3 ms·

If I looked at a painting before making my own similar one, did I break copyright?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ben_w 2y ago
While this pattern shows the inconsistency between how humans and AI are treated, there have been many examples over history where the ability to do at an increased scale something that was already familiar, results in the law being changed. Shining a torch at a plane is usually fine, shining a laser at them usually is a crime.
- martin-t 2y ago
  None of the people who claim LLMs are intelligent and "persons" argue for giving them legal personhood and human rights. Telling.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    You're one of today's lucky 10,000*: Blake Lemoine, 2.5 years ago, hired a lawyer to make this exact argument: https://www.businessinsider.com/suspended-google-engineer-says-sentient-ai-hired-lawyer-2022-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/suspended-google-engineer-sa... Myself, every time this topic comes up, I point to the fact that the philosophy of mind has 40 different definitions of "consciousness" which makes it really hard for any two people to even be sure they're arguing about the same thing when they argue if any given AI does or doesn't have it. (Also: They can be "persons" legally without being humans, cf. corporate personhood; and they can have rights independently of either personhood or humanity, cf. animal welfare). * https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
    - martin-t 2y ago
      I knew about that case (though I don't know the specifics of how sophisticated the LaMDA model was at the time, I don't know if it ever was available online so I could try it). AFAICT Blake Lemoine was not concerned with copyright at all, he just genuinely believed the model was sentient. What I meant ("none" is obviously a hyperbole, though not by much) is that people argue that "AI" (they always use this term rather than the more descriptive ML or LLM or generative models) is somehow special and either that the mixing of input material is sufficient to defeat copyright or that it somehow magically doesn't apply for reasons they either cannot describe or which include the word "intelligence".
martin-t 2y ago
I am writing a master's thesis and notice somebody has written one containing a chapter than I also need to write. I copy paste the chapter but replace every word with a synonym. Did I break copyright? Did I commit plagiarism?
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  Exactly. I think the answer is always "it depends" and usually boils down to a judge's opinion on just how obvious of a copy it is.
  - martin-t 2y ago
    There are 2 separate metrics - obviousness (=provability) and reality. Courts operate on provability (and for good reasons). However, reality is I have used someone else's work and pretended it's my own. Now, ironically, there are cases where the act of masking it can be more time consuming than writing it from scratch. That is still plagiarism, although it might not be provable.
    - ranger_danger 2y ago
      I don't think it's possible to get away from that, we are both "plagiarizing" something else in a way just by writing these responses, because there are no new ideas, everything is a copy of something else, the only question is by how much, and can you tell. Obviously this goes down a philosophical rabbit hole... but I think the "reality" you describe is just as subjective as obviousness.
      - martin-t 2y ago
        So, first, this is factually wrong, there are obviously new ideas, often rediscovered independently. Second, seeing things in black and white is a fallacy. The amount obviously matters and what also matters is the _human_ work on top of the original work. LLMs are fundamentally different, human time (and work) has value, LLM time does not (it costs money to run but that is both different and inconsequential in comparison). Third, you seem to forget that you can base academic work on that of other people, as long as you give proper credit. Just like are can base your code on that of other people, as long as you follow their code's license.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

While this pattern shows the inconsistency between how humans and AI are treated, there have been many examples over history where the ability to do at an increased scale something that was already familiar, results in the law being changed. Shining a torch at a plane is usually fine, shining a laser at them usually is a crime.

martin-t 2y ago
None of the people who claim LLMs are intelligent and "persons" argue for giving them legal personhood and human rights. Telling.
- ben_w 2y ago
  You're one of today's lucky 10,000*: Blake Lemoine, 2.5 years ago, hired a lawyer to make this exact argument: https://www.businessinsider.com/suspended-google-engineer-says-sentient-ai-hired-lawyer-2022-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/suspended-google-engineer-sa... Myself, every time this topic comes up, I point to the fact that the philosophy of mind has 40 different definitions of "consciousness" which makes it really hard for any two people to even be sure they're arguing about the same thing when they argue if any given AI does or doesn't have it. (Also: They can be "persons" legally without being humans, cf. corporate personhood; and they can have rights independently of either personhood or humanity, cf. animal welfare). * https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
  - martin-t 2y ago
    I knew about that case (though I don't know the specifics of how sophisticated the LaMDA model was at the time, I don't know if it ever was available online so I could try it). AFAICT Blake Lemoine was not concerned with copyright at all, he just genuinely believed the model was sentient. What I meant ("none" is obviously a hyperbole, though not by much) is that people argue that "AI" (they always use this term rather than the more descriptive ML or LLM or generative models) is somehow special and either that the mixing of input material is sufficient to defeat copyright or that it somehow magically doesn't apply for reasons they either cannot describe or which include the word "intelligence".

martin-t 2y ago

I am writing a master's thesis and notice somebody has written one containing a chapter than I also need to write. I copy paste the chapter but replace every word with a synonym. Did I break copyright? Did I commit plagiarism?

ranger_danger 2y ago
Exactly. I think the answer is always "it depends" and usually boils down to a judge's opinion on just how obvious of a copy it is.
- martin-t 2y ago
  There are 2 separate metrics - obviousness (=provability) and reality. Courts operate on provability (and for good reasons). However, reality is I have used someone else's work and pretended it's my own. Now, ironically, there are cases where the act of masking it can be more time consuming than writing it from scratch. That is still plagiarism, although it might not be provable.
  - ranger_danger 2y ago
    I don't think it's possible to get away from that, we are both "plagiarizing" something else in a way just by writing these responses, because there are no new ideas, everything is a copy of something else, the only question is by how much, and can you tell. Obviously this goes down a philosophical rabbit hole... but I think the "reality" you describe is just as subjective as obviousness.
    - martin-t 2y ago
      So, first, this is factually wrong, there are obviously new ideas, often rediscovered independently. Second, seeing things in black and white is a fallacy. The amount obviously matters and what also matters is the _human_ work on top of the original work. LLMs are fundamentally different, human time (and work) has value, LLM time does not (it costs money to run but that is both different and inconsequential in comparison). Third, you seem to forget that you can base academic work on that of other people, as long as you give proper credit. Just like are can base your code on that of other people, as long as you follow their code's license.