stuff and are not paying you for it, and we are still profiting from it!!"

8note 2y ago
both this and land acknowledgements are making sure people are keeping those people in mind. that makes it harder to keep justifying screwing over those people.
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  I've seen lots of land acknowledgements from people who own land. Never once seen one put their money where their mouth is.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

qntmfred 2y ago

I was once a top 1% stack overflow user. I didn't start contributing to make money, just to share information and learn from each other. that can and should also be good enough for the AI era.

o11c 2y ago
There's a difference between "I'm willing to exert myself to help people" and "I'm willing to exert myself so that somebody else can slap their name on my effort and make money, then deny me the right to do the same to them". Also, at a social level - the worst kind of user has always been a help vampire, and LLMs are really good at increasing the number of help vampires.
- lmz 2y ago
  > Also, at a social level - the worst kind of user has always been a help vampire, and LLMs are really good at increasing the number of help vampires. Maybe we should hype up LLMs more so the help vampires and LLMs can keep each other busy?
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  An ungodly amount of paid software is built on the back free stack exchange answers. Complaining about lack of compensation for answers that ultimately lead to revenue was just as valid 20 years ago as today.
fennecs 2y ago
Not sure that’s quite equivalent; Megacorp scraping the entire internet vs individuals sharing knowledge on a platform are a completely different scale.
sdesol 2y ago
> I didn't start contributing to make money Your intentions might not have been to make money, but you were creating social credit that could be redeemed for a higher and better paying job. With GitHub, Stack Overflow, etc., you are adding to your resume, but with AI, you literally get nothing in return for contributing.
- 8note 2y ago
  that social credit remains though? you can still point at your history of answers for how well you understand the thing, and how well you can communicate that knowledge. a portfolio is still a portfolio
  - sdesol 2y ago
    With StackOverflow, GitHub, etc. you would likely have people reach out to you for opportunities. With AI, if you contribute to StackOverflow and if it gets picked up by AI, people may or may not know.
    - CamperBob2 2y ago
      That's a very small price to pay for what we all stand to gain. I pay for o1-pro cheerfully, but I wouldn't pay anything at all for Stack Overflow. ChatGPT certainly generates its share of BS, but I have yet to have a question rejected because somebody who was using a different language or OS asked about something vaguely similar 8 years ago.
      - sdesol 2y ago
        > That's a very small price to pay for what we all stand to gain. Sure, if AI was made free for everybody (or only be charged for cost to run). With Stack Overflow, GitHub and others, there is a mutual understanding that contributing can benefit the contributor. What is the incentive to continue contributing if the social agreement is, you get to help define a statistical weight for the next token and nobody will know? I think the future business model may require AI companies to pay people to contribute, or it might not be a technology roadblock, but rather a data roadblock that prevents further advancement.
deathanatos 2y ago
> I was once a top 1% stack overflow user. So am I. > I didn't start contributing to make money, just to share information and learn from each other. that can and should also be good enough for the AI era. Sure; my content was contributed under CC-BY-SA, and if AI honors the rather simple terms of that license, then it's also good enough for the AI era, just as I had the same expectations of human consumers.
formerlurker 2y ago
I wonder what would happen if we purposely start polluting the training data? It may be too late for older technology but technology is always changing. If this is a way for me to protect my job and increase my value I actually consider doing this.
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
The billionaires thank you for your generosity

weitendorf 2y ago

I don't know if I would ever be able to get over the absurdity of a Statement of Country for internet posters

upghost 2y ago
Okay maybe maybe but hear me out -- it would be hilarious if this started happening often enough that the LLMs started echoing it XD. That would certainly cause some legal headaches.
Modified3019 2y ago
Huh. Well today I learned that was a thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_acknowledgement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_acknowledgement
- nameless_me 2y ago
  Land acknowledgements are common in Canada especially in provinces that did not sign treaties with indigenous people prior to taking their land.

Yehoshaphat 2y ago

That quote reads like a land acknowledgement.

swyx 2y ago
performative wokeness. the main factor is whether you are using it or not. let's not claim OP is a better person because they said grace before sinning like the rest of us
- Abishek_Muthian 2y ago
  I agree, I'm not claiming to be a better person for giving credit where it's due; It's just my habit. I stayed away from using LLMs for a long time but then came a point when it became a disadvantage to not use one, especially as a person belonging to disadvantaged section of the society I'm forced use any & all forms of technology which helps me & others like me to have some equity.
  - upghost 2y ago
    Hey Abishek I really did not mean to derail the comments with my offhand observation. I actually really liked the attribution and it did not strike me as a (as I've come to learn the term) "land acknowledgement". It came across as sincere. Besides I don't want a land acknowledgement, I want a statue!!
    - Abishek_Muthian 2y ago
      Not at all. I really like constructive criticism of HN, may be the way I wrote it came off as insincere to some but I credit even the memes I share on social media.
mvdtnz 2y ago
It certainly has the same insincere vibe about it.

WillAdams 2y ago

Why can't we train a model only on public domain materials and if anything is copyright only on materials where the rights-owners have granted permission?

slyall 2y ago
Because copyright last for 75+ years so there is relatively little that is public domain. Why should training be subject to copyright? (and at what stages of the process). People learn most of what they know from copyright media, giving copyright owners more control over that might be a bad idea But AI companies are paying content owners for for access recently (partially to reduce legal risk, partially to get access to material not publicly available) but then giving deep-pocket Incumbent a monopoly might be a bad idea.
- WillAdams 2y ago
  Because training intrinsically involves making a copy. Perhaps requiring that deep-pocket companies actually compensate copyright holders would be a starting point for a fairer system?
  - ticulatedspline 2y ago
    Mostly I see two outcomes. Either the holders "lose" and it basically follows "human" rules meaning you can train a model on any (legally obtained) material but there's restrictions on use and regurgitation. I say "human" rules because that's basically how people work. Any artist or writer worth their salt has been trained on gobs of copyrighted material, and you can totally hire people to use their knowledge to violate copyright now. the other option is the holders "win" and these models must only be trained on owned material, in which case the market will collapse into a handful of models controlled by companies that already own huge swaths of intellectual property. basically think DisneyDiffusion or RandomHouse-LLM. Nobody is getting paid more but it's all above board since it's been trained on all the data they have rights to. You might see some holders benefit if they have a particularly large and useful dataset, like Reddit or the Wall Street Journal.