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> LLMs immediately and completely displace the bread-and-butter replacement-tier illustration and design work that makes up much of that profession And so what
by hatefulmoron 1y ago
> LLMs immediately and completely displace the bread-and-butter replacement-tier illustration and design work that makes up much of that profession
And so what? Tell it to the Graphviz diagram creators, entry level Javascript programmers, horse carriage drivers, etc. What's special?
> .. and does so by effectively counterfeiting creative expression
What does this actually mean, though? ChatGPT isn't claiming to have "creative expression" in this sense. Everybody knows that it's generating an image using mathematics executed on a GPU. It's creating images. Like an LLM creates text. It creates artwork in the same sense that it creates novels.
> Far more importantly, though, artists haven't spent the last quarter century working to eliminate protections for IPR. Software developers have.
Programmers are very particular about licenses in opposition to your theory. Copyleft licensing leans heavily on enforcing copyright. Besides, I hear artists complain about the duration of copyright frequently. Pointing to some subset of programmers that are against IPR is just nutpicking in any case.
- tptacek 1y agoOh, for sure. Programmers are very particular about licenses. For code.
- hatefulmoron 1y agoI get it, you have an axe to grind against some subset of programmers who are "nerds" in a "piracy culture". Artists don't deserve special protections. It sucks for your family members, I really mean that, but they will have to adapt with everybody else.
- mwcampbell 1y agoI disagree with you on this. Artists, writers, and programmers deserve equal protection, and this means that tptacek is right to criticize nerd piracy culture. In other words, we programmers should respect artists and writers too.
- hatefulmoron 1y agoTo be clear, we're not in disagreement. We should all respect each other. However, it's pretty clear that the cat's out of the bag, and trying to claw back protections for only one group of people is stupid. It really betrays the author's own biases.
- victorbjorklund 1y agoDoubt it is the same people. I doubt anyone argues that paintings deserve no protection while code does it.
- tptacek 1y agoI do have an axe to grind, and that part of the post is axe-grindy (though: it sincerely informs how I think about LLMs), I knew that going into it (unanimous feedback from reviewers!) and I own it.
- marcusb 1y agoI generally agree with your post. Many of the arguments against LLMs being thrown around are unserious, unsound, and a made-for-social-media circle jerk that don't survive any serious adversarial scrutiny. That said, this particular argument you are advancing isn't getting so much heat here because of an unfriendly audience that just doesn't want to hear what you have to say. Or that is defensive because of hypocrisy and past copyright transgressions. It is being torn apart because this argument that artists deserve protection, but software engineers don't is unsound special pleading of the kind you criticize in your post. Firstly, the idea that programmers are uniquely hypocritical about IPR is hyperbole unsupported by any evidence you've offered. It is little more than a vibe. As I recall, when Photoshop was sold with a perpetual license, it was widely pirated. By artists. Secondly, the idea -- that you dance around but don't state outright -- that programmers should be singled out for punishment since "we" put others out of work is absurd and naive. "We" didn't do that. It isn't the capital owners over at Travelocity that are going to pay the price for LLM displacement of software engineers, it is the junior engineer making $140k/year with a mortgage. Thirdly, if you don't buy into LLM usage as violating IPR, then what exactly is your argument against LLM use for the arts? Just a policy edict that thou shalt not use LLMs to create images because it puts some working artists out of business? Is there a threshold of job destruction that has to occur for you to think we should ban LLMs use case by use case? Are there any other outlaws/scarlet-letter-bearers in addition to programmers that will never receive any policy protection in this area because of real or perceived past transgressions?
- tptacek 1y agoAdobe is one of the most successful corporations in the history of commerce; the piracy technologists enabled wrecked most media industries. Again, the argument I'm making regarding artists is that LLMs are counterfeiting human art. I don't accept the premise that structurally identical solutions in software counterfeit their originals.