this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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Honestly, a lot of the effects people attribute to "AI" as understood by this polemic are ongoing and got ignited by algorithmic searches first and then supercharged by social media. If anything, there are some ways in which the moral AI panic is actually triggering regulation that should have existed for ages.
Regulation is only going to prevent regular people from benefiting from AI while keeping it as a tool for the upper crust to continue to benefit. Artists are a Trojan horse on this.
We're thinking about different "regulation", and that's another place where extreme opinions have nuked the ground into glass.
Absolutely yeah, techbros are playing up the risks because they hope regulators looking for a cheap win will suddenly increase the cost for competitors, lock out open alternatives and grandfather them in as the only valid stewards of this supposedly apocalyptic technology. We probably shouldn't allow that.
But "maybe don't make an app that makes porn out of social media pictures of your underage ex girlfriend at the touch of a button" is probably reasonable, AI or no AI.
Software uses need some regulation like everything else does. Doesn't mean we need to sell the regulation to disingenuous corporations.
We already have laws that protect people when porn is made of them without consent. AI should be a tool that's as free and open to be used as possible and built upon. Regulation is only going to turn it into a tool for the haves and restrict the have not's. Of course you're going to see justifiable reasons just like protecting children made sense during the satanic panics. Abuse happens in daycares across the countries. Satanists do exist. Pen pineapple apple pen.
Its not like you control these things by making arguments that make no sense. They're structured to ensure you agree with them especially during the early phase roll out otherwise it would just become something that again never pans out the way we fear. Media is there to generate the fear and arguments to convince us to hobble ourselves.
No, that's not true at all. That's the exact same argument that the fearmongers are using to claim that traditional copyright already covers the use cases of media as AI training materials and so training is copying.
It's not. We have to acknowledge that there is some novel element to these, and novel elements may require novel frameworks. I think IP and copyright are broken anyway, but if the thing that makes us rethink them is the idea that machines can learn from a piece of media without storing a copy and spit out a similar output... well, we may need to look at that.
And if there is a significant change in how easily accessible, realistic or widespread certain abusive practices are we may need some adjustments there.
But that's not the same as saying that AI is going to get us to Terminator within five years and so Sam Altman is the only savior that can keep the grail of knowledge away from bad actors. Regulation should be effective and enable people to compete in the novel areas where there is opportunity.
Both of those things can be true at the same time. I promise you don't need to take the maximalist approach. You don't even need to take sides at all. That's the frustrating part of this whole thing.
I think we should stop applying broken and primitive regulations and laws created before any of this technology and ability was ever even dreamed of. Sorry to say but I don't want to protect the lowly artist over the ability for people to collaborate and advance our knowledge and understanding forward. I want to see copyright, IP and other laws removed entirely.
We should have moved more towards the open sharing of all information. We have unnecessarily recreated all the problems of the predigital age and made them worse.
If it was up to me I would abolish copyright and IP laws. I would make every corner of the internet a place for sharing data and information and anyone putting their work online would need to accept it will be recreated, shared and improved upon. We all should have moved in a different direction then what we have now.
Oh, man, I do miss being a techno-utopian. It was the nineties, I had just acquired a 28.8k modem in high school, my teachers were warning me about the risks of algorithmically selected, personalized information and I was all "free the information, man" and "people will figure it out" and "the advantages of free information access outweigh the negatives of the technology used to get there".
And then I was so wrong. It's not even funny how wrong I was. Like, sitting on the smoldering corpse of democracy and going "well, that happened" wrong.
But hey, I'm sure we'll mess it up even further so you can get there as well.
For the record, I don't mean to defend the status quo with that. I agree that copyright and intellectual property are broken and should be fundamentally reformulated. Just... not with a libertarian, fully unregulated framework in mind.
Hi fellow traveler. I think you and I took a similar path to get here except I started with a 33.6k modem in high school and the catch phrase I remember is “Information wants to be free.” What’s your thought on copyright reform? Somewhere along the lines of 25 years and non-renewable? How you feeling about the concept of software/algorithm patents? Talking about stuff like this is reminding me of /. :)
Well, if this was travel and not a fall down a very long, very dark hole, then one of the stops was learning when to say "I don't know".
I don't have all the answers for copyright. I don't think my problem is primarily with terms. I'm probably closer to thinking perhaps the system should acknowledge where we landed consuetudinarily. Just let people share all materials, acknowledge a right of the original author to be the sole profit holder in for-profit exploitation. That's effectively how most of the Internet works anyway. Even then there's obviously tons of stuff we'd have to sort out. What happens with ownership transfer? What about terms? What about derivative work? Components of larger works? I don't know.
We're talking about reworking some of the biggest markets and industries on the planet from the ground up. It's not a shower thought, it's something a whole bunch of very smart people with different backgrounds should and would have to get together for years to put together. Probably on a global scale.
It's an absurd question to have a locked down opinion about. The gap between beign able to tell "yeah, duh, something's not working" and being able to fix it is enormous here. Figuring out that much is probably as far as my trip is gonna take me at this point. And I know even less about patent law.