this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) company Anthropic has claimed to a US court that using copyrighted content in large language model (LLM) training data counts as “fair use”, however.

Under US law, “fair use” permits the limited use of copyrighted material without permission, for purposes such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, and research.

In October 2023, a host of music publishers including Concord, Universal Music Group and ABKCO initiated legal action against the Amazon- and Google-backed generative AI firm Anthropic, demanding potentially millions in damages for the allegedly “systematic and widespread infringement of their copyrighted song lyrics”.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Google and Amazon both have massive corpuses of this data that they would allow only themselves to use.

Anthropic isn’t saying this to help content creators, they’re saying this to kill OpenAI so they don’t have to actually compete

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Data Leak at Anthropic Due to Contractor Error

TL;DR - Anthropic had a data leak due to a contractor’s mistake, but says no sensitive info was exposed. It wasn’t a system breach, and there’s no sign of malicious intent.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Interesting that Anthropic is making this argument, considering their story in the AI space. They're certainly no OpenAI.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

This is not actually true at all, you could train very good LLMs on public domain only info, especially science oriented ones.

But what people want is a chatbot that can call on current events, and that is where the cost comes in.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago (2 children)

You don't get to both ignore intellectual property rights of others, and enforce them for yourself. Fuck these guys.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I guess people are finally catching up to the big con with LLMs should not be copyrighted ampliganda. It is astroturfing at its best.

The end goal is controlling rights to what corporations produce with LLMs without spending a dime. All the while cutting jobs.

Writing was in CAPITAL LETTERS on the walls for the past two years. Why did twitter restrict API access? Why did Reddit restrict API access? Why did Github/Bitbucket/Gitlab restricted web ui functions for unlogged?

They knew and wallgardened the user generated data.

Cmon people.

And the hypocrisy of this all. If it is bad, it is user data, if we can mine nuh ah bitch, ours.

Also, for people arguing for free use of anything to build LLMs. Regulations will come. Once big players control enough of the LLM market.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Serious Question: When an artist learns to draw by looking at the drawings of the masters, and practicing the techniques they pioneered, are the art students respecting the intellectual property rights of those masters?

Are not all of that student's work derivative of an education based on other people's work who will never see compensation for that student's use?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I agree with you on principle. However... How long do you think it will be until these very same "AI" companies copyright and patent every piece of content their algorithms spew out? Will they abide by the same carve-outs they want for themselves right now? Somehow I doubt it.

They want to ignore the laws for themselves, but enforce them onto everyone else. This "Rules for thee but not for me" bullshit can't be allowed to pass. Let's then abolish all copyright, and we'll see how long these companies last when everyone can just grab their stuff "for learning".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

How long before a self-owned AI company that does every administrative job better than humans because it trained on human behavior for 100 years?

What do you think an entity like that would be capable of?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

A bit off-topic, but I'd be fine with that. The more mind-numbingly dumb work that computers can do for us, the less time we have to spend doing it ourselves. Administrative jobs holders disagree with this, but so did every person whose job and livelihood was replaced by automation, ever. UBI (universal basic income) is the only answer that will save all of us from starvation when automation eventually replaces us too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I agree with everything in your post but the simple truth is administrative jobs are the modern equivalent of fluff court positions handed out to the 2nd+ born children of nobles and the modern owner class will never give up that eternal source of easy wealth.

Which is also why they fight so hard to keep anyone not in the owner class out of management.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

One, let's accept that there is a public domain, and cribbing freely from the public domain is A-OK. I can reproduce Michaelangelo all I want, and it's all good. AI can crib from that all it wants.

AI can't invent. People can invent: i can have a wholly new idea that no one has ever had. AI does nothing but recombine other existing ideas. It must have seed data, and it won't create anything for which it has no initial input: feed it photographs only, and it can't create a pencil drawing image. Feed it only black and white images, and it can't create color images.

People do not require cribbing from sources. Give a toddler supplies, and they will create. So, we have established that there is a fundamental difference between the creation process. One is dependent on previous work, and one is not.

Now, with influences, you can ask, is your new creation dependent on the previous creation directly? If it is so utterly dependent on the prior work, such that your work could not possibly exist without that specific prior art, you might get sued. It will get debated and society's best approximation of a collective rational mind will determine if you copied or if you created something new that was merely inspired by prior art.

AI can only create by the direct existence of prior art. It fakes invention. Its work has to come from somewhere else.

People have shown how dependent it is on its sources with prompts that say things like, "portrait of a patriotic soldier superhero" and it comes back with a goddamned portrait of Chris Evans. The prompt did not include his name, or Captain or America, and it comes back with an MCU movie poster. AI does not create. People create.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think there is a fundamental difference here. People are not corporations. People have always learned like this and will always learn like this. Do we really want to allow large corporations to take knowledge from people, then commercialize it and put these very same people out of work?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Your distinction is mostly philosophical. Legally corporations have more protections than people.

I'm probably one of the most anti-corporate people you'll meet today, I don't even think publicly traded companies should exist.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Well how about consent at the very least?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Yup. Same as the way the rest of use and learn from the internet. We basically wouldn’t have the internet as we know it if it weren’t 99% free content.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

And yet, it seems when you say anything anti-ai, lemmy bites your head off.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

We are allowed to have nuance, nothing is inherently good or bad. A knife can wound or make dinner.

Trying to reduce nuance lessens the public discourse, do not be tempted by lowest common denominator memery.

Whether anyone likes it or not LLMs are here and even if we strictly regulate them there will be organizations and governments that do not.

WHAT WE SHOULD be focusing on is how to prevent low effort AI content from just basically overtaking the web.

We are already mostly there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You can't prevent it without regulations. Companies won't care while gaining money from it unless they're obligated to, and even then, some won't comply either.

BTW, that mentality of "other countries vs mine" is absurd. War crimes shouldn't be committed by a country just because the other commits them; others bad ≠ I good.

LLMs can't and should NOT replace a human, at least not yet (they're not even that good either). If we can't have guaranteed basic needs such as housing, food and healthcare or a BUI, then they should not keep leaving people without jobs because no one will be able to afford anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

You can't prevent it WITH regulation.

Just like illegal dumping: If it makes the company more than the fine, it is just a cost of business.

BTW, that mentality of “other countries vs mine” is absurd.

China will never agree to a limitation of tech advancement because that is their primary source of wealth, and frankly your comment shows a tragic lack of understanding on international affairs.

This isn't 'us good them bad', this is 'China has a history of ignoring technology patents and restrictions in order to gain international advantage. The fact that you assumed that I had petty reasons makes it clear you have nothing to contribute to this conversation.

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