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Stephen King: My Books Were Used to Train AI
(literature.cafe)
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this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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Technology
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Yeah, and even if it WERE truly intelligent -- which these SALAMIs are almost certainly not -- it doesn't even matter.
A human and a robot are not the same. They have different needs and must be afforded different moral protections. Someone can buy a book, read it, learn from it, and incorporate things it learned from that experience into their own future work. They may transform it creatively or it may plagiarize or it may rest in some grey area in-between where it isn't 100% clear if it was novel or plagiarized. All this is also true for a LLM "AI". -- But whether or not this process is fundamentally the same or not isn't even a relevant question.
Copyright law isn't something that exists because it is a pure moral good to protect the creative output of a person from theft. It would be far more ethical to say that all the outputs of human intellect should be shared freely and widely for all people to use, unencumbered by such things. But if creativity is rewarded with only starvation, creativity will go away, so copyright exists as a compromise to try and ensure there is food in the bellies of artists. And with it, we have an understanding that there is a LOT of unclear border space where one artist may feed on the output of another to hopefully grow the pot for everyone.
The only way to fit generative bots into the philosophical framework of copyright is to demand that the generative bots keep food in the bellies of the artists. Currently, they threaten it. It's just that simple. People act like it's somehow an important question whether they "learn" the same way people do, but the question doesn't matter at all. Robots don't get the same leeway and protection afforded to humans because robots do not need to eat.
Well said.
no. it exists to stop 18th century london print shops from breaking each others' knees, and subsequently has been expanded to continue to serve the interests of industry.
I think it's a pretty important question whether we're reaching the end of the distinction between human and machine. People will begin to use machine minds more and more as part of their work. Tying strings now to the works of machines is screwing the creators of tomorrow. The line between what a person creates and what a machine creates WILL evaporate. It's not a matter of if, but when.
Imagine we put a ton of regulations on people who use power tools to do carpentry. I'm sure the carpenters around the time power tools were created figured "That's not true craftsmanship. They shouldn't be able to make a living off that!" But the carpenters of today would be screwed by these regulations because of course they have to use the latest technology to stay competitive.
As for the argument that we're taking the food out of creative's mouths: I don't think anyone is not buying Stephen King novels now because they can just ask for a Stephen King style novel from ChatGPT. You can pirate Stephen King already. People aren't fascinated by LLMs because of how well they plagiarize. They're fascinated by them because they're capable of transformative works, not unlike humans. Nobody is typing "Write a Stephen King Novel" they're typing, "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle but it's Snoop Dogg and Betty White in the style of Stephen King." As much as I'm sure King would love to suck up all royalties for these stories, there's no universe where it makes sense that he should. You don't own what you inspire.
but you're wrong about the philosophical framework of copyright.