Apparently, stealing other people’s work to create product for money is now “fair use” as according to OpenAI because they are “innovating” (stealing). Yeah. Move fast and break things, huh?
“Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression—including blogposts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents—it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials,” wrote OpenAI in the House of Lords submission.
OpenAI claimed that the authors in that lawsuit “misconceive[d] the scope of copyright, failing to take into account the limitations and exceptions (including fair use) that properly leave room for innovations like the large language models now at the forefront of artificial intelligence.”
OpenAI are not going to make the source code for their model accessible to all to learn from. This is 100% about profiting from it themselves. And using copyrighted data to create open source models would seem to violate the very principles the open source community stands for - namely that everybody contributes what they agree to, and everything is published under a licence. If the basis of an open source model is a vast quantity of training data from a vast quantity of extremely pissed off artists, at least some of the people working on that model are going to have a “are we the baddies?” moment.
The AI models are also never going to produce a solution to climate change that humans will accept. We already know what the solution is, but nobody wants to hear it, and expecting anyone to listen to ChatGPT and suddenly change their minds about using fossil fuels is ludicrous. And an AI that is trained specifically on knowledge about the climate and technologies that can improve it, with the purpose of innovating some hypothetical technology that will fix everything without humans changing any of their behaviour, categorically does not need the entire contents of ArtStation in its training data. AIs that are trained to do specific tasks, like the ones trained to identify new antibiotics, are trained on a very limited set of data, most of which is not protected by copyright and any that is can be easily licenced because the quantity is so small - and you don’t see anybody complaining about those models!
OpenAI isn’t the only company doing this, nor is their specific model the knowledge that I’m referring to.
It is already being used to further fusion research beyond anything we’ve been able to do with standard algorithms
Then it’s not a solution. That’s like telling your therapist, “I know how to fix my relationship, my partner just won’t do it!”
Lol. Yeah, I agree, that’s never going to work.
That’s a strong claim to make. Regardless of the ethics involved, or the problems the AI can solve today, the fact is we seeing rapid advances in AI research as a direct result of these ethically dubious models.
In general, I’m all for the capitalist method of artists being paid their fair share for the work they do, but on the flip side, I see a very possible mass extinction event on the horizon, which could cause suffering the likes of which humanity has never seen. If we assume that is the case, and we assume AI has a chance of preventing it, then I would prioritize that over people’s profits today. And I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say I’m wrong.
And then there’s the problem of actually enforcing any sort of regulation, which would be so much more difficult than people here are willing to admit. There’s basically nothing you can do even if you wanted to. Your Carlin example is exactly the defense a company would use: “I guess our AI just happened to create a movie that sounds just like Paul Blart, but we swear it’s never seen the film. Great minds think alike, I guess, and we sell only the greatest of minds”.
Personally I think the claim that the entire contents of ArtStation will lead to working technology that fixes climate change is the bolder claim - and if there was any merit to it, there would be some evidence for it that the corporations who want copyright to be disapplied to artists would be able to produce. And if we’re saying that getting rid of copyright protections will save the planet, then perhaps Disney should give up theirs as well. Because that’s the reality here: we’re expecting humans to be obliterated by AI but are not expecting the rich and powerful to make any sacrifices at all. And art is part of who we are as a species, and has been for hundreds of thousands of years. Replacing artists with AI because somehow that will fix climate change is not only a massive stretch, but what would we even be saving humanity for at that point? So that everybody can slave away in insecure, meaningless work so the few can hoard everything for themselves? Because the Star Trek utopia where AI does all the work and humans can pursue self-enrichment is not an option on the table. The tech bros just want you to think it is.
That’s fair, and why I didn’t make that claim. What I said was, claiming the opposite is also bold.
I don’t think it’s in the corporation’s best interest to solve climate change, though. At least, not in the near term. Their interests are always self-serving. But that doesn’t mean the technology they produce going forward isn’t our best shot at survival.
Which we’re not…
Ok. Fine with me.
Eh, so far in this discussion we had not agreed on the former. Maybe you meant “if we assume…why are we not…”? And I would say, we don’t need AI to kill us all for me to agree that the rich and powerful should be forced to contribute a fair share to society by society.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’re implying that what AI produces is not art. If so, then I don’t think there’s any risk of AI replacing art. If art is important to humans, then we will still create it and appreciate it. It’s like when humans invented fast food: if it’s not giving us the nutrients we need, we won’t be able to survive off of it regardless of how prevalent it becomes.
This is one of those loaded “what is my purpose in life” questions. There’s no reason to save humanity at all. There’s no reason we exist to begin with. The cynical “we’re a bunch of monkeys fighting for resources on a forgotten ball flying through emptiness” take could have been made at any point in human history, we didn’t need AI to take over.
Strong claim.
Agree.
I feel like you are prone to false dichotomies. Just thought I’d point it out.
My point, ultimately, is that the AI companies would have a stronger claim to fair use of artistic works if they could point to an end use-case that is good for humanity as a whole, to the point that it offsets the massive loss to and of artists. Because right now, the entirety of their claim to the complete contents of ArtStation appears to amount to nothing more than “trollface we want to make tons of money!” And that is not a good enough reason to render copyright law meaningless when it relates to individual artists but not corporations.