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Some of their arguments are more than just naive ones. They argue that LLMs are stealing our culture to feed it back to us. Can we really argue that they didn
by xutopia 15d ago
Some of their arguments are more than just naive ones.
They argue that LLMs are stealing our culture to feed it back to us. Can we really argue that they didn't make use of everything we wrote and said online to train their data?
- bubblemoth 15d agoI mean, the CEO of Microsoft would agree with them: https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/17/microsoft-exec-called-ai-scraping-the-largest-theft-of-labor-in-human-history-new-unredacted-filings-reveal/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/17/microsoft-exec-called-ai-s...
- verelo 15d agoYeah honestly, I see a future where people start suing for reparations over things like this.
- red-iron-pine 15d ago"I would like my $18 for reddit shitposts, plz"
- verelo 14d agoI bet in many cases, the history of a single reddit account is worth substantially more than $18
- gdevenyi 15d ago> They argue that LLMs are stealing our culture to feed it back to us. How is that any different from what media already did. Most of Disney's original material was European cultural stories.
- rwmj 15d agoThere's a rather large difference in scale for a start.
- Aerroon 15d agoIndeed. Disney's cultural impact has been far greater.
- Apocryphon 15d agoActual humans were involved in that process, implying creativity, intent, craftsmanship went into the final work, not just a mechanical process.
- ds_opseeker 15d agoI agree with you, and also wish the wakeup call had come when the Mouse locked up our culture. (Copyright Act of 1976 Shifted the framework to the life of the author plus 50 years, Or 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act pushed individual protection to the life of the author plus 70 years) Maybe now the wakeup call is loud enough to actually wake more people?
- gdevenyi 15d agoYou got it
- runarberg 15d agoThis question is in bad faith. There are plenty of obvious differences and the poster knows it.
- esafak 15d agoNobody's livelihood was affected by appropriating old folk tales.
- jrflo 15d agoWhere did you see this? The only claim I saw from the article was that 1 prompt uses 16oz of water, which is obviously false if you do any level of research
- reilly3000 15d agoTalk to people. Most are exposed to “AI” through endless social media slop that has taken over the majority of their feeds, not coding assistants. There are also job fears (not unwarranted, due to how AI leaders talk), and of course the DC issues. It is a weird political block but a very potent issue for some. I know both of my older teens want nothing to do with the stuff.
- hbn 15d agoI've barely looked into this but I don't understand the water usage thing. Are people under the impression that water is a one-time consumable like a video game, where you "use" it and then it's gone forever? I've seen people claim that the data centers are creating "unusable" water whatever that means. Are the datacenters are sending water-filled rockets to Jupiter so we can't use it again?
- jrflo 15d agoIt's a spectrum, I think a majority of people with that stance just think "AI datacenters consume water" and that's as sophisticated as it gets. A more realistic nuanced take would be that "AI is evaporating water which then rains in the ocean, decreasing our supply of fresh water".
- beej71 15d agoClearly the water isn't atomized. But where I live, each year nature presents us with a certain amount of water to allocate as we see fit. It's not like the water the golf course uses goes to Jupiter. But you probably don't want to pay to be able to drink it after. Right?
- dmix 15d agoSo what's the solution? Another rent-seeking system where any future information an AI learns about the world has to be carefully attributed for the possibility that someone might take a piece. A whole patent-troll/music industry style mass buy up of AI information rights with a team of lawyers sending out DMCA warnings hooked into every harness. Does it get paid out on training or is it like music where if the model output is vaguely similar to something someone else created they get a royalty.
- harimau777 15d agoEven if the solution is difficult, I don't think that justifies theft.
- JoshTriplett 15d agoImagine actually asking permission to use other people's work to train AI. Imagine respecting the answer of "no".
- unrented7977 15d agoBut it would be unprofitable to ask permission!
- Windchaser 15d agoI mean.. it feels kinda weird to say that you get to determine how other people use your work? Once you've sold your product, it's out in the open and available for use however the customer wants to use it. If I bought a cake from your bakery, and then said "I'm going to serve it at my friends' gay wedding!", you couldn't be "hey, no, I don't approve of that". You've already sold me the cake; no take-backsies. And if I buy a hammer, the hardware store doesn't get to tell me what I'm allowed to build.
- JoshTriplett 15d agoIf you're arguing for abolishing copyright, I'm all for it. But as long as copyright exists, AI training should not get any exception to it. That creates an asymmetry, where AI gets to rip off our work and use it to compete with us, while we don't get to do the same with proprietary works (e.g. software). I don't want a world in which AI can rip off all of my Open Source code and not respect its license, but I can't take macOS and virtualize it and not care what Apple thinks of that.
- Aurornis 15d agoThe AI protestors in the article are holding up signs that say AI will kill us all. They think this is a doomsday technology. They’re not in the streets over a concern about cultural appropriation in LLM training sets.
- skeledrew 15d agoToo much Terminator.
- tamimio 15d agoI find their arguments are less naive than the ones who used to say 5G controls our brains just few years ago. I remember personally back in 2021 when we used 5g to fly drones, very educated individuals claimed they don’t feel ok and are sick because they stood next to the tower for few hours because they heard 5g is bad!! just a normal 5g, not even mmwave or anything similar. AI can be useful no doubt, I think most of people who are against AI aren’t against the concept itself, they are against the business built around it, the greed that will use AI to destroy the quality of life, the mass surveillance that won’t be possible without AI, destroying rare books for AI training, slopification of everything you see around from texts to images to videos, among other legitimate reasons to hate it. Open ai used to be a non for profit, I don’t think anyone protesting AI now would have issues with the company few years ago, when the main focus was research, solve issues, cure diseases, among many other good reasons.