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Yes, true. But does that really shift the argument much? An AI is like the most well-read book nerd you’ve ever met. The AI has read everything. They still won’

by drob518 7mo ago

Yes, true. But does that really shift the argument much? An AI is like the most well-read book nerd you’ve ever met. The AI has read everything. They still won’t recite Harry Potter for you at full length and reading what the original author wrote is part of the pleasure.

nrabulinski 7mo ago
Does a literal book nerd profit megacorporations when they bring up books to you? While burning through a household worth of energy in the process? Also, I’d like to talk with such book nerd because they’d have opinions on books, potentially if I brought up something I have read we could exchange thoughts about it, they could make recommendations for me based on their complex experiences instead of statistics from Reddit comments. An LLM can do none of those, while also doing the former. It’s a lose-lose. Also, a book nerd doesn’t take roughly ~all human created text to train to produce meaningful results. It’s just such a misplaced analogy and people have been making it ever since OpenAI announced chatgpt for the first time - why do people think “an LLM is just a human who read a lot”
- charcircuit 7mo ago
  Megacorporations making profit is not some evil that needs to be stopped. The economy is not zero sum.
  - zephen 7mo ago
    > The economy is not zero sum. This is true. But it's not always positive sum, either. > Megacorporations making profit is not some evil that needs to be stopped. Externalities are a thing. It's not about the profit per se, but about how (a) the making of that profit might negatively impact others, and (b) the deployment of that profit in pursuit of rent-seeking and other antisocial behavior in order to insure its continued existence might also negatively impact others.
    - drob518 7mo ago
      Externalities are a thing, but this isn’t exactly dumping toxic waste into a river.
      - trinsic2 7mo ago
        I disagree with that. from what I read data centers are going to have some real world negative effects on human populations
      - zephen 7mo ago
        No, it's more just drying the river up entirely. https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/25/texas-data-center-water-use/ https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/25/texas-data-center-wa...
triceratops 7mo ago
> An AI is like the most well-read book nerd you’ve ever met. The AI has read everything But no real book nerd has read everything. Current law was designed for the capabilities of humans.
- drob518 7mo ago
  Sure, we could change current law, but I think that only forces an AI company to buy one copy of every book. I don’t think it gives any sort of royalty stream to anyone beyond that. Copyright is literally the right to make copies. Once I have acquired a copy, I can read it, summarize it, transform it, etc. in myriad ways.
  - triceratops 7mo ago
    You can't make copies though. AI training requires making copies of materials, even if they're purchased.
    - drob518 7mo ago
      Not true. You can photocopy pages from a book you own for your own use. You can make copies of purchased software as a backup. What you can’t do is make copies and give them to all your friends or sell them to the public.
      - triceratops 7mo ago
        > You can photocopy pages from a book you own for your own use No. You won't get it trouble for it. But it is against the law. https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright "U.S. copyright law provides copyright owners with the following exclusive rights: Reproduce the work in copies" This doesn't differentiate between partial and complete copies. > You can make copies of purchased software as a backup This is true. They had to write out that exception for digital media. And the key is "backup". You can't run or use multiple copies if you only own one.
intended 7mo ago
Yes. 1) Quantity is its own quality: Scale makes a difference 2) The tools themselves automate tasks and consolidate their outputs. The “sale” of a piece of content, and its consumption, shifts away from the people producing it Example: We have entire networks and systems that depended on consumption occurring on the site itself. News websites, or indie sites depend on ad revenue.

by drob518 7mo ago

nrabulinski 7mo ago

Does a literal book nerd profit megacorporations when they bring up books to you? While burning through a household worth of energy in the process? Also, I’d like to talk with such book nerd because they’d have opinions on books, potentially if I brought up something I have read we could exchange thoughts about it, they could make recommendations for me based on their complex experiences instead of statistics from Reddit comments. An LLM can do none of those, while also doing the former. It’s a lose-lose. Also, a book nerd doesn’t take roughly ~all human created text to train to produce meaningful results. It’s just such a misplaced analogy and people have been making it ever since OpenAI announced chatgpt for the first time - why do people think “an LLM is just a human who read a lot”

charcircuit 7mo ago
Megacorporations making profit is not some evil that needs to be stopped. The economy is not zero sum.
- zephen 7mo ago
  > The economy is not zero sum. This is true. But it's not always positive sum, either. > Megacorporations making profit is not some evil that needs to be stopped. Externalities are a thing. It's not about the profit per se, but about how (a) the making of that profit might negatively impact others, and (b) the deployment of that profit in pursuit of rent-seeking and other antisocial behavior in order to insure its continued existence might also negatively impact others.
  - drob518 7mo ago
    Externalities are a thing, but this isn’t exactly dumping toxic waste into a river.
    - trinsic2 7mo ago
      I disagree with that. from what I read data centers are going to have some real world negative effects on human populations
    - zephen 7mo ago
      No, it's more just drying the river up entirely. https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/25/texas-data-center-water-use/ https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/25/texas-data-center-wa...

triceratops 7mo ago

> An AI is like the most well-read book nerd you’ve ever met. The AI has read everything But no real book nerd has read everything. Current law was designed for the capabilities of humans.

drob518 7mo ago
Sure, we could change current law, but I think that only forces an AI company to buy one copy of every book. I don’t think it gives any sort of royalty stream to anyone beyond that. Copyright is literally the right to make copies. Once I have acquired a copy, I can read it, summarize it, transform it, etc. in myriad ways.
- triceratops 7mo ago
  You can't make copies though. AI training requires making copies of materials, even if they're purchased.
  - drob518 7mo ago
    Not true. You can photocopy pages from a book you own for your own use. You can make copies of purchased software as a backup. What you can’t do is make copies and give them to all your friends or sell them to the public.
    - triceratops 7mo ago
      > You can photocopy pages from a book you own for your own use No. You won't get it trouble for it. But it is against the law. https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright "U.S. copyright law provides copyright owners with the following exclusive rights: Reproduce the work in copies" This doesn't differentiate between partial and complete copies. > You can make copies of purchased software as a backup This is true. They had to write out that exception for digital media. And the key is "backup". You can't run or use multiple copies if you only own one.

intended 7mo ago

Yes. 1) Quantity is its own quality: Scale makes a difference 2) The tools themselves automate tasks and consolidate their outputs. The “sale” of a piece of content, and its consumption, shifts away from the people producing it Example: We have entire networks and systems that depended on consumption occurring on the site itself. News websites, or indie sites depend on ad revenue.