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One aspect that I feel is ignored by the comments here is the geo-political forces at work. If the US takes the position that LLMs can't use copyrighted work or
by jhaile 1y ago
One aspect that I feel is ignored by the comments here is the geo-political forces at work. If the US takes the position that LLMs can't use copyrighted work or has to compensate all copyright holders – other countries (e.g. China) will not follow suit. This will mean that US LLM companies will either fall behind or be too expensive. Which means China and other countries will probably surge ahead in AI, at least in terms of how useful the AI is.
That is not to say that we shouldn't do the right thing regardless, but I do think there is a feeling of "who is going to rule the world in the future?" tha underlies governmental decision-making on how much to regulate AI.
- bgwalter 1y agoThe same president that is putting 145% tariffs on China could put 1000% tariffs on Internet chat bots located in China. Or order the Internet cables to be cut as a last resort (citing a national emergency as is the new practice). I'm not sure at all what China will do. I find it likely that they'll forbid AI at least for minors so that they do not become less intelligent. Military applications are another matter that are not really related to these copyright issues.
- asddubs 1y agoyou could apply that same logic to any IP breaches though, not just AI
- Ekaros 1y agoYour employee steals your source code and sells it to multiple competitors. Why should you have any right to go after those competitors?
- johnnyanmac 1y agoBecause they bought code from someone not authorized to sell it? This isn't some new phenomenon. We do indeed seize assets from buyers if the seller stole them.
- therouwboat 1y agoIf AI is so important, maybe it should be owned by the government and free to use for all citizens.
- pc86 1y agoName two non-military things that the government owns and aren't complete dumpster fires that barely do the thing they're supposed to do. Even (especially?) the military is a dumpster fire but it's at least very good at doing what it exists to do.
- pergadad 1y agoThe government doesn't make tanks, it just shells out gigantic amounts to companies to make them. That said, there are plenty of successful government actions across the world, where Europe or Japan probably have a good advantage with solid public services. Think streets, healthcare, energy infrastructure, water infrastructure, rail, ...
- pc86 1y agoWe're talking about the US government though
- const_cast 1y agoThere's nothing special about the US government that makes it uniquely shit. The difference here is that we have people like yourself: those who have zero faith in our government and as such act as double agents or saboteurs. When people such as yourself gain power in the legislator they "starve the beast". Meaning, purposefully deconstruct sections of our government such that they have justification for their ideological belief that our government doesn't work. You guys work backwards. The foregone conclusion is that government programs never work, and then you develop convoluted strategies to prove that.
- bilbo0s 1y agoThat's a trick question. I mean, name 2 things anyone owns that aren't dumpster fires? Long time ago industrial engineers used to say, "Even Toyota has recalls." Something being a dumpster fire is so common nowadays that you really need a better reason to argue in support of a given entity's ownership. (Or even non-ownership for that matter.)
- bigbuppo 1y agoThe real problem here is that AI companies aren't even willing to follow the norms of big business and get the laws changed to meet their needs.
- johnnyanmac 1y agoThis is pre iselt why we need proportional fees for courts. We can't just let companies treat the law as a cost benefits analysis. They should live in fear of a court result against their favor.
- oooyay 1y agoWell hell, by that logic average citizens should be able to launder corporate intellectual property because China will never follow suit in adhering to intellectual property law. I'm game if you are.
- jowea 1y agoIsn't that sort of logic precisely why China doesn't adhere to IP law?
- oooyay 1y agoYes, I was being a bit facetious. It was snark intended to point out that corporations don't get to have their cake and eat it too. Either everything is free and there are no boundaries or we live by our own principles.
- r053bud 1y agoIt’s barely facetious though. What is stopping me from “starting an AI company” (LLC, sure), torrenting all ebooks (which Facebook did), and as long as I don’t seed, I’m golden?
- gruez 1y ago>What is stopping me from “starting an AI company” (LLC, sure), torrenting all ebooks (which Facebook did), and as long as I don’t seed, I’m golden? Nothing. You don't even need the LLC. I don't think anyone got prosecuted for only downloading. All prosecutions were for distribution. Note that if you're torrenting, even if you stop the moment it's finished (and thus never goes to "seeding"), you're still uploading, and would count as distribution for the purposes of copyright law.
- Pooge 1y agoWhich is still what Facebook did, if I'm not mistaken. There's no way they torrented and managed to upload less than 1 bit.
- Bjorkbat 1y agoI broadly agree in that sure, unfettered access to copyrighted material will AI more capable, but more capable of what exactly? For national security reasons I'm perfectly fine with giving LLMs unfettered access to various academic publications, scientific and technical information, that sort of thing. I'm a little more on the fence about proprietary code, but I have a hard time believing there isn't enough code out there already for LLMs to ingest. Otherwise though, what is an LLM with unfettered access to copyrighted material better at vs one that merely has unfettered access to scientific / technical information + licensed copyrighted material? I would suppose that besides maybe being a more creative writer, the other LLM is far more capable of reproducing copyrighted works. In effect, the other LLM is a more capable plagiarism machine compared to the other, and not necessarily more intelligent, and otherwise doesn't really add any more value. What do we have to gain from condoning it? I think the argument I'm making is a little easier to see in the case of image and video models. The model that has unfettered access to copyrighted material is more capable, sure, but more capable of what? Capable of making images? Capable of reproducing Mario and Luigi in an infinite number of funny scenarios? What do we have to gain from that? What reason do we have for not banning such models outright? Not like we're really missing out on any critical security or economic advantages here.
- Teever 1y agoIf common culture is an effective substrate to communicate ideas as in we can use shared pop culture references to make metaphors to explain complex ideas then the common culture that large companies have ensnared in excessively long copyrights and trademarks to generate massive profits is a useful thing for an LLM that is designed to convey ideas to have embedded in it. If I'm learning about kinematics maybe it would be more effective to have comparisons to Superman flying faster than a speeding bullet and no amount of dry textbooks and academic papers will make up for the lack of such a comparison. This is especially relevant when we're talking about science-fiction which has served as the inspiration for many of the leading edge technologies that we use including stuff like LLMs and AI.
- Bjorkbat 1y agoFair point, we use metaphor to explain and understand a variety of topics, and a lot of those metaphors are best understood through pop culture analogies. A reasonable compromise then is that you can train an AI on Wikipedia, more-or-less. An AI trained this way will have a robust understanding of Superman, enough that it can communicate through metaphor, but it won't have the training data necessary to create a ton of infringing content about Superman (well, it won't be able to create good infringing content anyway. It'll probably have access to a lot of plot summaries but nothing that would help it make a particularly interesting Superman comic or video). To me it seems like encyclopedias use copyrighted pop culture in a way that constitutes fair use, and so training on them seems fine as long as they consent to it.
- hulitu 1y ago> One aspect that I feel is ignored by the comments here is the geo-political forces at work. If the US takes the position that LLMs can't use copyrighted work or has to compensate all copyright holders – other countries (e.g. China) will not follow suit. Oh really ? They didn't had any problem when people installed copyrighted Windows to come after them. BSA. But now Microsoft turns a blind eye because it suits them.
- stonogo 1y agoBig "Mr. President, we cannot allow a mineshaft gap" energy going on, even if it's difficult for me personally to believe that LLMs contribute in any sense to ruling the world.
- arp242 1y agoI get what you're saying, but this is just a race to the bottom, no? It's annoying to see the current pushback against China focusing so much on inconsequential matters with so much nonsense mixed in, because I do think we do need to push back against China on some things.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y agoThe design, manufacture and supply of electronics is far more important than one particular usage, e.g, "LLMs". It has never been a requirement to violate copyrights to produce electronics, or computer software. In fact, arguably there would be no "MicroSoft" were it not for Gates' lobbying for the existence and enforcement of "software copyright". The "Windows" franchise, among others, relies on it. The irony of Microsoft's support for OpenAI is amusing. Copyright enforcement for me but not for thee.