this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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You seem to have misinterpreted my "alignment", if you will. I do agree my arguments here leaned pretty heavily on the corporate side.
But many of these AI are either run or backed by these same massive corporations. Corporations who staunchly defend their own copyright, yet don't mind taking from the little guy and breaking their own unfair rules even further.
I am, generally, anti-AI. As may have been apparent. I wish not for my words to be vacuumed up into a black box to be spat back out at me.
Whilst I think some amount of copyright is fair, 80 years is far too many. Putting a cap on how profiting any property can be is an interesting take.
But that's not part of the conversation. It's wrong for AI companies to take whatever data they can get their hands on just because it's out there for human eyes to read. Whether that content has outlived its newsworthy usefulness or not.
I understand your "alignment" correctly.
You're obviously not reading anything I write.
You are making baseless assumptions about me, though it is true I initially didn't particularly care to read the entirety of your comment.
Ultimately I don't care for the NYT. What I do care about is the starving artist whose work is being ripped off. I care about web crawlers not respecting any wishes of the creator and consent being forcefully taken.
If they wish not to partake that wish ought to be respected. Better yet, it should be opt-in before your works are allowed to be used.
But the current society isn't about being fair. They can store your data for advertisement because you surely have nothing to hide and cannot be affected by targeted propaganda. They can use your work for their own means and charge a profit. You get to be happy you're allowed to exist at all to lick their boots. You will own nothing and be happy.
Cool, you're fine with your work being used by massive corporations to make their own profits off of your work. Not everyone may agree to that, and an artist should be able to control how their work is appropriated for some time.
I suppose it's my fault for not being able to voice these awful gut feelings properly. You equate my view of personal liberty with some sort fascist mindset. You are wrong. And you who cares not for their own work does not get to import that view onto others.
Next you'll call me wrong, saying you do care about your work. Which I'm sure you do, my statement was hyperbolic to some extent. But surely you must understand that your view of some sort of ROI cap does not match that of the corporations taking as they please. OpenAI suddenly stopped being so open when their model became popular.
What assumption am I making about you? I think I got it quite right.
That's not the problem. The problem is that you are acting on gut feeling. Your policy preferences are based on gut feeling.
I am guessing that you want your future to be a certain way. You want future society to be a certain way. To get there, we need to take the right steps. But you're not thinking about that at all. You're just thinking about what steps you feel like taking.
That won't get you to where you want to be. You haven't even thought about where it will actually take you.
Me being some radical right-winger, Mr. or Ms. AI-techbro.
Is your "I don't mind my work being used in someone else's venture" any less of a gut feeling? I believe not.
More of these baseless assumptions of yours, but going into future ramifications I may or may not have considered isn't part of this conversation.
You didn't even respond to my main points and instead latched onto what seems to you to be the weakest part of my argument. Are you reading my replies properly?
Companies taking whatever they please, be it data otherwise, without oversight is problematic. Regardless of how much you personally enjoy being trampled on for the sake of "progress" or not.
I have never claimed that. I explicitly wrote that I don't believe you want what you are clamoring for.
You do not read long posts, remember?
The defining feature of rich people is that they own a lot of property. When you make it so that more money must be paid to property owners, you disproportionately benefit the rich.
"though it is true I initially didn't [...]"
That said, I read it again, I suppose I have been uncharitable. You make some good points, and perpetual ironclad intellectual property hoarded by massive corporations isn't something my current views adequately address.
But just because I don't have an answer to that doesn't mean I have to agree with AI companies scraping every last corner of the internet for their datasets.
You say you disagree with property owners always receiving compensation for their work being used.
To some extent I agree with your disagreement.
Even so I cannot view AI companies taking the work of whomever they please without compensation as morally justifiable. Especially if those artists are small and have no way to defend themselves.
IP hoarders are a separate issue.
You don't have to agree. It's a value judgement. What is important to you? There is no correct answer.
My conviction is that property is mainly a means to an end. That end is human well-being, but if you pressed me on what exactly that means, I'd start flailing.
You can believe that intellectual property is fundamentally important. Mind that what you think of as intellectual property is probably broader/different from copyright in law. You can say that enforcing this kind of property right is an end in itself, that justifies the terrible consequences. Small artists would get shafted one way or the other.
And ideally they wouldn't. Letting AI companies take as they please is one part of that, therefore it should be stopped.
Injustice is such a frustrating thing. But when the opposing party has trillions of dollars and you draw in your free time there's literally nothing you can do. So much for equality.
That's a result of your values. Your views on property are incompatible with equality.
You made the assumption that I do not care if my writings are used for AI training but I actually do. I like it. I like knowing that I helped other people. I feel the same way about taxes, but this is better since it does not cost me anything.
This may be too long but here's a quick overview of what your views on property mean for small artists.
Per Google, Getty Images' archive is the largest privately-owned photographic archive in the world, containing over 130 million images dating back to the beginning of photography and beyond. Unsurprisingly, Getty is suing over AI.
How many images does your small artist own? A few dozen? A few hundred?
So when your small artist gets a few dollars, Getty gets many millions. Of course, they won't be getting the same per image. Getty can pay lawyers millions to negotiate and there will still be many millions left in profit. Your small artist can't do that. Even the negotiation would cost more than their images are worth. They can only upload to their images to Adobe or Shutterstock and accept whatever they are given.
Even the most selfless non-profit would have to take a big chunk just to handle the cost of running the website, dealing with copyright infringement, bad quality images, "naughty" images, track payment information, handle the money,... But why should they be selfless? After all, the website is basically their property.
Now we reach the point where it gets bad.
Remember that the rent for these images does not create anything of value. No one is paid to make anything new. Money is transferred to property owners, because they own property. It ends up mainly with rich people, because they own so much property. Much of the money for "small artists" is wasted on bureaucracy. A good chunk also ends up with rich people, because middle men are unavoidable.
Since we are mainly transferring and not creating wealth, it must come from somewhere. It comes from subscription fees for AI services. It can't come from anywhere else, right?
For example, a subscription for Photoshop has to include these fees. What Photoshop calls generative fill is genAI.
Now riddle me this: Who pays subscriptions for Photoshop?
Ah, my favourite argument.
"Clothing brands are using slavery to produce clothes."
- "They ought to be produced sustainably!"
"Who's going to pay for that?"
Perhaps generative AI models, as they currently exist, are too good to be true.
If they can only afford to pay individual artists pennies, perhaps it is something that shouldn't be taken. If those artists are happy for their work to contribute to someone else's MRR scheme then they should be free to submit their work wherever, or tag it with something.
I don't care what Getty Images gets paid. I don't know how the licensing works for that platform, but Getty doesn't make all of its own images and those photographers and artists who contribute ought to be compensated in turn.
If that makes the work infeasible, so be it.
But if that's a system that gets implemented now then the existing companies would have an insurmountable headstart. Should they be forced to completely wipe their work?
And Getty shouldn't be making money off pictures from the 1800s. I agree with that too.
And I understand no "value is generated" by paying property owners. I guess you should give your books away to people on the street since the value has already been created by writing them and there's no more point in selling them.
Not literally, of course. But if individual artists don't make any money and/or reputation off their already made work they won't be able to continue "generating new value", I guess they'll have to find some office job, or head out to the not-yet-automated mines.
It's a shit situation which is profiting off a free and open internet. An internet which is slowly closing itself off further and further.
And I think, with all due respect, you're misguided for being happy to contribute to your own replacement. If you sell your books on Amazon; Amazon is getting flooded with AI generated books, making it even more difficult for yours to stand out in the sea of regurgitated garbage. Maybe you personally have a system for getting around that, not everybody does. Alternatively you don't rely on the income of your books, but at that point why bother publishing at all? Might as well send them directly to OpenAI or whomever.
Edit: Oh, better yet, because I just ran into it: Getty/Adobe Stock licensing you generated images! I'd laugh if it didn't make me want to cry.
If that's not what you want, you really should think about what you support.
Your ideas mean that wealth must be transferred to property owners. This wealth has to come from somewhere. It must be created through work.
Wealth is taken from workers and given to owners. That's what you are demanding.
Where images are concerned, wealth must go from artists to owners.
Thank you for reading my post, only responding to a single point, and making a strawman of the rest of my argument.
Why do I even bother.
Enjoy replacing yourself.