4 ms·

"IP" is a very new concept in our culture and completely absent in other cultures. It was invented to prevent verbatim reprints of books, but even so, the publi

by woah 2y ago

"IP" is a very new concept in our culture and completely absent in other cultures. It was invented to prevent verbatim reprints of books, but even so, the publishing industry existed for hundreds of years before then. It's been expanded greatly in the past 50 years. Acting like copyright is some natural law of the universe that LLMs are upending simply because they can learn from written texts is silly. If you want to argue that it should be radically expanded to the point that not only a work, but even the ideas and knowledge contained in that work should be censored and restricted, fine. But at least have the honesty to admit that this is a radical new expansion for a body of law that has already been radically expanded relatively recently.

mullingitover 2y ago
> It was invented to prevent verbatim reprints of books It was also invented to keep the publishing houses under control and keep them from papering the land in anti-crown propaganda (like the stuff that fueled the civil war in England and got Charles I beheaded). Probably one of the biggest brewing fights will be whether the models are free to tell the truth or whether they'll be mouthpieces for the ruling class. As long as they play ball with the powers that be, I predict copyrights won't be a problem at all for the chosen winners.
- jsemrau 2y ago
  "mouthpieces for the ruling class" That's actually a great point. Judging from the current state of media, there is a clear momentum to take sides in moral arguments. Maybe the standard for models need to be a fair use clause?
- selfhoster11 2y ago
  That's why I am a big proponent of local, open-weights computation. They can't shut down a non-compliant model if you're the one running it yourself.
  - derivagral 2y ago
    I agree this would be a positive direction, but something that gives me pause is the forced upgrades and hardware cycle of both mac and windows now. They both scan files in your system constantly for various reasons, so for this purpose you're really stuck on *nix variants, right?
    - selfhoster11 2y ago
      That's what I do. I'm really sick of the OS no longer being mine.
LtWorf 2y ago
The problem here is it's still illegal for me to do a backup copy of the stuff i bought, but they can do whatever they want.
only-one1701 2y ago
“The Venetian Patent Statute of 19 March 1474, established by the Republic of Venice, is usually considered to be the earliest codified patent system in the world.[11][12] It states that patents might be granted for "any new and ingenious device, not previously made", provided it was useful. By and large, these principles still remain the basic principles of current patent laws.“ What are you talking about.
- pitaj 2y ago
  Patents and copyright are very different beasts.
  - fc417fc802 2y ago
    The discussion was about IP though, which includes both of those.
  - only-one1701 2y ago
    As another commenter says, this is about IP, but even positing that copyright is somehow invalid because it’s new is incredibly obtuse. You know what other law is relatively new? Women’s suffrage. I’m annoyed by arguments like the above because they’re clearly derived from working backwards from a desired conclusion; in this case, that someone’s original work can be consumed and repurposed to create profit by someone else. Our laws and society have determined this to be illegal; the fact that it would be con isn’t for OpenAI if it weren’t has no bearing.
    - only-one1701 2y ago
      Also, a quick glance at the wikipedia page for "copyright" talks about the first law being put down and enforced in 1710. What are we even doing here?
fc417fc802 2y ago
> It's been expanded greatly in the past 50 years. Elephant in the room. If copyright and patent both expired after 20 years or so then I might feel very differently about the system, and by extension about machine learning practices. It's absurd to me that broad cultural artifacts which we share with our parent's (or even grandparent's) generation can be legally owned.
codedokode 2y ago
What AI companies are doing (downloading pirated music and training models) is completely unfair. It takes lot of money (everything related to music is expensive), talent and work to record a good song and what AI companies do is just grab millions of songs for free and call it "fair use". If their developers are so smart and talented why don't they simply compose and record the music by themselves? > not only a work, but even the ideas and knowledge contained in that work AI models reproduce existing audio tracks when asked, although in a distorted and low-quality form. Also it will be funny to observe how US government will try to ignore violating copyright for AI while issuing ridiculous fines for torrenting a movie by ordinary citizens.
- LexGray 2y ago
  Everything in tech is unfair. Music teachers replaced by apps and videos. Audio engineers replaced by apps. Albums manufacturing and music stores replaced by digital downloads. Custom instruments replaced by digital soundboards. Trained vocalists replaced by auto-tune. AI is just the final blip of squeezing humans out of music.
  - antihipocrat 2y ago
    Not just music, models are trained on all types of art forms that have been created by humans across every medium and businesses are now choosing to use content from AI rather than pay an artist. Breakout success can still be achieved from humans who create brand new art styles that can't yet be replicated by an AI. These artists will reap the rewards until all of these works are added to the subsequent AI training models.
- ForTheKidz 2y ago
  > What AI companies are doing (downloading pirated music and training models) is completely unfair. We work in an industry built on leveraging unfairness. Expecting otherwise on this forum is very odd.
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pera 2y ago
You are missing GP's point and misunderstanding what generative models are actually doing. The late OpenAI researcher and whistleblower, Suchir Balaji, wrote an excellent article regarding this topic: https://suchir.net/fair_use.html https://suchir.net/fair_use.html
xbar 2y ago
Your argument that IP and copyright do not exist now because they did not exist in the past is bogus. IP and copyright exist.

by woah 2y ago

mullingitover 2y ago

> It was invented to prevent verbatim reprints of books It was also invented to keep the publishing houses under control and keep them from papering the land in anti-crown propaganda (like the stuff that fueled the civil war in England and got Charles I beheaded). Probably one of the biggest brewing fights will be whether the models are free to tell the truth or whether they'll be mouthpieces for the ruling class. As long as they play ball with the powers that be, I predict copyrights won't be a problem at all for the chosen winners.

jsemrau 2y ago
"mouthpieces for the ruling class" That's actually a great point. Judging from the current state of media, there is a clear momentum to take sides in moral arguments. Maybe the standard for models need to be a fair use clause?
selfhoster11 2y ago
That's why I am a big proponent of local, open-weights computation. They can't shut down a non-compliant model if you're the one running it yourself.
- derivagral 2y ago
  I agree this would be a positive direction, but something that gives me pause is the forced upgrades and hardware cycle of both mac and windows now. They both scan files in your system constantly for various reasons, so for this purpose you're really stuck on *nix variants, right?
  - selfhoster11 2y ago
    That's what I do. I'm really sick of the OS no longer being mine.

LtWorf 2y ago

The problem here is it's still illegal for me to do a backup copy of the stuff i bought, but they can do whatever they want.

only-one1701 2y ago

“The Venetian Patent Statute of 19 March 1474, established by the Republic of Venice, is usually considered to be the earliest codified patent system in the world.[11][12] It states that patents might be granted for "any new and ingenious device, not previously made", provided it was useful. By and large, these principles still remain the basic principles of current patent laws.“ What are you talking about.

pitaj 2y ago
Patents and copyright are very different beasts.
- fc417fc802 2y ago
  The discussion was about IP though, which includes both of those.
- only-one1701 2y ago
  As another commenter says, this is about IP, but even positing that copyright is somehow invalid because it’s new is incredibly obtuse. You know what other law is relatively new? Women’s suffrage. I’m annoyed by arguments like the above because they’re clearly derived from working backwards from a desired conclusion; in this case, that someone’s original work can be consumed and repurposed to create profit by someone else. Our laws and society have determined this to be illegal; the fact that it would be con isn’t for OpenAI if it weren’t has no bearing.
  - only-one1701 2y ago
    Also, a quick glance at the wikipedia page for "copyright" talks about the first law being put down and enforced in 1710. What are we even doing here?

fc417fc802 2y ago

> It's been expanded greatly in the past 50 years. Elephant in the room. If copyright and patent both expired after 20 years or so then I might feel very differently about the system, and by extension about machine learning practices. It's absurd to me that broad cultural artifacts which we share with our parent's (or even grandparent's) generation can be legally owned.

codedokode 2y ago

What AI companies are doing (downloading pirated music and training models) is completely unfair. It takes lot of money (everything related to music is expensive), talent and work to record a good song and what AI companies do is just grab millions of songs for free and call it "fair use". If their developers are so smart and talented why don't they simply compose and record the music by themselves? > not only a work, but even the ideas and knowledge contained in that work AI models reproduce existing audio tracks when asked, although in a distorted and low-quality form. Also it will be funny to observe how US government will try to ignore violating copyright for AI while issuing ridiculous fines for torrenting a movie by ordinary citizens.

LexGray 2y ago
Everything in tech is unfair. Music teachers replaced by apps and videos. Audio engineers replaced by apps. Albums manufacturing and music stores replaced by digital downloads. Custom instruments replaced by digital soundboards. Trained vocalists replaced by auto-tune. AI is just the final blip of squeezing humans out of music.
- antihipocrat 2y ago
  Not just music, models are trained on all types of art forms that have been created by humans across every medium and businesses are now choosing to use content from AI rather than pay an artist. Breakout success can still be achieved from humans who create brand new art styles that can't yet be replicated by an AI. These artists will reap the rewards until all of these works are added to the subsequent AI training models.
ForTheKidz 2y ago
> What AI companies are doing (downloading pirated music and training models) is completely unfair. We work in an industry built on leveraging unfairness. Expecting otherwise on this forum is very odd.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pera 2y ago

You are missing GP's point and misunderstanding what generative models are actually doing. The late OpenAI researcher and whistleblower, Suchir Balaji, wrote an excellent article regarding this topic: https://suchir.net/fair_use.html https://suchir.net/fair_use.html

xbar 2y ago

Your argument that IP and copyright do not exist now because they did not exist in the past is bogus. IP and copyright exist.