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> It's just that we can't show HOW they've been encoded in the model, means it's fair use? Describing training as “encoding them in the model” doesn’t seem lik

> It's just that we can't show HOW they've been encoded in the model, means it's fair use? Describing training as “encoding them in the model” doesn’t seem like an accurate description of what is happening. We know for certain that a typical copyrighted work that is trained on is not contained within the model. It’s simply not possible to represent the entirety of the training set within a model of that size in any meaningful way. There are also papers showing that memorisation plateaus at a reasonably low rate according to the size of the model. Training on more works doesn’t result in more memorisation, it results in more generalisation. So arguments based on the idea that those works are being copied into the model don’t seem to be founded in fact. > I can't sell you a Harry potter book, but I can sell you some service that let's you generate it yourself? That’s the reason why cases like this are doomed to fail: No model can output any of the Harry Potter books. Memorisation doesn’t happen at that scale. At best, they can output snippets. That’s clearly below the proportionality threshold for copyright to matter.

mattigames 1y ago
Copyright was build to protect the artist from unauthorized copy by a human not by a machine (a machine wildly beyond their imagination at the time I mean), so the input and output limitations of humans were absolutely taken into account when writing such laws, if LLMs were treated in similar fashion authors would have had a say in wether their works can be used as inputs in such models or if they forbid it.
- JimDabell 1y ago
  This reply doesn’t seem to relate to either of the points I made.
  - mattigames 1y ago
    Yes it does, the spirit of the law matters in many one cases. A fair ruling would have declared that authors must be able to forbid the usage of their work as training data for any given model because the "transformative" processes that are being executed are wildly beyond what the writers of the law knew were even possible at the time of the writing of such laws.
    - JimDabell 1y ago
      I made two points: - It is not accurate to describe training as “encoding works into the model”. – A model cannot recreate a Harry Potter book. Neither of these have anything to do with “the spirit of the law”.
      - mattigames 1y ago
        > proportionality threshold for copyright to matter. This is the part I have a problem with, that threshold was put there for humans based on their capabilities, it's an extremely dishonest assessment that the same threshold must apply for a LLM and it's outputs, those works were created to be read by humans not a for-profit statistical inference machine, the derivative nature were also expected to be caused by the former no the later, so the judge should have admitted that the context of the law is insufficient and that copyright must include the power of forbidding the usage of one's work into such model for copyright to continue fulfilling it's intended purpose (or move the case to the supreme court I guess)
        JimDabell 1y ago
        > that threshold was put there for humans based on their capabilities It wasn’t. It’s there because a small proportion being reproduced doesn’t harm the copyright holder in the same way a full reproduction does. Nobody is going to stop buying Harry Potter books because they can get an LLM to spit out ~50 words from the book. This is entirely in line with the spirit of the law. This is exactly why proportionality is a factor in fair use.
      - modo_mario 1y ago
        Can it not recreate a book? I kind of assumed I could ask it for verses from the bible one by one till i have the full book? When i ask chatgpt for a specific page or so from HP I get the impression that the model would be perfectly capable of doing so but is hindred by extra work openAI put in to prevent the answer specifically because of copyright. In which case the question: What if someone manages to do some prompt trickery again to get past it? Are they then responsible?
dns_snek 1y ago
> That’s clearly below the proportionality threshold for copyright to matter. This type of reasoning keeps coming up with seemingly zero consideration for why copyright actually exists. The goal of copyright, under US law, is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts". The goal of companies creating these LLMs is to supersede the use of source material they draw from, like books. You use an LLM because it has all the answers without having to spend the money compensating the original authors, or put in the work digesting it yourself, that's their entire value proposition. Their end game is to create a product so good that nobody has a reason to ever buy a book again. A few hours after you publish your book, the LLM will gobble it up and distribute the insights contain within to all of their users for free, "it's fair use", they say. There won't be any economic incentive to write books at that point, and so "the progress of science and useful arts" will crawl to a halt. Copyright defeated. If LLM companies are allowed to produce market substitutes of original works then the goal of copyright is being defeated on a technicality and this ought to be a discussion about whether copyright should be abolished completely, not a discussion about whether big tech should be allowed to get away with it.
- JimDabell 1y ago
  > The goal of companies creating these LLMs is to supersede the use of source material they draw from, like books. Nobody is going to stop buying Harry Potter books because they can get an LLM to spit out ~50 words from one of the books. The proportionality factor is very clearly relevant here. > If LLM companies are allowed to produce market substitutes of original works Did Meta publish a book written by an LLM? > The goal of copyright, under US law, is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts". I would consider training LLMs to be very much in line with those goals.
  - dns_snek 1y ago
    > Nobody is going to stop buying Harry Potter books because they can get an LLM to spit out ~50 words from one of the books. Not yet, but they'll stop buying books on niche technical subjects. > Did Meta publish a book written by an LLM? They don't need to publish a book to substitute original works. They substitute the original work every time they generate a response that is based on the book they substituted. > I would consider training LLMs to be very much in line with those goals. Because you're misunderstanding the premise. Original works are the ones that advance art and science. Those are the ones that are supposed to be protected by copyright.

mattigames 1y ago

Copyright was build to protect the artist from unauthorized copy by a human not by a machine (a machine wildly beyond their imagination at the time I mean), so the input and output limitations of humans were absolutely taken into account when writing such laws, if LLMs were treated in similar fashion authors would have had a say in wether their works can be used as inputs in such models or if they forbid it.

JimDabell 1y ago
This reply doesn’t seem to relate to either of the points I made.
- mattigames 1y ago
  Yes it does, the spirit of the law matters in many one cases. A fair ruling would have declared that authors must be able to forbid the usage of their work as training data for any given model because the "transformative" processes that are being executed are wildly beyond what the writers of the law knew were even possible at the time of the writing of such laws.
  - JimDabell 1y ago
    I made two points: - It is not accurate to describe training as “encoding works into the model”. – A model cannot recreate a Harry Potter book. Neither of these have anything to do with “the spirit of the law”.
    - mattigames 1y ago
      > proportionality threshold for copyright to matter. This is the part I have a problem with, that threshold was put there for humans based on their capabilities, it's an extremely dishonest assessment that the same threshold must apply for a LLM and it's outputs, those works were created to be read by humans not a for-profit statistical inference machine, the derivative nature were also expected to be caused by the former no the later, so the judge should have admitted that the context of the law is insufficient and that copyright must include the power of forbidding the usage of one's work into such model for copyright to continue fulfilling it's intended purpose (or move the case to the supreme court I guess)
      - JimDabell 1y ago
        > that threshold was put there for humans based on their capabilities It wasn’t. It’s there because a small proportion being reproduced doesn’t harm the copyright holder in the same way a full reproduction does. Nobody is going to stop buying Harry Potter books because they can get an LLM to spit out ~50 words from the book. This is entirely in line with the spirit of the law. This is exactly why proportionality is a factor in fair use.
    - modo_mario 1y ago
      Can it not recreate a book? I kind of assumed I could ask it for verses from the bible one by one till i have the full book? When i ask chatgpt for a specific page or so from HP I get the impression that the model would be perfectly capable of doing so but is hindred by extra work openAI put in to prevent the answer specifically because of copyright. In which case the question: What if someone manages to do some prompt trickery again to get past it? Are they then responsible?

dns_snek 1y ago

> That’s clearly below the proportionality threshold for copyright to matter. This type of reasoning keeps coming up with seemingly zero consideration for why copyright actually exists. The goal of copyright, under US law, is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts". The goal of companies creating these LLMs is to supersede the use of source material they draw from, like books. You use an LLM because it has all the answers without having to spend the money compensating the original authors, or put in the work digesting it yourself, that's their entire value proposition. Their end game is to create a product so good that nobody has a reason to ever buy a book again. A few hours after you publish your book, the LLM will gobble it up and distribute the insights contain within to all of their users for free, "it's fair use", they say. There won't be any economic incentive to write books at that point, and so "the progress of science and useful arts" will crawl to a halt. Copyright defeated. If LLM companies are allowed to produce market substitutes of original works then the goal of copyright is being defeated on a technicality and this ought to be a discussion about whether copyright should be abolished completely, not a discussion about whether big tech should be allowed to get away with it.

JimDabell 1y ago
> The goal of companies creating these LLMs is to supersede the use of source material they draw from, like books. Nobody is going to stop buying Harry Potter books because they can get an LLM to spit out ~50 words from one of the books. The proportionality factor is very clearly relevant here. > If LLM companies are allowed to produce market substitutes of original works Did Meta publish a book written by an LLM? > The goal of copyright, under US law, is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts". I would consider training LLMs to be very much in line with those goals.
- dns_snek 1y ago
  > Nobody is going to stop buying Harry Potter books because they can get an LLM to spit out ~50 words from one of the books. Not yet, but they'll stop buying books on niche technical subjects. > Did Meta publish a book written by an LLM? They don't need to publish a book to substitute original works. They substitute the original work every time they generate a response that is based on the book they substituted. > I would consider training LLMs to be very much in line with those goals. Because you're misunderstanding the premise. Original works are the ones that advance art and science. Those are the ones that are supposed to be protected by copyright.