4 ms·

I am not sure if profits are easy to gather if all professional users can rent hardware instead of renting the service. In the end the users would actually prof

I am not sure if profits are easy to gather if all professional users can rent hardware instead of renting the service. In the end the users would actually profit from the model, not the provider (who competes with other providers of the same open source model). And here I am not sure if we can see AI as some kind of cybernetic enhancement that allows to execute ideas on the shoulders of humanity instead of just a scammy way to resell already present content.

martin-t 2y ago
Exactly. It's impractical to distribute compensation (and credit) fairly so it's very easy for those who profit to say "we can't", their their hands up and keep profiting. Doesn't make it right. It's just the rich getting richer by taking from everyone so little that no individual bothers to fight back.
- chromanoid 2y ago
  Why do you think the rich get richer when operating an AI is a price competition and training new models gives only a short competitive advantage? I would hope that for each individual there opens an ocean of opportunities that is sustained by all humans that came before and poured their bucket of knowledge into it.
  - martin-t 2y ago
    1) For starters, ML companies clearly go through enormous amounts of money, the rich people in control of them very obviously get compensated quite generously, if you're into euphemisms, which the people who built the "training data" (= their copyrighted works) get nothing. 2) It's not just ML companies but anyone using their products. A while ago everyone was upset that chatGPT regurgitated fast inverse square root from Quake's GPL code verbatim including a comment, clearly violating the license unless the program it generated it into was also under GPL. I am sure since then they've made sure the copyrighted material used as training data gets misex up a bit more thoroughly so it doesn't produce it in the output verbatim and is therefore harder to detect. So what if i spend a couple days writing an algorithm, give it a nice doc comment and tests, publish it under AGPL, it gets used as training data and a random programmer in a random company working on a random for-profit product runs into the same problem but instead of writing the algo himself, he asks a generative model and it produces my code just a little mixed up so it's not immediately recognizable but clearly based on my code? I deserve to be paid, that's what happens.
    - chromanoid 2y ago
      Algorithms should not be subject to copyright IMO. If you publish code, AFAIK under EU law only blatant copies are an infringement. In case of art, copyright is enforceable anyway, at least not in any different form than before AI. Yes, current AIs just remix their training data in a rather direct way. But in the end how different is that to how humans create? I would suggest we should embrace this new way of creating things while finding laws to empower all creators and not only those who were hired by deep pockets.
      - martin-t 2y ago
        > AFAIK under EU law only blatant copies are an infringement Laws generally don't encode what is right but a compromise between the state's interests, lobbyists and the general population making enough ruckus if too unsatisfied. > But in the end how different is that to how humans create? 1) Scale. Some strategies that are socially acceptable when done by individuals but not when done at a massive scale. For example because individuals have very limited time and can invest very limited effort. Looking at a website is perfectly OK. Making thousands of requests a second might be considered an attack. Human memory is limited. Similar principles apply to humans looking at code. 2) Source of data. Much of human "input" is viewing the real world (not copyrighted material) through their senses. Much of learning is from teachers or documentation, both of which voluntarily give me information. I don't know about you but when I wanna know how to use a particular function, I don't go looking through random GH repos to see how other people use it, I go to the docs. > finding laws to empower all creators and not only those who were hired by deep pockets That is not even the only issue. When I publish something under AGPL, my users have the right to modify the code, even if my code gets to them through some third party. LLMs allow laundering code and taking that right from (my) users.
        chromanoid 2y ago
        > > AFAIK under EU law only blatant copies are an infringement > Laws generally don't encode what is right but a compromise between the state's interests, lobbyists and the general population making enough ruckus if too unsatisfied. of course, but I actually think that this is the correct moral stand. Patenting algorithms is like patenting thoughts. > I don't know about you but when I wanna know how to use a particular function, I don't go looking through random GH repos to see how other people use it, I go to the docs. I always look into sources. Usually I look into the code I want to call first. But this is probably also because I mainly use Java. So if I read your AGPL code and implement something similar in another programming language after also reading other implementations of the algorithm, is that something I have to attribute you for? Isn't code just an executable documentation of an algorithm? Especially if the algorithm is well known, I don't see any injustice here - "Die Gedanken sind frei". If I copy your code via copy and paste, then this is an infringement, but just retelling a similar story should not be affected by copyright.

martin-t 2y ago

Exactly. It's impractical to distribute compensation (and credit) fairly so it's very easy for those who profit to say "we can't", their their hands up and keep profiting. Doesn't make it right. It's just the rich getting richer by taking from everyone so little that no individual bothers to fight back.

chromanoid 2y ago
Why do you think the rich get richer when operating an AI is a price competition and training new models gives only a short competitive advantage? I would hope that for each individual there opens an ocean of opportunities that is sustained by all humans that came before and poured their bucket of knowledge into it.
- martin-t 2y ago
  1) For starters, ML companies clearly go through enormous amounts of money, the rich people in control of them very obviously get compensated quite generously, if you're into euphemisms, which the people who built the "training data" (= their copyrighted works) get nothing. 2) It's not just ML companies but anyone using their products. A while ago everyone was upset that chatGPT regurgitated fast inverse square root from Quake's GPL code verbatim including a comment, clearly violating the license unless the program it generated it into was also under GPL. I am sure since then they've made sure the copyrighted material used as training data gets misex up a bit more thoroughly so it doesn't produce it in the output verbatim and is therefore harder to detect. So what if i spend a couple days writing an algorithm, give it a nice doc comment and tests, publish it under AGPL, it gets used as training data and a random programmer in a random company working on a random for-profit product runs into the same problem but instead of writing the algo himself, he asks a generative model and it produces my code just a little mixed up so it's not immediately recognizable but clearly based on my code? I deserve to be paid, that's what happens.
  - chromanoid 2y ago
    Algorithms should not be subject to copyright IMO. If you publish code, AFAIK under EU law only blatant copies are an infringement. In case of art, copyright is enforceable anyway, at least not in any different form than before AI. Yes, current AIs just remix their training data in a rather direct way. But in the end how different is that to how humans create? I would suggest we should embrace this new way of creating things while finding laws to empower all creators and not only those who were hired by deep pockets.
    - martin-t 2y ago
      > AFAIK under EU law only blatant copies are an infringement Laws generally don't encode what is right but a compromise between the state's interests, lobbyists and the general population making enough ruckus if too unsatisfied. > But in the end how different is that to how humans create? 1) Scale. Some strategies that are socially acceptable when done by individuals but not when done at a massive scale. For example because individuals have very limited time and can invest very limited effort. Looking at a website is perfectly OK. Making thousands of requests a second might be considered an attack. Human memory is limited. Similar principles apply to humans looking at code. 2) Source of data. Much of human "input" is viewing the real world (not copyrighted material) through their senses. Much of learning is from teachers or documentation, both of which voluntarily give me information. I don't know about you but when I wanna know how to use a particular function, I don't go looking through random GH repos to see how other people use it, I go to the docs. > finding laws to empower all creators and not only those who were hired by deep pockets That is not even the only issue. When I publish something under AGPL, my users have the right to modify the code, even if my code gets to them through some third party. LLMs allow laundering code and taking that right from (my) users.
      - chromanoid 2y ago
        > > AFAIK under EU law only blatant copies are an infringement > Laws generally don't encode what is right but a compromise between the state's interests, lobbyists and the general population making enough ruckus if too unsatisfied. of course, but I actually think that this is the correct moral stand. Patenting algorithms is like patenting thoughts. > I don't know about you but when I wanna know how to use a particular function, I don't go looking through random GH repos to see how other people use it, I go to the docs. I always look into sources. Usually I look into the code I want to call first. But this is probably also because I mainly use Java. So if I read your AGPL code and implement something similar in another programming language after also reading other implementations of the algorithm, is that something I have to attribute you for? Isn't code just an executable documentation of an algorithm? Especially if the algorithm is well known, I don't see any injustice here - "Die Gedanken sind frei". If I copy your code via copy and paste, then this is an infringement, but just retelling a similar story should not be affected by copyright.