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> Right, but "distaste" isn't grounds for trying to ban something. It isn't, but it doesn't stop people from trying and hoping for a miracle. That's pretty muc

> Right, but "distaste" isn't grounds for trying to ban something. It isn't, but it doesn't stop people from trying and hoping for a miracle. That's pretty much all there is to the arguments of image models, as well as LLMs, being trained in violation of copyright - it's distaste and greed[0], with a slice of basic legalese on top to confuse people into believing the law says what it doesn't (at least yet) on top. > If Adobe properly licenses all their training data artists don't have a right to say "well i think this is bad for creativity and puts my job at risk, ban it!!!" Or more precisely, they have a right to say that, but no moral justification for trying to ban/regulate/sue over it. I'd say they have plenty of moral / ethical justification for trying to ban/regulate/sue over it, they just don't have much of a legal one at this point. But that's why they should be trying[1] - they have a legitimate argument that this is an unexpected, undeserved, unfair calamity for them, threatening to derail their lives, and lives of their dependents, across the entire sector - and therefore that laws should be changed to shield them, or compensate them for the loss. After all, that's what laws are for. (Let's not forget that the entire legal edifice around recognizing and protecting "intellectual property" is an entirely artificial construct that goes against the nature of information and knowledge, forcing information to behave like physical goods, so it's not unfair to the creators in an economy that's built around trading physical goods. IP laws were built on moral arguments, so it's only fair to change them on moral grounds too.) -- [0] - Greed is more visible in the LLM theatre of this conflict, because with textual content there's vastly more people who believe that they're entitled to compensation just because some comments they wrote on the Internet may have been part of the training dataset, and are appalled to see LLM providers get paid for the service while they are not. This Dog in the Manger mentality is distinct from that of people whose output was used in training a model that now directly competes with them for their job; the latter have legitimate ethical reasons to complain. [1] - Even though myself I am for treating training datasets to generative AI as exempt from copyright. I think it'll be better for society in general - but I recognize it's easy for me to say it, because I'm not the one being rugpulled out of a career path by GenAI, watching it going from 0 to being half of the way towards automating away visual arts, in just ~5 years.

skissane 2y ago
> they have a legitimate argument that this is an unexpected, undeserved, unfair calamity for them, threatening to derail their lives, and lives of their dependents, across the entire sector - and therefore that laws should be changed to shield them, or compensate them for the loss. After all, that's what laws are for. Lots of people have had their lives disrupted by technological and economic changes before - entire careers which existed a century ago are now gone. Given society provided little or no compensation for prior such cases of disruption, what’s the argument for doing differently here?
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Moral growth and learning from history?
  - skissane 2y ago
    There’s a big risk that you end up creating a scheme to compensate for technological disruption in one industry and then fail to do so in another, based on the political clout / mindshare / media attention each has - and then there are many people in even worse personal situations (through no fault of their own) who would also miss out. Wouldn’t a better alternative be to work on improving social safety nets for everybody, as opposed to providing a bespoke one for a single industry?
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      > Wouldn’t a better alternative be to work on improving social safety nets for everybody, as opposed to providing a bespoke one for a single industry? Yes, but: 1) It's not really an exclusive choice; different people can pursue different angles, including all of them - one can both seek immediate support/compensation for the specific case they're the victim of and seek longer-term solution for everyone who'd face the same problem in the future. 2) A bespoke solution is much more likely to be achievable than a general one. 3) I don't believe it would be good for society for artists to succeed in curtailing generative AI! But, should they succeed, I imagine the consequences will encourage people to seek the more general solution that mitigates occupational damage of GenAI while preserving its availability, instead of having to deal with a series of bespoke stopgaps that also kills GenAI entirely. 4) Not that banning GenAI has any chance of succeeding - the most we'd get is it being unavailable in some countries, who'd then be at a disadvantage in competition with countries that embraced it. Again, I'm not in favor of banning GenAI - on the contrary, I'm in favor of giving a blanket exception from copyright laws for purposes of training generative models. However, I recognize the plight of artists and other people who are feeling the negative economic impact on their jobs right now (and hell, my own line of work - software development - is still one of the most at risk in the near to mid-term, too); I wish for a solution that will help them (and others about to be in this situation), but in the meantime, I don't begrudge them for trying to fight it - I think they have full right to. I only have problems with people who oppose AI because they feel that Big AI is depriving them of opportunity to seek rent from society for the value AI models are creating.

skissane 2y ago

> they have a legitimate argument that this is an unexpected, undeserved, unfair calamity for them, threatening to derail their lives, and lives of their dependents, across the entire sector - and therefore that laws should be changed to shield them, or compensate them for the loss. After all, that's what laws are for. Lots of people have had their lives disrupted by technological and economic changes before - entire careers which existed a century ago are now gone. Given society provided little or no compensation for prior such cases of disruption, what’s the argument for doing differently here?

TeMPOraL 2y ago
Moral growth and learning from history?
- skissane 2y ago
  There’s a big risk that you end up creating a scheme to compensate for technological disruption in one industry and then fail to do so in another, based on the political clout / mindshare / media attention each has - and then there are many people in even worse personal situations (through no fault of their own) who would also miss out. Wouldn’t a better alternative be to work on improving social safety nets for everybody, as opposed to providing a bespoke one for a single industry?
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    > Wouldn’t a better alternative be to work on improving social safety nets for everybody, as opposed to providing a bespoke one for a single industry? Yes, but: 1) It's not really an exclusive choice; different people can pursue different angles, including all of them - one can both seek immediate support/compensation for the specific case they're the victim of and seek longer-term solution for everyone who'd face the same problem in the future. 2) A bespoke solution is much more likely to be achievable than a general one. 3) I don't believe it would be good for society for artists to succeed in curtailing generative AI! But, should they succeed, I imagine the consequences will encourage people to seek the more general solution that mitigates occupational damage of GenAI while preserving its availability, instead of having to deal with a series of bespoke stopgaps that also kills GenAI entirely. 4) Not that banning GenAI has any chance of succeeding - the most we'd get is it being unavailable in some countries, who'd then be at a disadvantage in competition with countries that embraced it. Again, I'm not in favor of banning GenAI - on the contrary, I'm in favor of giving a blanket exception from copyright laws for purposes of training generative models. However, I recognize the plight of artists and other people who are feeling the negative economic impact on their jobs right now (and hell, my own line of work - software development - is still one of the most at risk in the near to mid-term, too); I wish for a solution that will help them (and others about to be in this situation), but in the meantime, I don't begrudge them for trying to fight it - I think they have full right to. I only have problems with people who oppose AI because they feel that Big AI is depriving them of opportunity to seek rent from society for the value AI models are creating.