Just like I do with literally all content I’ve ever consumed. Everything I’ve seen has been remashed in my brain into the competencies I charge money for.

It’s not until I profit off of someone else’s work — ie when the source of the profit is their work — that I’m breaking any rules.

This is a non-issue. We’ve let our (legitimate) fear of AI twist us into distorting truth and motivated reasoning. Instead of trying to paint AI as morally wrong, we should admit that we are afraid of it.

We’re trying to replace our fear with disgust and anger. It’s not healthy for us. AI is ultra fucking scary. And not because it’s going to take inspiration from a copyrighted song when it writes a different song. AI is ultra fucking scary because it will soon surpass any possibility of our understanding, and we will be at the whim of an alien intelligence.

But that’s too sci fi sounding, to be something people have to look at. Because it sounds so out there, it’s easy to scoff at and dismiss. So instead of acknowledging our terror at the fact this thing will likely end humanity as we know it, we’re sublimating that energy through righteous indignation. See, indignation is unpleasant, but it’s less threatening to the self than terror.

It’s understandable, like doing another line of coke is understandable. But it is not healthy, not productive, and will not play out the way we think. We need to stop letting our fear turn our minds to mush.

Reading someone else’s material before you write new material is not the same as copying someone else’s material and selling it as your own. The information on the internet has always been considered free for legal use. And the limit of legal use is based on the selling of others’ verbatim material.

This is a simple fact, easy to see. Except recognizing it nullifies the righteous indignation, opening the way for the terror and confusion to come in again.