To be clear, I don’t think the fundamental issue is whether humans have a training dataset. We do. And it includes copyrighted work. It also includes our unique sensory perceptions and lots of stuff that is definitely NOT the result of someone else’s work. I don’t think anyone would dispute that copyrighted text, pictures, sounds are integrated into human consciousness.
The question is whether it is ethical, and should it be legal, to feed copyrighted works into an AI training dataset and use that AI to produce material that replaces, displaces, or competes with the copyrighted work used to train it. Should it be legal to distribute or publish that AI-produced material at all if the copyright holder objects to the use of their work in an AI training dataset? (I concede that these may be two separate, but closely related, questions.)
What level of abstraction is enough? Training doesn’t store or reference the work at all. It derives a set of weights from it automatically. But what if you had a legion of interns manually deriving the weights and entering them in instead? Besides the impracticality of it, if I look at a picture, write down a long list of small adjustments, -2.343, -.02, +5.327, etc etc etc, and adjust the parameters of the algorithm without ever scanning it in, is that legal? If that is, does that mean the automation of that process is the illegal part?
Right now our understanding of derivative works is mostly subjective. We look at the famous Obama “HOPE” image, and the connection to the original news photograph from which it was derived seems quite clear. We know it’s derivative because it looks derivative. And we know it’s a violation because the person who took the news photograph says that they never cleared the photo for re-use by the artist (and indeed, demanded and won compensation for that reason).
Should AI training be required to work from legally acquired data, and what level of abstraction from the source data constitutes freedom from derivative work? Is it purely a matter of the output being “different enough” from the input, or do we need to draw a line in the training data, or…?
And yeah all the extra data that we humans fundamentally aquire in life does change everything we make.
I’d argue that it’s the crucial difference. People on this thread are arguing like humans never make original observations, or observe anything new, or draw new conclusions or interpretations of new phenomena, so everything humans make must be derived from past creations.
Not only is that clearly wrong, but it also fails the test of infinite regress. If humans can only create from the work of other humans, how was anything ever created? It’s a risible suggestion.
To be clear, I don’t think the fundamental issue is whether humans have a training dataset. We do. And it includes copyrighted work. It also includes our unique sensory perceptions and lots of stuff that is definitely NOT the result of someone else’s work. I don’t think anyone would dispute that copyrighted text, pictures, sounds are integrated into human consciousness.
The question is whether it is ethical, and should it be legal, to feed copyrighted works into an AI training dataset and use that AI to produce material that replaces, displaces, or competes with the copyrighted work used to train it. Should it be legal to distribute or publish that AI-produced material at all if the copyright holder objects to the use of their work in an AI training dataset? (I concede that these may be two separate, but closely related, questions.)
What level of abstraction is enough? Training doesn’t store or reference the work at all. It derives a set of weights from it automatically. But what if you had a legion of interns manually deriving the weights and entering them in instead? Besides the impracticality of it, if I look at a picture, write down a long list of small adjustments, -2.343, -.02, +5.327, etc etc etc, and adjust the parameters of the algorithm without ever scanning it in, is that legal? If that is, does that mean the automation of that process is the illegal part?
Right now our understanding of derivative works is mostly subjective. We look at the famous Obama “HOPE” image, and the connection to the original news photograph from which it was derived seems quite clear. We know it’s derivative because it looks derivative. And we know it’s a violation because the person who took the news photograph says that they never cleared the photo for re-use by the artist (and indeed, demanded and won compensation for that reason).
Should AI training be required to work from legally acquired data, and what level of abstraction from the source data constitutes freedom from derivative work? Is it purely a matter of the output being “different enough” from the input, or do we need to draw a line in the training data, or…?
All good questions.
We were talking about consciousness not AI created works and copyright but I do have some opinions on that.
I think that if an artist doesn’t want their works included in an AI dataset then it is their right to say no.
And yeah all the extra data that we humans fundamentally aquire in life does change everything we make.
I’d argue that it’s the crucial difference. People on this thread are arguing like humans never make original observations, or observe anything new, or draw new conclusions or interpretations of new phenomena, so everything humans make must be derived from past creations.
Not only is that clearly wrong, but it also fails the test of infinite regress. If humans can only create from the work of other humans, how was anything ever created? It’s a risible suggestion.