5 ms·

“Information wants to be free“. It’s not “theft of labor”; the work was already done. If anything it is theft of “intellectual property” (aka “copyright infrin

“Information wants to be free“. It’s not “theft of labor”; the work was already done. If anything it is theft of “intellectual property” (aka “copyright infringement”), if you believe that is a thing, but not of the “labor” that went into it. My personal take: anyone producing content, everyone’s creativity, is fed by something that others did before. We’re all standing on the shoulders of giants composed of previous generations and their “content’s” distribution and dissemination. I have an immense gratitude for all the labor before me that I was and am allowed to partake; without that, I would be nothing. Sharing information is an act of love; gatekeeping it is short-sighted greed. New technologies have always “killed” previous “labor”, out of which new opportunity grows. I just wished the collected data was public. I hope we all get a mega-leak at some point.

bcjdjsndon 15d ago
Unpopular opinion on here
- ambicapter 15d ago
  Probably because it claims there’s no problem, and then makes a tiny little mention of the BIG problem at the very end.
- newsclues 15d ago
  The unpopular part is the hypocrisy where their work has already or must be rewarded while other people’s work is not.
proc0 15d ago
"I just wished the collected data was public. " That's the entire contention here. It's a double standard. Companies will sue the living hell out of anyone taking their IP, whether it's code or art, yet they have no qualms taking all the data they need from anyone and everyone. It was already a problem before, i.e. artists getting paid very little for work that companies profit a lot from like musicians or digital artists, but now with AI it's on steroids.
- DownGoat 15d ago
  On the flip side, output from an LLM is not copyrighted.
  - tremon 15d ago
    That has not been decided. The only thing that's been decided is that the copyright on the output of an LLM is not owned by the LLM itself.
- jrflo 15d ago
  I think the difference is that the companies are dumping billions of dollars into transforming that data into something useful, so they would like a return on their profits. Opening up the models for free is not a good business model if you want to make money.
  - nosyke 14d ago
    I think the difference is that people are investing significant amounts of time, effort, and money into transforming their work into something useful, so naturally they would like some return on that investment. Giving away that work for free is not a particularly good business model if those people expect to be compensated for the value they create.
  - intended 14d ago
    There’s too many implicit assumptions in that sentence that run afoul of the conversation. Just spending money doesn’t mean it’s legal, for example. Criminals expect RoI too.
- blfr 15d ago
  Other companies have no qualms about distilling the first. Let's hop on gear and get the market to deliver a distilled Fable that runs on a smartwatch. Sooner is better.
  - cute_boi 15d ago
aners_xyz 15d ago
[flagged]
polytely 15d ago
I sort of agree, and i think strengtening IP Law is probably not great. But I do think it's very fucked that building generative ai is only possible by taking the works of countless artists and craftspeople and then the model produced from that data immediately gets deployed to destroy the careers of the people whose, work was vital to it being created, without compensation for them, while making a few evil nerds richer than god. I think if you work at one of these labs you owe an enormous debt to society and your earnings should be redistributed among it.
- juiceland 15d ago
  > I think if you work at one of these labs you owe an enormous debt to society and your earnings should be redistributed among it. Now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s start with redistributing the profits from AI companies and then move on to all profits from all companies because the logic is the same.
  - tzs 15d ago
    Nope. You are making one or both of these mistakes. (1) Overlooking that the same logic can lead to different outcomes depending on the premises to which the logic is applied. (2) Overlooking that real life is analog, not digital, and so thinking the premises are the same when they are not.
    - juiceland 15d ago
      The targeted outcome is the redistribution of wealth away from the capital class to the working class. Capitalist exploitation of labor was analog to begin with, and the same premise does apply: the capital class absorbs the fruits of labor, training, and education that is performed by the masses in order to enrich themselves. The capital class owes a tremendous debt to society and if they don't plan on paying we should plan to seize it.
      - Nasrudith 15d ago
        And how has exproproation been working out for you? What is that? Massive poverty and nobody wants to trade with you?
alentred 15d ago
> Sharing information is an act of love Most AI companies are not sharing it, though. They appropriated it and resell it.
fwlr 15d ago
Well the future we seem to be getting is “information wants to be free for the first ten thousand tokens, then $1 per million tokens after”.
- TeMPOraL 14d ago
  Your point notwithstanding, that's still a bargain.
pier25 15d ago
There’s a difference between an individual creating something and the industrialization of creation. You can’t scale the creation of a single person 1000000x by the snap of a finger but you can with machines. This has severe implications.
DanielHB 15d ago
The key problem is that IP is either proprietary to the creator or it is a commons type of situation. Even if you agree with the former exploiting the commons for personal profit is... not good. One could make the argument that if these LLMs were all open weight it would be okay, but to keep the result of the training private and proprietary is not fair.
nisegami 15d ago
>"Information wants to be free". I agree wholeheartedly and in keeping with that, I call upon frontier AI labs to release both their weights and training sets.
JoeJonathan 15d ago
Just because “information wants to be free” is a thing people say doesn’t mean it’s true.
ex-aws-dude 15d ago
> anyone producing content, everyone’s creativity, is fed by something that others did before The thing I produce does not replace demand for the original though? I can’t recite the original for a million people
jayd16 15d ago
So by definition creative labor cannot be stolen? Seems like flawed logic to me.
- beering 15d ago
  Taking the original of a painting from your house is stealing. Copying is only potentially violating the government-granted limited-time exclusivity that allows you to decide who can copy your work. BTW I hereby allow you or your browser to copy this comment into your computer’s RAM.
  - jayd16 15d ago
    It's telling that you need to fall back to non-creative information in your argument. Clearly we're talking about the labor of creating a written or visual work, not the contents of your ram. I did not use the word copy either. My interpretation of the parent comment is that it was rationalizing by claiming all creativity is not fully original and therefore must have no rights. Extrapolated further, this is a collapse of creative works as a profession.
tzs 15d ago
> “Information wants to be free“ What about the rest of that quote?
cush 15d ago
Yikes. That’s some deep entitlement. Unfortunately in the real world there’s this thing called money, and we exchange it for goods and services. The reason information isn’t free is because it costs time to produce it and people need to be fed. If you believe that a creator doesn’t need to consent and doesn’t deserve credit or compensation for their work, then you’re likely not someone who has many fundamental needs unmet These AI companies actively chose not to get consent from creators and earn billions from their content with no compensation.
- armchairhacker 15d ago
  In the past, but today fewer people are getting paid less this way. Would you rather resurrect IP law, or find some new way to pay creators, then finish killing it?
  - avidruntime 15d ago
    > In the past, but today fewer people are getting paid less this way. There has never been more content creators making a living off their content than there is today. Look no further than these enormous platforms with ad rev sharing options for contributors producing UGC. > Would you rather resurrect IP law, or find some new way to pay creators, then finish killing it? Uploading content online and getting a cut of ad revenue fits this criteria, no? The idea that we would scrap IP law and rewrite it from scratch is the very definition of tossing the baby out with the bathwater, IMO.
    - TeMPOraL 14d ago
      > There has never been more content creators making a living off their content than there is today. Look no further than these enormous platforms with ad rev sharing options for contributors producing UGC. And you think anyone is actually making a living this way? It's one of the most extreme winner-take-all markets, even worse than sports and music. Top .1% maybe can live off it, everyone else also has an actual job that pays the bills.
    - armchairhacker 14d ago
equality_1138 15d ago
You wouldn't be standing on the shoulders of giants without IP laws, bub. Your "immense gratitude" is a farce.
eli_gottlieb 15d ago
> It’s not “theft of labor”; the work was already done. If anything it is theft of “intellectual property” (aka “copyright infringement”), if you believe that is a thing, but not of the “labor” that went into it. If you cross out "intellectual" from these sentences, isn't this just the dichotomy of actual workers as living labor vs capital as dead labor?
whiplash451 14d ago
I think you’re confusing fan in and fan out.
Mali- 14d ago
By your argument, I should be able to directly copy a book and sell it myself. The work was already done! What's more, they were fed by everyone's creativity, so of course I should be able to sell an exact copy. In reality, the short-sighted greed is allowing widespread theft of intellectual property; do you think the number of writers would increase or decrease if there were no protections against content theft? If you have such "immense gratitude", pay for the work.
- capr 14d ago
  Most likely increase, despite your intuition. This argument has been debunked so many times both intellectually and empirically. For one, read "Against Intellectual Property" by Stephan Kinsella.

bcjdjsndon 15d ago

Unpopular opinion on here

ambicapter 15d ago
Probably because it claims there’s no problem, and then makes a tiny little mention of the BIG problem at the very end.
newsclues 15d ago
The unpopular part is the hypocrisy where their work has already or must be rewarded while other people’s work is not.

proc0 15d ago

"I just wished the collected data was public. " That's the entire contention here. It's a double standard. Companies will sue the living hell out of anyone taking their IP, whether it's code or art, yet they have no qualms taking all the data they need from anyone and everyone. It was already a problem before, i.e. artists getting paid very little for work that companies profit a lot from like musicians or digital artists, but now with AI it's on steroids.

DownGoat 15d ago
On the flip side, output from an LLM is not copyrighted.
- tremon 15d ago
  That has not been decided. The only thing that's been decided is that the copyright on the output of an LLM is not owned by the LLM itself.
jrflo 15d ago
I think the difference is that the companies are dumping billions of dollars into transforming that data into something useful, so they would like a return on their profits. Opening up the models for free is not a good business model if you want to make money.
- nosyke 14d ago
  I think the difference is that people are investing significant amounts of time, effort, and money into transforming their work into something useful, so naturally they would like some return on that investment. Giving away that work for free is not a particularly good business model if those people expect to be compensated for the value they create.
- intended 14d ago
  There’s too many implicit assumptions in that sentence that run afoul of the conversation. Just spending money doesn’t mean it’s legal, for example. Criminals expect RoI too.
blfr 15d ago
Other companies have no qualms about distilling the first. Let's hop on gear and get the market to deliver a distilled Fable that runs on a smartwatch. Sooner is better.
- cute_boi 15d ago

aners_xyz 15d ago

[flagged]

polytely 15d ago

I sort of agree, and i think strengtening IP Law is probably not great. But I do think it's very fucked that building generative ai is only possible by taking the works of countless artists and craftspeople and then the model produced from that data immediately gets deployed to destroy the careers of the people whose, work was vital to it being created, without compensation for them, while making a few evil nerds richer than god. I think if you work at one of these labs you owe an enormous debt to society and your earnings should be redistributed among it.

juiceland 15d ago
> I think if you work at one of these labs you owe an enormous debt to society and your earnings should be redistributed among it. Now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s start with redistributing the profits from AI companies and then move on to all profits from all companies because the logic is the same.
- tzs 15d ago
  Nope. You are making one or both of these mistakes. (1) Overlooking that the same logic can lead to different outcomes depending on the premises to which the logic is applied. (2) Overlooking that real life is analog, not digital, and so thinking the premises are the same when they are not.
  - juiceland 15d ago
    The targeted outcome is the redistribution of wealth away from the capital class to the working class. Capitalist exploitation of labor was analog to begin with, and the same premise does apply: the capital class absorbs the fruits of labor, training, and education that is performed by the masses in order to enrich themselves. The capital class owes a tremendous debt to society and if they don't plan on paying we should plan to seize it.
    - Nasrudith 15d ago
      And how has exproproation been working out for you? What is that? Massive poverty and nobody wants to trade with you?

alentred 15d ago

> Sharing information is an act of love Most AI companies are not sharing it, though. They appropriated it and resell it.

fwlr 15d ago

Well the future we seem to be getting is “information wants to be free for the first ten thousand tokens, then $1 per million tokens after”.

TeMPOraL 14d ago
Your point notwithstanding, that's still a bargain.

pier25 15d ago

There’s a difference between an individual creating something and the industrialization of creation. You can’t scale the creation of a single person 1000000x by the snap of a finger but you can with machines. This has severe implications.

DanielHB 15d ago

The key problem is that IP is either proprietary to the creator or it is a commons type of situation. Even if you agree with the former exploiting the commons for personal profit is... not good. One could make the argument that if these LLMs were all open weight it would be okay, but to keep the result of the training private and proprietary is not fair.

nisegami 15d ago

>"Information wants to be free". I agree wholeheartedly and in keeping with that, I call upon frontier AI labs to release both their weights and training sets.

JoeJonathan 15d ago

Just because “information wants to be free” is a thing people say doesn’t mean it’s true.

ex-aws-dude 15d ago

> anyone producing content, everyone’s creativity, is fed by something that others did before The thing I produce does not replace demand for the original though? I can’t recite the original for a million people

jayd16 15d ago

So by definition creative labor cannot be stolen? Seems like flawed logic to me.

beering 15d ago
Taking the original of a painting from your house is stealing. Copying is only potentially violating the government-granted limited-time exclusivity that allows you to decide who can copy your work. BTW I hereby allow you or your browser to copy this comment into your computer’s RAM.
- jayd16 15d ago
  It's telling that you need to fall back to non-creative information in your argument. Clearly we're talking about the labor of creating a written or visual work, not the contents of your ram. I did not use the word copy either. My interpretation of the parent comment is that it was rationalizing by claiming all creativity is not fully original and therefore must have no rights. Extrapolated further, this is a collapse of creative works as a profession.

tzs 15d ago

> “Information wants to be free“ What about the rest of that quote?

cush 15d ago

Yikes. That’s some deep entitlement. Unfortunately in the real world there’s this thing called money, and we exchange it for goods and services. The reason information isn’t free is because it costs time to produce it and people need to be fed. If you believe that a creator doesn’t need to consent and doesn’t deserve credit or compensation for their work, then you’re likely not someone who has many fundamental needs unmet These AI companies actively chose not to get consent from creators and earn billions from their content with no compensation.

armchairhacker 15d ago
In the past, but today fewer people are getting paid less this way. Would you rather resurrect IP law, or find some new way to pay creators, then finish killing it?
- avidruntime 15d ago
  > In the past, but today fewer people are getting paid less this way. There has never been more content creators making a living off their content than there is today. Look no further than these enormous platforms with ad rev sharing options for contributors producing UGC. > Would you rather resurrect IP law, or find some new way to pay creators, then finish killing it? Uploading content online and getting a cut of ad revenue fits this criteria, no? The idea that we would scrap IP law and rewrite it from scratch is the very definition of tossing the baby out with the bathwater, IMO.
  - TeMPOraL 14d ago
    > There has never been more content creators making a living off their content than there is today. Look no further than these enormous platforms with ad rev sharing options for contributors producing UGC. And you think anyone is actually making a living this way? It's one of the most extreme winner-take-all markets, even worse than sports and music. Top .1% maybe can live off it, everyone else also has an actual job that pays the bills.
  - armchairhacker 14d ago

equality_1138 15d ago

You wouldn't be standing on the shoulders of giants without IP laws, bub. Your "immense gratitude" is a farce.

eli_gottlieb 15d ago

> It’s not “theft of labor”; the work was already done. If anything it is theft of “intellectual property” (aka “copyright infringement”), if you believe that is a thing, but not of the “labor” that went into it. If you cross out "intellectual" from these sentences, isn't this just the dichotomy of actual workers as living labor vs capital as dead labor?

whiplash451 14d ago

I think you’re confusing fan in and fan out.

Mali- 14d ago

By your argument, I should be able to directly copy a book and sell it myself. The work was already done! What's more, they were fed by everyone's creativity, so of course I should be able to sell an exact copy. In reality, the short-sighted greed is allowing widespread theft of intellectual property; do you think the number of writers would increase or decrease if there were no protections against content theft? If you have such "immense gratitude", pay for the work.

capr 14d ago
Most likely increase, despite your intuition. This argument has been debunked so many times both intellectually and empirically. For one, read "Against Intellectual Property" by Stephan Kinsella.