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Suing Writers Seethe at OpenAI's Excuses in Court
(futurism.com)
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this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Technology
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No that's not how it works. It stores learned information like "word x is more likely to follow word y than word a" or "people from country x are more likely to consume food a than b". That is what is distributed when the AI model is shared. To learn that, it just reads books zillions of times and updates its table of likelihoods. Just like an artist might listen to a Lil Wayne album hundreds of times and each time they learn a little bit more about his rhyme style or how beats work or whatever. It's more complicated than that, but that's a layperson's explanation of how it works. The book isn't stored in there somewhere. The book's contents aren't transferred to other parties.
The learning model is artificial, vs a human that is sentient. If a human learns from a piece of work, that’s fine if they emulate styles in their own work. However, sample that work, and the original artist is due compensation. This was a huge deal in the late 80s with electronic music sampling earlier musical works, and there are several cases of copyright that back original owners’ claim of royalties due to them.
The lawsuits allege that the models used copyrighted work to learn. If that is so, writers are due compensation for their copyrighted work.
This isn’t litigation against the technology. It’s litigation around what a machine can freely use in its learning model. Had ChatGPT, Meta, etc., used works in the public domain this wouldn’t be an issue. Yet it looks as if they did not.
EDIT
And before someone mentions that the books may have been bought and then used in the model, it may not matter. The Birthday Song is a perfect example of copyright that caused several restaurant chains to use other tunes up until the copyright was overturned in 2016. Every time the AI uses the copied work in its’ output it may be subject to copyright.
I can read a copy written work and create a work from the experience and knowledge gained. At what point is what I'm doing any different to the A.I.?
For one thing: when you do it, you're the only one that can express that experience and knowledge. When the AI does it, everyone an express that experience and knowledge. It's kind of like the difference between artisanal and industrial. There's a big difference of scale that has a great impact on the livelihood of the creators.
Yes, it's wonderful. Knowledge might finally become free in the advent of AI tools and we might finally see the death of the copyright system. Oh how we can dream.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Information has always been free if you look hard enough. With the advent of the internet, you're able to connect with people who possess this information and you're likely to find it for free on YouTube or other websites.
Copyright exists to protect against plagiarism or theft (in an ideal world). I understand the frustration that comes with archaic laws and that updates to laws move at a glacier's pace, however, the death of copyright harms more people than you're expecting.
Piracy has existed as long as the internet has. Companies have been complaining ceaselessly about lost profits but once LLMs came along, they're fine with piracy if it's been masked behind a glorified search algorithm. They're fine with cutting jobs and replacing them with an LLM that produces less quality output at significantly cheaper rates.
And with the advent of AI we no longer have to look hard.