3 ms·

If they want to avoid paying for the creative effort of authors and other artists then they should also not charge for the use of their models.

esafak 2y ago
No, they should pay. The solution is not to make everything free, but cost the market rate. Somebody made these things; pay them.
- silverliver 2y ago
  ... without restricting other people. This whole mess is because society decided that restricting everyone's rights to share and access information was a sane tradeoff to make for making sure people got paid. No it is not and, so long as humans are physical, it will never be. It appears that humanity will have to get this simple fact hammered into them with every new leap in technology. Find another work-rewarding scheme. Ensure you get paid before you release information (e.g. crowd funding or contracts with escrows). Forget about nonsensical concepts relating to "intellectual" property (information is not property). Forget recurring revenue from licensing information. You only get paid once when you do work. You are not entitled to anything more. If reality makes living off your work unworkable, do something else. I'm glad other countries are starting to wake up and ignore this nonsense. Stop trying make something as unnatural and immoral as this work.
reilly3000 2y ago
They should train a model on a clean dataset and copyright dataset, charge extra on the copyright model, and pay a royalty to copyright owners when their works are cited in a response.
- ideashower 2y ago
  I like this and agree. It should be opt-in. I almost feel as if it should be something exciting and rewarding.
- wholinator2 2y ago
  The problem there is how are we defining "works are cited"? Also couldn't you just do the same thing done to spotify and make bot farms to generate millions of citations?
  - codedokode 2y ago
    You can simply pay to everyone whose works you have used for training, every time a model processes a request.
visarga 2y ago
But who should pay? The model developers? Training models is a cost center. And what about open source AI, should we legislate it out of existence? How about the AI providers? they operate on thin margins, and make just cents a million tokens. If one provider is too expensive, users quickly switch. Maybe the users? Users derive the lion share of benefits from AI. But those benefits are hard to quantize. Maybe a blanket tax? That would simplify things, but would put all creatives on a quantitative rather than qualitative criteria. I think generative AI is the worst copyright infringement tool ever devised. It's slow, expensive and imprecise. On the other hand copying is fast, free and perfect. I think nobody can, for science, regurgitate a full book with AI, it won't have fidelity to the original. The real enemy of any artist is the long tail of works, sometimes spanning decades, that they have to compete against. So it's other authors. That is why we are in an attention economy, and have seen the internet enshittified. The most creative part of internet ignores copyright royalties. From open source, to wikipedia, open scientific publication and even social networks, if everyone demanded royalties none of them would be possible.
- kweingar 2y ago
  > The most creative part of internet ignores copyright royalties. From open source, to wikipedia, open scientific publication and even social networks, if everyone demanded royalties none of them would be possible. Notably, in all of these cases the people involved consent to participating.
- basisword 2y ago
  >> The real enemy of any artist is the long tail of works, sometimes spanning decades, that they have to compete against. Had to check this wasn’t sama. You seriously believe the real enemy of artists is other artists? Not the guys making billions and trying to convince us “the computers are just reading it like a human”?
  - visarga 2y ago
    Are you implying AI is causing more competition than other creatives, and the billion choices the public has?
stainablesteel 2y ago
there are some free models out there from both chat companies and open source
93po 2y ago
i really don't understand this argument. at which point is it violating copyright versus an intelligence learning and making content the same way as humans? it was living cells, but they worked as transistors, would it be ok? it was whole-brain emulation on silicon transistors, would it be ok? it was a generative AI similar to what we have today, but 100x more sentient and self aware, is that ok? if you locked a human in a room with nothing but tolkien books for 20 years, then asked them to write a fantasy novel, is that ok? All art is built on learning from previous art. I don't understand the logic of it being a computer so suddenly now it's wrong and bad. I also don't understand general support of intellectual property when it overwhelmingly benefits the mega wealthy and stifles creative endeavors like nothing else. You art isn't less valuable just because a computer makes something similar, in the same way it's not less valuable if another human copies your style and makes new art in your style.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  > I don't understand the logic of it being a computer so suddenly now it's wrong and bad My answer to this is one I've written already before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42720749 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42720749
- TaupeRanger 2y ago
  You "really don't understand" the difference? Do we need to spell out that these systems aren't human artists simply looking at paintings and admiring features about them? They are Python programs running linear algebra libraries, sucking in pixels from anywhere they can find them, and then being used by corporations with billion dollar valuations to increase investor/shareholder value at the expense of the people who provided the artwork to train the systems - people who, as you already know, are NOT paid for providing their work, and who never CONSENTED to having their work used for such a purpose. Now do you "understand the difference"?
  - ben_w 2y ago
    AI is a new thing. It's OK to say you don't want it, that it's a threat to livelihoods. But it's a mistake to use these kinds of arguments, that are predicated on such narrow points that overlap so much with human brains. It's going to be a threat to my career, soon enough — but the threat it poses to me exists even if it never read any of my blog posts or my github repos. Even if it had never read a single line of ObjC or Swift. > Do we need to spell out that these systems aren't human artists simply looking at paintings and admiring features about them? In a word, yes. In more words: explain what it would take for an AI to count as a person — none of what you wrote connects with what was in the comment you replied to. You dismiss AI as "python": would it help if the maths was done as the pure linear amplification range of the quantum effects in transistors?; you dismiss them as "sucking in pixels from anywhere they can find them" like humans don't spend all day with their eyes open; you complain "corporations with billion dollar valuations to increase investor/shareholder value at the expense of the people who provided the artwork to train the systems" like this isn't exactly what happens with government funded education of humans. I anticipate that within my lifetime it will be possible for a human brain to be preserved on death, scanned, and the result used as a full brain sim that remembers what the human remembered at the the time of death. Would it matter if the original human had memorised Harry Potter end-to-end and the upload could quote it all perfectly? Would Rowling get the right to delete that brain upload? I'm following a YouTube channel where they're growing mouse neurons on electrode grids to train them to play video games. It's entirely plausible, given the current rate of progress, that 15 years from now, GPT-4 could be encoded onto a brain organoid the size of a living mouse's brain — does it magically become OK then? And in 30 years, that same thing as an implant into a human? The threat to my economic prospects is already present in completely free models whose weights are given away and cannot avail the billion-dollar corporations who made them. I can download free models and run them on my laptop, outputting tokens faster than I can read them for an energy budget lower than my own brain, corporations who made those models don't profit directly by me doing this, and if those corporations go bankrupt I can still run those models. The risk to my economic value is not because any of these "stole" anything, but because the models are useful and cheap. GenAI art (and voice) is… well, despite the fact I will admit to enjoying it privately/on free content, whenever I see it on products or blog posts, or when I hear it in the voices on YouTube videos, it's a sign the human behind it has zero budget and therefore whatever it is I don't want to buy it. People already use it because it's cheap, it's a sign of being cheap, signs of cheap are a proxy of generally poor quality. But that's not going to save my career, nobody's going to decide to boycott all iPhone apps that aren't certified "made by 100% organic grass-fed natural humans with no AI assistance". So believe me, I get that it's scary. But the arguments you're using aren't good ones.

esafak 2y ago

No, they should pay. The solution is not to make everything free, but cost the market rate. Somebody made these things; pay them.

silverliver 2y ago
... without restricting other people. This whole mess is because society decided that restricting everyone's rights to share and access information was a sane tradeoff to make for making sure people got paid. No it is not and, so long as humans are physical, it will never be. It appears that humanity will have to get this simple fact hammered into them with every new leap in technology. Find another work-rewarding scheme. Ensure you get paid before you release information (e.g. crowd funding or contracts with escrows). Forget about nonsensical concepts relating to "intellectual" property (information is not property). Forget recurring revenue from licensing information. You only get paid once when you do work. You are not entitled to anything more. If reality makes living off your work unworkable, do something else. I'm glad other countries are starting to wake up and ignore this nonsense. Stop trying make something as unnatural and immoral as this work.

reilly3000 2y ago

They should train a model on a clean dataset and copyright dataset, charge extra on the copyright model, and pay a royalty to copyright owners when their works are cited in a response.

ideashower 2y ago
I like this and agree. It should be opt-in. I almost feel as if it should be something exciting and rewarding.
wholinator2 2y ago
The problem there is how are we defining "works are cited"? Also couldn't you just do the same thing done to spotify and make bot farms to generate millions of citations?
- codedokode 2y ago
  You can simply pay to everyone whose works you have used for training, every time a model processes a request.

visarga 2y ago

But who should pay? The model developers? Training models is a cost center. And what about open source AI, should we legislate it out of existence? How about the AI providers? they operate on thin margins, and make just cents a million tokens. If one provider is too expensive, users quickly switch. Maybe the users? Users derive the lion share of benefits from AI. But those benefits are hard to quantize. Maybe a blanket tax? That would simplify things, but would put all creatives on a quantitative rather than qualitative criteria. I think generative AI is the worst copyright infringement tool ever devised. It's slow, expensive and imprecise. On the other hand copying is fast, free and perfect. I think nobody can, for science, regurgitate a full book with AI, it won't have fidelity to the original. The real enemy of any artist is the long tail of works, sometimes spanning decades, that they have to compete against. So it's other authors. That is why we are in an attention economy, and have seen the internet enshittified. The most creative part of internet ignores copyright royalties. From open source, to wikipedia, open scientific publication and even social networks, if everyone demanded royalties none of them would be possible.

kweingar 2y ago
> The most creative part of internet ignores copyright royalties. From open source, to wikipedia, open scientific publication and even social networks, if everyone demanded royalties none of them would be possible. Notably, in all of these cases the people involved consent to participating.
basisword 2y ago
>> The real enemy of any artist is the long tail of works, sometimes spanning decades, that they have to compete against. Had to check this wasn’t sama. You seriously believe the real enemy of artists is other artists? Not the guys making billions and trying to convince us “the computers are just reading it like a human”?
- visarga 2y ago
  Are you implying AI is causing more competition than other creatives, and the billion choices the public has?

stainablesteel 2y ago

there are some free models out there from both chat companies and open source

93po 2y ago

i really don't understand this argument. at which point is it violating copyright versus an intelligence learning and making content the same way as humans? it was living cells, but they worked as transistors, would it be ok? it was whole-brain emulation on silicon transistors, would it be ok? it was a generative AI similar to what we have today, but 100x more sentient and self aware, is that ok? if you locked a human in a room with nothing but tolkien books for 20 years, then asked them to write a fantasy novel, is that ok? All art is built on learning from previous art. I don't understand the logic of it being a computer so suddenly now it's wrong and bad. I also don't understand general support of intellectual property when it overwhelmingly benefits the mega wealthy and stifles creative endeavors like nothing else. You art isn't less valuable just because a computer makes something similar, in the same way it's not less valuable if another human copies your style and makes new art in your style.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
> I don't understand the logic of it being a computer so suddenly now it's wrong and bad My answer to this is one I've written already before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42720749 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42720749
TaupeRanger 2y ago
You "really don't understand" the difference? Do we need to spell out that these systems aren't human artists simply looking at paintings and admiring features about them? They are Python programs running linear algebra libraries, sucking in pixels from anywhere they can find them, and then being used by corporations with billion dollar valuations to increase investor/shareholder value at the expense of the people who provided the artwork to train the systems - people who, as you already know, are NOT paid for providing their work, and who never CONSENTED to having their work used for such a purpose. Now do you "understand the difference"?
- ben_w 2y ago
  AI is a new thing. It's OK to say you don't want it, that it's a threat to livelihoods. But it's a mistake to use these kinds of arguments, that are predicated on such narrow points that overlap so much with human brains. It's going to be a threat to my career, soon enough — but the threat it poses to me exists even if it never read any of my blog posts or my github repos. Even if it had never read a single line of ObjC or Swift. > Do we need to spell out that these systems aren't human artists simply looking at paintings and admiring features about them? In a word, yes. In more words: explain what it would take for an AI to count as a person — none of what you wrote connects with what was in the comment you replied to. You dismiss AI as "python": would it help if the maths was done as the pure linear amplification range of the quantum effects in transistors?; you dismiss them as "sucking in pixels from anywhere they can find them" like humans don't spend all day with their eyes open; you complain "corporations with billion dollar valuations to increase investor/shareholder value at the expense of the people who provided the artwork to train the systems" like this isn't exactly what happens with government funded education of humans. I anticipate that within my lifetime it will be possible for a human brain to be preserved on death, scanned, and the result used as a full brain sim that remembers what the human remembered at the the time of death. Would it matter if the original human had memorised Harry Potter end-to-end and the upload could quote it all perfectly? Would Rowling get the right to delete that brain upload? I'm following a YouTube channel where they're growing mouse neurons on electrode grids to train them to play video games. It's entirely plausible, given the current rate of progress, that 15 years from now, GPT-4 could be encoded onto a brain organoid the size of a living mouse's brain — does it magically become OK then? And in 30 years, that same thing as an implant into a human? The threat to my economic prospects is already present in completely free models whose weights are given away and cannot avail the billion-dollar corporations who made them. I can download free models and run them on my laptop, outputting tokens faster than I can read them for an energy budget lower than my own brain, corporations who made those models don't profit directly by me doing this, and if those corporations go bankrupt I can still run those models. The risk to my economic value is not because any of these "stole" anything, but because the models are useful and cheap. GenAI art (and voice) is… well, despite the fact I will admit to enjoying it privately/on free content, whenever I see it on products or blog posts, or when I hear it in the voices on YouTube videos, it's a sign the human behind it has zero budget and therefore whatever it is I don't want to buy it. People already use it because it's cheap, it's a sign of being cheap, signs of cheap are a proxy of generally poor quality. But that's not going to save my career, nobody's going to decide to boycott all iPhone apps that aren't certified "made by 100% organic grass-fed natural humans with no AI assistance". So believe me, I get that it's scary. But the arguments you're using aren't good ones.