[idiotsecant]

You're typing a lot in these posts but literally every point you're making here is orthogonal to the actual discussion, which is why utilizing the end product of exposing an AI to copyrighted material and exposing a human to copyrighted material are morally distinct.

[peoplefromibiza]

> which is why utilizing the end product of exposing an AI to copyrighted material and exposing a human to copyrighted material are morally distinct.

sorry for writing in capital letters, maybe that way they will stand out enough for you to focus on what's important.

WE ARE NOT AIS

an AI is the equivalent of a photocopier or sampling a song to make a new song, there are limits on how much you can copy/use copyrighted material, that do not apply TO YOUR HEARS, because you hearing a song does not AUTOMATICALLY AND MECHANICALLY translates into a new song. You still need to LEARN HOWTO MAKE MUSIC, which is not about the features of the song, it's about BEING ABLE TO COMPOSE MUSIC.

which is not what these AI do, they cannot compose music, they can mix and match features taken from copyrighted material into new (usually not that new, nor good) material.

If we remove the copyrighted material from you, you can still make music.

You could be deaf and still compose music.

If we remove copyrighted material from AIs they cannot compose shit.

Because the equivalent of a deaf person for an AI that create music CANNOT EXIST - for obvious reasons.

So AIs DEPEND ON copyrighted material, they don't just learn from it, they WOULD BE USELESS WITHOUT IT.

and morally the difference is that THEY DO NOT PAY for the privilege of accessing the source material.

They take, without giving anything back to the artists.

They do not even ask for the permission.

is it clearer now?

[Kim_Bruning]

I'll try to address your underlying thought, and hope I'm getting it right.

I think you are right to be skeptical and cautious in the face of claims of AI progress. From as far back as the days of the Mechanical Turk, many such claims have turned out to be puffery at best, or outright fraud at worst.

From time to time, however, inevitably, some claims have actually proven to be true, and represent an actual breakthrough. More and more, I'm beginning to think that the current situation is one of those instances of a true breakthrough occurring.

To the surface point: I do not think the current proliferation of generative AI/ML models are unoriginal per se. If you ask them for something unoriginal, you will naturally(?) get something unoriginal. However, if you ask them for something original, you may indeed get something original.

[Kim_Bruning]

> If we remove copyrighted material from AIs they cannot compose shit.

I wonder in what way you mean that? In any case the latest stable diffusion model file itself is 3.5 GB, which is several of orders of magnitude less than the training dataset.

It probably doesn't contain much literal copyrighted data.

[idiotsecant]

You're making much more concise arguments now, I think that makes the discussion more useful and interesting.

I would take the position that it's self evident that if you take the 'training data' away from humans they also can't compose music. If you take a baby, put it in a concrete box for 30 years (or until whatever you consider substantial biological maturity), and then put it in front of a piano it's not going to create Chopin. It might figure out how to make some dings and boops and will quickly lose interest.

Humans also need a huge amount of training data and we, at best, make minor modifications to these ideas to place them into new context to create new things. The difference between average and world class is vanishingly small in terms of the actual basic insight in some domain. Take the greatest composers that have ever lived and rewind them and perform our concrete box experiment and you'll have a wild animal, barely capable of recognizing cause and effect between hitting the piano and the noise it makes.

That world class composer, when exposed to modern society, consumed an awful lot of media for 'free' just by existing. Should they be charged for it? Did they commit a copyright infraction? Why or why not?