5 ms·

Makes sense to me. AI models are trained on (as large of a subset as possible of) the sum of human knowledge, so their outputs should belong to humanity as a w

Makes sense to me. AI models are trained on (as large of a subset as possible of) the sum of human knowledge, so their outputs should belong to humanity as a whole. Really so should all creative works, on the same basis of all creative expression being the product of the society and civilization which fundamentally and inescapably influenced the creator — and they would belong to humanity as a whole, if it wasn't for intellectual property systems demanding the removal of ideas from the commons.

iwontberude 2mo ago
[dead]
kulahan 2mo ago
Really gotta force the starving artist motif or what's the point?
- ozlikethewizard 2mo ago
  That we all stand on the shoulders of giants? There is no private innovation that isnt built on mountains on publicly shared knowledge and innovation, and usually public funds as well. The idea that private enterprise leads innovation is propaganda, i.e publicly funded academic study paved the way for LLMs, corps just commodotise ideas to make them viable under capitalism.
  - gruez 2mo ago
    >The idea that private enterprise leads innovation is propaganda, i.e publicly funded academic study paved the way for LLMs, corps just commodotise ideas to make them viable under capitalism. So if you founded some wildly successful unicorn, I (or the government) can come over and say "nice startup, too bad it runs off of the internet (based off ARPANET), so your startup belongs to the the state now"?
    - ozlikethewizard 2mo ago
      Got a whole wagon of straw to sell you, you're going to need it
    - yellowapple 2mo ago
      The government can already do that if it so chooses, given that the government is the singular reason why any corporation is able to exist as an independent legal entity in the first place (as opposed to a bunch of individual persons collaborating informally).
gruez 2mo ago
>Makes sense to me. AI models are trained on (as large of a subset as possible of) the sum of human knowledge, so their outputs should belong to humanity as a whole. No it doesn't, because that would mean any sort of secondary source shouldn't be eligible for copyright either, eg. encyclopedias, which are basically rehashing "the sum of human knowledge".
- solid_fuel 2mo ago
  Interesting POV. Remind me - did those encyclopedias pay experts to write their contents, or did they just hoover up every bit of text they could find - regardless of owner - and toss it into a blender?
  - jujube3 2mo ago
    Sure, I'll remind you. The most popular encyclopedia of our time, Wikipedia, doesn't pay most of its contributors (I think they do have some administrative staff or something?). Nor do they pay journalists or authors for the articles and books that they cite.
    - solid_fuel 2mo ago
      Interesting, interesting. And this wikipedia - it gets its contents by hoovering up the web, then? Or do you maybe want to put on your thinking hat and consider the difference between voluntary contributions and theft?
      - jujube3 2mo ago
        Yes, Wikipedia gets its content largely by hovering up the web, without the consent of the authors. For example you can cite a New York Times article in Wikipedia, without getting the consent of the NYT author. Wikipedia also "hoovers up" (as you put it) offline sources like books. Again without consent! Indeed, the need to get consent from the author before reading a published work Isn't A Thing in general, outside some very specific contractural scenarios.
9dev 2mo ago
I’m all for this, if we also set up a system to let society pay for artists. And I mean in full: cover for their living expenses; their rent; internet access; materials; everything. Or how do you suppose art gets created for humanity as a whole to enjoy?
- yellowapple 2mo ago
  That, too, is something for which I've been advocating for quite some time now.
- gruez 2mo ago
  >And I mean in full: cover for their living expenses; their rent; internet access; materials; everything. Who decides which artists get subsidized? How would larger projects work? Seeing how often open source volunteer projects implode due to various community drama, this sort of system would basically preclude any sort of big production.
  - yellowapple 2mo ago
    > Who decides which artists get subsidized? The easy answer is to just pay literally everyone. This is called a “universal basic income”, and has been repeatedly demonstrated to be a good idea for many reasons besides decoupling creative expression from the need to put food on the table.
TheOtherHobbes 2mo ago
It's either/or. Either you reward creators and inventors to keep creating and inventing and keep poverty at bay, or you give everyone enough to avoid poverty whether they work or not and reward c+i in some other way. What we have now is neither - owners are hugely over-rewarded for owning things and extracting passive value from everyone else, creators and inventors are kinda sorta rewarded sometimes if they're lucky and very much not if they're not. Just like other workers. "The commons" is not a thing in this model, except in a few small niches.
- wakawaka28 2mo ago
  >What we have now is neither - owners are hugely over-rewarded for owning things and extracting passive value from everyone else, creators and inventors are kinda sorta rewarded sometimes if they're lucky and very much not if they're not. Just like other workers. Creators and inventors are rewarded but obviously they cannot consume the whole pie. The people who invest in creative pursuits eat a lot of losses. People only seem to notice profitable successes, and forget that failures need to be paid for as well. The same logic also applies to workers. The fact that your labor costs money is a guarantee, and it might not make money at all. We can think of a few examples where the work is directly delivered to consumers with zero marginal overhead, but most work DOES have overhead and liabilities, no matter how simple.
- yellowapple 2mo ago
  That's indeed one of many reasons why I'm staunchly pro-UBI.
rileymat2 2mo ago
I don't really understand this, I was trained on all the knowledge I was capable of ingesting, but my outputs are largely mine unless there is too much similarity to a copyrighted work. I don't understand why AI would be different. When I do work for hire, my employer owns it, roughly equivalent to me paying Open AI/Anthropic for output.
- ranger_danger 2mo ago
  It's not, barring any secondary issues like proof the training data was acquired illegally. When there is a copyright dispute, it's always a subjective test on the judge/jury's part as to how similar it is in appearance, purpose, etc. if it's not deemed fair use.

iwontberude 2mo ago

[dead]

kulahan 2mo ago

Really gotta force the starving artist motif or what's the point?

ozlikethewizard 2mo ago
That we all stand on the shoulders of giants? There is no private innovation that isnt built on mountains on publicly shared knowledge and innovation, and usually public funds as well. The idea that private enterprise leads innovation is propaganda, i.e publicly funded academic study paved the way for LLMs, corps just commodotise ideas to make them viable under capitalism.
- gruez 2mo ago
  >The idea that private enterprise leads innovation is propaganda, i.e publicly funded academic study paved the way for LLMs, corps just commodotise ideas to make them viable under capitalism. So if you founded some wildly successful unicorn, I (or the government) can come over and say "nice startup, too bad it runs off of the internet (based off ARPANET), so your startup belongs to the the state now"?
  - ozlikethewizard 2mo ago
    Got a whole wagon of straw to sell you, you're going to need it
  - yellowapple 2mo ago
    The government can already do that if it so chooses, given that the government is the singular reason why any corporation is able to exist as an independent legal entity in the first place (as opposed to a bunch of individual persons collaborating informally).

gruez 2mo ago

>Makes sense to me. AI models are trained on (as large of a subset as possible of) the sum of human knowledge, so their outputs should belong to humanity as a whole. No it doesn't, because that would mean any sort of secondary source shouldn't be eligible for copyright either, eg. encyclopedias, which are basically rehashing "the sum of human knowledge".

solid_fuel 2mo ago
Interesting POV. Remind me - did those encyclopedias pay experts to write their contents, or did they just hoover up every bit of text they could find - regardless of owner - and toss it into a blender?
- jujube3 2mo ago
  Sure, I'll remind you. The most popular encyclopedia of our time, Wikipedia, doesn't pay most of its contributors (I think they do have some administrative staff or something?). Nor do they pay journalists or authors for the articles and books that they cite.
  - solid_fuel 2mo ago
    Interesting, interesting. And this wikipedia - it gets its contents by hoovering up the web, then? Or do you maybe want to put on your thinking hat and consider the difference between voluntary contributions and theft?
    - jujube3 2mo ago
      Yes, Wikipedia gets its content largely by hovering up the web, without the consent of the authors. For example you can cite a New York Times article in Wikipedia, without getting the consent of the NYT author. Wikipedia also "hoovers up" (as you put it) offline sources like books. Again without consent! Indeed, the need to get consent from the author before reading a published work Isn't A Thing in general, outside some very specific contractural scenarios.

9dev 2mo ago

I’m all for this, if we also set up a system to let society pay for artists. And I mean in full: cover for their living expenses; their rent; internet access; materials; everything. Or how do you suppose art gets created for humanity as a whole to enjoy?

yellowapple 2mo ago
That, too, is something for which I've been advocating for quite some time now.
gruez 2mo ago
>And I mean in full: cover for their living expenses; their rent; internet access; materials; everything. Who decides which artists get subsidized? How would larger projects work? Seeing how often open source volunteer projects implode due to various community drama, this sort of system would basically preclude any sort of big production.
- yellowapple 2mo ago
  > Who decides which artists get subsidized? The easy answer is to just pay literally everyone. This is called a “universal basic income”, and has been repeatedly demonstrated to be a good idea for many reasons besides decoupling creative expression from the need to put food on the table.

TheOtherHobbes 2mo ago

It's either/or. Either you reward creators and inventors to keep creating and inventing and keep poverty at bay, or you give everyone enough to avoid poverty whether they work or not and reward c+i in some other way. What we have now is neither - owners are hugely over-rewarded for owning things and extracting passive value from everyone else, creators and inventors are kinda sorta rewarded sometimes if they're lucky and very much not if they're not. Just like other workers. "The commons" is not a thing in this model, except in a few small niches.

wakawaka28 2mo ago
>What we have now is neither - owners are hugely over-rewarded for owning things and extracting passive value from everyone else, creators and inventors are kinda sorta rewarded sometimes if they're lucky and very much not if they're not. Just like other workers. Creators and inventors are rewarded but obviously they cannot consume the whole pie. The people who invest in creative pursuits eat a lot of losses. People only seem to notice profitable successes, and forget that failures need to be paid for as well. The same logic also applies to workers. The fact that your labor costs money is a guarantee, and it might not make money at all. We can think of a few examples where the work is directly delivered to consumers with zero marginal overhead, but most work DOES have overhead and liabilities, no matter how simple.
yellowapple 2mo ago
That's indeed one of many reasons why I'm staunchly pro-UBI.

rileymat2 2mo ago

I don't really understand this, I was trained on all the knowledge I was capable of ingesting, but my outputs are largely mine unless there is too much similarity to a copyrighted work. I don't understand why AI would be different. When I do work for hire, my employer owns it, roughly equivalent to me paying Open AI/Anthropic for output.

ranger_danger 2mo ago
It's not, barring any secondary issues like proof the training data was acquired illegally. When there is a copyright dispute, it's always a subjective test on the judge/jury's part as to how similar it is in appearance, purpose, etc. if it's not deemed fair use.