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I know people really hate AI training on their work - but is it really any different than a human reading it? I know there's a complaint that AI can verbatim r
by qarl 6mo ago
I know people really hate AI training on their work - but is it really any different than a human reading it?
I know there's a complaint that AI can verbatim repeat that work. But so can human savants. No one is suing human savants for reading their books.
Producing copyrighted material, of course. Training on copyrighted material... I just don't see it.
EDIT: Making a perfectly valid point, but it's unpopular, so down I go.
- NoOn3 6mo agoWhy should an AI have the same rights as a human? How about then to grant AI all other rights, for example, to allow voting?(sarcasm)
- qarl 6mo agoWe're not talking about rights, we're talking about illegal acts. If it's illegal for a machine to do it, how can it be ok for a human? Just from a rational argumentation point of view. Clearly if a law is written saying as much, then sure. But there is no such copyright law like that yet.
- NoOn3 6mo agoThe issue is certainly not so simple. But it seems to me, purely theoretically, that the rules don't necessarily have to be the same for living people and non-living machines.
- qarl 6mo agoWell - actually - it is pretty simple. For something to be illegal, there must be a law saying it's illegal. There are no laws distinguishing humans from machines in copyright law.
- triceratops 6mo ago> There are no laws distinguishing humans from machines in copyright law Correct. Because until very recently there was no need.
- qarl 6mo agoAH. So you agree that it's not illegal.
- triceratops 6mo agoWhat isn't?
- qarl 6mo agoI'm just happy you agree with me.
- triceratops 6mo agoI don't agree with most of what you've said on this discussion. I couldn't have been clearer about that in my other replies. The only part I did agree on was a hypothetical that hasn't happened.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- qarl 6mo ago[dead]
- pkaeding 6mo agoBut machines don't do things. People do things, and they use tools/machines to do those things more easily or efficiently.
- qarl 6mo agoMy apologies - I'm speaking loosely of course. Translate all my claims about machines breaking the law into claims about humans using machine breaking the law.
- pkaeding 6mo agoSorry, I wasn't trying to be pedantic. I was trying to make the point (which I think is in line with your point) that the fact that AI is involved here doesn't make a difference. It is a tool, but the people using the tool are (as always) responsible for the outcome.
- nancyminusone 6mo agoNo one is asking human savants about what they read 1 million times per day. Suppose they did, and some guy was filling stadiums regularly to hear him recite an entire audio book. That would probably get the attention of someone's lawyers.
- qarl 6mo agoI don't see your point. The problem is producing the copyrighted work, not processing it beforehand. If it's illegal for AIs it should be illegal for humans, too. Is that really what you're arguing? It should be illegal for savants to read books?
- SahAssar 6mo agoI don't think anyone is arguing that the consumption is illegal. It's the reproduction that is illegal. Read a book, that's fine. Write a book, that's fine. Read a book and then write a book that is 99.9% the same as the book that you read and sell it for profit without a license from the original author, that's infringement.
- qarl 6mo agoNo, if you read the article, the point is in the training, not the reproduction. That's what all these lawsuits are about - it's the training not the reproduction. I already agreed in my first comment that the reproduction is off limits. In this case, it appears that Meta torrented illegal copies of the work to do the training. Obviously that's bad. But conflating that with training itself doesn't follow.
- doublescoop 6mo agoIf copyright law doesn't extend to the works being used for training, why should it extend to the model that is produced as a result? AI model creators have set up an ethical scenario where the right thing to do is ignore copyright laws when it comes to AI, which includes model use. It might never be legal, but it has become ethical to pirate models, distill them against ToS, etc.
- grebc 6mo agoIt’s different.
- thomasahle 6mo agoThe human savant will remember where they read it and give you credit. It might lead more people to read your work, and ultimately you make money. The AI won't even know where the page of text it's seeing came from, and people will avoid your book as they can just ask the AI. So you make less money. (Talking about specialized technical books here.)
- qarl 6mo agoNot necessarily.
- fantasizr 6mo agoreading it after stealing it: gray area. producing & monetizing competing works devaluing the original is a problem
- qarl 6mo agoSo is it a problem when humans produce and monetize competing works? My understanding is that there quite an industry in humans reading books and synthesizing their points. Cliff's Notes, for example.
- fantasizr 6mo agoI did some quick googling and most of cliffs notes guides are on public domain works so no problem there, they've also paid to license content, and also have been protected by fair use as parody
- qarl 6mo agoTo Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, Beloved, The Kite Runner, The Handmaid's Tale are all copyrighted works with a Cliff's Notes guide.
- jryan49 6mo agoI had to buy the copyrighted material before reading it... Meta apparently operates in a different legal system than me. That's my issue with it.
- qarl 6mo agoYes, I have no objection to that part. It's the arguments that training itself is the problem. Sarah Silverman as the most prominent example.
- jryan49 6mo agoI mean the act of reproducing the copyrighted material is what is illegal. LLMs I've used for coding has outputted exact copyrights for code verbatim into my code before. When that happens it feels kind of fishy to be honest.
- qarl 6mo agoYes. I agree. But many people argue that training itself is a copyright violation. That's the position I'm countering here.
- redsocksfan45 6mo ago[dead]
- Quarondeau 6mo agoThere's a huge difference in scale. The human mind can only process a limited portion of all works available over a lifetime. Human learning is therefore naturally limited to small-scale reuse, which serves to keep it proportional. A machine training on all copyrighted materials in the world for commercial purposes at an industrial scale makes it disproportionate.
- qarl 6mo agoI see that as a distinction - but does it make a difference? If a company hired hundreds of savants, then it would be illegal for them to read books? I don't follow.
- Quarondeau 6mo agoIt would hardly make a dent. And if you hired hundreds of savants, the knowledge would still be spread over hundreds of separate minds. And even if we grant that those savants are also very skilled at creating "market substitutes" based on their training that are capable of competing with the original works, their maximum creative output would only be a relatively small number of new works, because they can only work at human speed.
- qarl 6mo agoOk - but if a company were able to hire one million savants, you feel it should be illegal, because why? Can you cite something in the copyright laws themselves that suggest this scale distinction?
- Quarondeau 6mo agoThis goes back to the original purpose of copyright, which is to serve as an economic incentive for individual creators and artists to make more art, by securing exclusive rights to use their own works commercially for a specified time. The goal is both the creation of more works, but also to protect the economic viability of artists. This principle is quite universal and can be found in many places, including the US constitution and US (supreme) court decisions, many international jurisdictions, treaties and conventions.
- triceratops 6mo ago> I know people really hate AI training on their work - but is it really any different than a human reading it? Yes it's very different. Humans need to eat, sleep, and pay taxes. You also have to pay them competitive wages.
- qarl 6mo agoI'm not sure your argument is supported by the actual law as written.
- triceratops 6mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48029673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48029673 There's nothing in the law to support your argument either. The law however does say, very unambiguously, that copying without permission isn't allowed . There aren't exceptions for "training" just because it's superficially similar to a human activity (reading a book). A human isn't allowed to hand-copy Harry Potter. Even if they bought all the Harry Potter books.
- qarl 6mo agoYes. But training is not copying.
- triceratops 6mo agoWe already covered this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48029085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48029085