4 ms·

[flagged]

ronsor 10mo ago
> believes that AI training data is built on the theft of people's labor I mean, this is an ideological point. It's not based in reason, won't be changed by reason, and is really only a signal to end the engagement with the other party. There's no way to address the point other than agreeing with them, which doesn't make for much of a debate. > an 1800s plantation owner saying "can you imagine trying to explain to someone 100 years from now we tried to stop slavery because of civil rights" I understand this is just an analogy, but for others: people who genuinely compare AI training data to slavery will have their opinions discarded immediately.
- mmooss 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - refulgentis 10mo ago
    [flagged]
  - tombert 10mo ago
    > It's very much based on reason and law. I have no interest in the rest of this argument, but I think I take a bit of issue on this particular point. I don't think the law is fully settled on this in any jurisdiction, but certainly not in the United States. "Reason" is a more nebulous term; I don't think that training data is inherently "theft", any more than inspiration would be even before generative AI. There's probably not an animator alive that wasn't at least partially inspired by the works of Disney, but I don't think that implies that somehow all animations are "stolen" from Disney just because of that fact. Obviously where you draw the line on this is obviously subjective, and I've gone back and forth, but I find it really annoying that everyone is acting like this is so clear cut. Evil corporations like Disney have been trying to use this logic for decades to try and abuse copyright and outlaw being inspired by anything.
    - mmooss 10mo ago
      It can be based on reason and law without being clear cut - that situation applies to most of reason and law. > I don't think that training data is inherently "theft", any more than inspiration would be even before generative AI. There's probably not an animator alive that wasn't at least partially inspired by the works of Disney ... Sure, but you can reason about it, such as by using analogies.
- zwnow 10mo ago
  > I mean, this is an ideological point. It's not based in reason You cant be serious
- beepbooptheory 10mo ago
  What makes something more or less ideological for you in this context? Is "reason" always opposed to ideology for you? What is the ideology at play here for the critics?
- zaptheimpaler 10mo ago
  We have clear evidence that millions of copyrighted books have been used as training data because LLMs can reproduce sections from them verbatim (and emails from employees literally admitting to scraping the data). We have evidence of LLMs reproducing code from github that was never ever released with a license that would permit their use. We know this is illegal. What about any of this is ideological and unreasonable? It's a CRYSTAL CLEAR violation of the law and everyone just shrugs it off because technology or some shit.
  - Alex2037 10mo ago
    >We know this is illegal >It's a CRYSTAL CLEAR violation of the law in the court of reddit's public opinion, perhaps. there is, as far as I can tell, no definite ruling about whether training is a copyright violation. and even if there was, US law is not global law. China, notably, doesn't give a flying fuck. kill American AI companies and you will hand the market over to China. that is why "everyone just shrugs it off".
    - goatlover 10mo ago
      The "China will win the AI race" if we in the West (America) don't is an excuse created by those who started the race in Silicon Valley. It's like America saying it had to win the nuclear arms race, when physicists like Oppenheimer back in the late 1940s were wanting to prevent it once they understood the consequences.
      - Alex2037 10mo ago
        okay, and? what do you picture happening if Western AI companies cease to operate tomorrow and fire all their researchers and engineers?
        Apocryphon 10mo ago
        Less slop
    - zaptheimpaler 10mo ago
refulgentis 10mo ago
[flagged]
- jakelazaroff 10mo ago
  I mean, yeah, if you omit any objectionable detail and describe it in the most generic possible terms then of course the comparison sounds tasteless and offensive. Consider that collecting child pornography is also "storing the result of an HTTP GET".
  - ronsor 10mo ago
    The objection to CSAM is rooted in how it is (inhumanely) produced; people are not merely objecting to a GET request.
    - jakelazaroff 10mo ago
      Indeed, and neither is that what people are objecting to with regard to AI training data.
      - deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
    - beeflet 10mo ago
      Yes, they're objecting to people training on data they don't have the right to, not just the GET request as you suggest. If you distribute child porn, that is a crime. But if you crawl every image on the web and then train a model that can then synthesize child porn, the current legal model apparently has no concept of this and it is treated completely differently. Generally, I am more interested in how this effects copyright. These AI companies just have free reign to convert copyrighted works into the public domain through the proxy of over-trained AI models. If you release something as GPL, they can strip the license, but the same is not true of closed-source code which isn't trained on.
    - tremon 10mo ago
anonym29 10mo ago
[flagged]
- sirwhinesalot 10mo ago
  It's not free. There is a license attached. One you are supposed to follow and not doing so is against the law.
  - anonym29 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - michaelsshaw 10mo ago
      We spread free software for multiple purposes, one of them being the free software ethos. People using that for training proprietary models is antithetical to such ideas. It's also an interesting double standard, wherein if I were to steal OpenAI's models, no AI worshippers would have any issue condemning my action, but when a large company clearly violates the license terms of free software, you give them a pass.
      - ronsor 10mo ago
        > I were to steal OpenAI's models, no AI worshippers would have any issue condemning my action If GPT-5 were "open sourced", I don't think the vast majority of AI users would seriously object.
        sirwhinesalot 10mo ago
        OpenAI got really pissy about DeepSeek using other LLMs to train though. Which is funny since that's a much clearer case of "learning from" than outright compressing all open source code into a giant pile of weights by learning a low-dimensional probability distribution of token sequences.
      - anonym29 10mo ago
JohnnyMarcone 10mo ago
I always wonder if the general sentiment toward genai would be positive if we had wealth redistribution mechanisms in place, so everyone would benefit. Obviously that's not the case, but if you consider the theoretical, do you think your view would be different?
- jakelazaroff 10mo ago
  To be honest, I'm not even sure I'm fully on board with the labor theft argument. But I certainly don't think generative AI is such an unambiguous boon for humankind that we should ignore any possible negative externalities just to advance it.
ThrowawayR2 10mo ago
> "To someone who believes that AI training data is built on the theft of people's labor..." i.e. people who are not hackers. Many (most?) hackers have been against the idea of copyright and intellectual property from the beginning. "Information wants to be free." after all. Must be galling for people to find themselves on the same side as Bill Gates and his Open Letter to Hobbyists in 1976 which was also about "theft of people's labor".

[flagged]

ronsor 10mo ago

> believes that AI training data is built on the theft of people's labor I mean, this is an ideological point. It's not based in reason, won't be changed by reason, and is really only a signal to end the engagement with the other party. There's no way to address the point other than agreeing with them, which doesn't make for much of a debate. > an 1800s plantation owner saying "can you imagine trying to explain to someone 100 years from now we tried to stop slavery because of civil rights" I understand this is just an analogy, but for others: people who genuinely compare AI training data to slavery will have their opinions discarded immediately.

mmooss 10mo ago
[flagged]
- refulgentis 10mo ago
  [flagged]
- tombert 10mo ago
  > It's very much based on reason and law. I have no interest in the rest of this argument, but I think I take a bit of issue on this particular point. I don't think the law is fully settled on this in any jurisdiction, but certainly not in the United States. "Reason" is a more nebulous term; I don't think that training data is inherently "theft", any more than inspiration would be even before generative AI. There's probably not an animator alive that wasn't at least partially inspired by the works of Disney, but I don't think that implies that somehow all animations are "stolen" from Disney just because of that fact. Obviously where you draw the line on this is obviously subjective, and I've gone back and forth, but I find it really annoying that everyone is acting like this is so clear cut. Evil corporations like Disney have been trying to use this logic for decades to try and abuse copyright and outlaw being inspired by anything.
  - mmooss 10mo ago
    It can be based on reason and law without being clear cut - that situation applies to most of reason and law. > I don't think that training data is inherently "theft", any more than inspiration would be even before generative AI. There's probably not an animator alive that wasn't at least partially inspired by the works of Disney ... Sure, but you can reason about it, such as by using analogies.
zwnow 10mo ago
> I mean, this is an ideological point. It's not based in reason You cant be serious
beepbooptheory 10mo ago
What makes something more or less ideological for you in this context? Is "reason" always opposed to ideology for you? What is the ideology at play here for the critics?
zaptheimpaler 10mo ago
We have clear evidence that millions of copyrighted books have been used as training data because LLMs can reproduce sections from them verbatim (and emails from employees literally admitting to scraping the data). We have evidence of LLMs reproducing code from github that was never ever released with a license that would permit their use. We know this is illegal. What about any of this is ideological and unreasonable? It's a CRYSTAL CLEAR violation of the law and everyone just shrugs it off because technology or some shit.
- Alex2037 10mo ago
  >We know this is illegal >It's a CRYSTAL CLEAR violation of the law in the court of reddit's public opinion, perhaps. there is, as far as I can tell, no definite ruling about whether training is a copyright violation. and even if there was, US law is not global law. China, notably, doesn't give a flying fuck. kill American AI companies and you will hand the market over to China. that is why "everyone just shrugs it off".
  - goatlover 10mo ago
    The "China will win the AI race" if we in the West (America) don't is an excuse created by those who started the race in Silicon Valley. It's like America saying it had to win the nuclear arms race, when physicists like Oppenheimer back in the late 1940s were wanting to prevent it once they understood the consequences.
    - Alex2037 10mo ago
      okay, and? what do you picture happening if Western AI companies cease to operate tomorrow and fire all their researchers and engineers?
      - Apocryphon 10mo ago
        Less slop
  - zaptheimpaler 10mo ago

refulgentis 10mo ago

[flagged]

jakelazaroff 10mo ago
I mean, yeah, if you omit any objectionable detail and describe it in the most generic possible terms then of course the comparison sounds tasteless and offensive. Consider that collecting child pornography is also "storing the result of an HTTP GET".
- ronsor 10mo ago
  The objection to CSAM is rooted in how it is (inhumanely) produced; people are not merely objecting to a GET request.
  - jakelazaroff 10mo ago
    Indeed, and neither is that what people are objecting to with regard to AI training data.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
  - beeflet 10mo ago
    Yes, they're objecting to people training on data they don't have the right to, not just the GET request as you suggest. If you distribute child porn, that is a crime. But if you crawl every image on the web and then train a model that can then synthesize child porn, the current legal model apparently has no concept of this and it is treated completely differently. Generally, I am more interested in how this effects copyright. These AI companies just have free reign to convert copyrighted works into the public domain through the proxy of over-trained AI models. If you release something as GPL, they can strip the license, but the same is not true of closed-source code which isn't trained on.
  - tremon 10mo ago

anonym29 10mo ago

[flagged]

sirwhinesalot 10mo ago
It's not free. There is a license attached. One you are supposed to follow and not doing so is against the law.
- anonym29 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - michaelsshaw 10mo ago
    We spread free software for multiple purposes, one of them being the free software ethos. People using that for training proprietary models is antithetical to such ideas. It's also an interesting double standard, wherein if I were to steal OpenAI's models, no AI worshippers would have any issue condemning my action, but when a large company clearly violates the license terms of free software, you give them a pass.
    - ronsor 10mo ago
      > I were to steal OpenAI's models, no AI worshippers would have any issue condemning my action If GPT-5 were "open sourced", I don't think the vast majority of AI users would seriously object.
      - sirwhinesalot 10mo ago
        OpenAI got really pissy about DeepSeek using other LLMs to train though. Which is funny since that's a much clearer case of "learning from" than outright compressing all open source code into a giant pile of weights by learning a low-dimensional probability distribution of token sequences.
    - anonym29 10mo ago

JohnnyMarcone 10mo ago

I always wonder if the general sentiment toward genai would be positive if we had wealth redistribution mechanisms in place, so everyone would benefit. Obviously that's not the case, but if you consider the theoretical, do you think your view would be different?

jakelazaroff 10mo ago
To be honest, I'm not even sure I'm fully on board with the labor theft argument. But I certainly don't think generative AI is such an unambiguous boon for humankind that we should ignore any possible negative externalities just to advance it.

ThrowawayR2 10mo ago

> "To someone who believes that AI training data is built on the theft of people's labor..." i.e. people who are not hackers. Many (most?) hackers have been against the idea of copyright and intellectual property from the beginning. "Information wants to be free." after all. Must be galling for people to find themselves on the same side as Bill Gates and his Open Letter to Hobbyists in 1976 which was also about "theft of people's labor".