[jMyles]

> The question is if this data is legal to scrape

...it is? I didn't see that question raised in OP's text at all. What do legacy human legalities have to do with how AI will behave?

> Because it's false equivalence? ChatGPT isn't a human being.

Is this important? What is so special about human learning that it puts it in a morally distinct category from the learning that our successors will do?

It sounds like OP is concerned with the ad-driven model of income on the internet, and whether it requires breaking in order for AI to both thrive and be fair.

[venv]

>Is this important?

Well yes, it's the whole crux of the matter. Laws govern human behaviour. As of 2023, only living beings have agency. If I shoot someone with a gun, the criminal is me and not the gun. Being a deterministic piece of silicon, a computer is perfectly equivalent. Sure, it is important to start a discussion of potential nonhuman sentience in the future, but these AI models are not unlike any previous software in legal issues. It's bizarre to me how many people are missing this.

[jMyles]

> these AI models are not unlike any previous software in legal issues

Agreed. However, the previous 'legal issues' related to software and the emergence of the internet are also difficult to take seriously when considered on anything but extremely short time scales.

Every time we swirl around this topic, we arrive at the same stumbles which the legacy legal system refuses to address:

* If something happening on the internet is illegal, _where_ is it illegal? Different jurisdictions recognize different jurisdictional notions - they can't even agree on whose laws apply where. If you declare something to be illegal in your house, does that give it the force of law on the internet? Of course not. Yet, the internet doesn't recognize the US state any more than it does your household. It seamlessly routes around the "laws" of both.

* The "laws" that the internet is bound to follow are the fundamental forces of physics. There is no - and can be no - formal in-band way for software to be bound to the laws of men, because signals do not obey borders. The only way to enforce these "laws" are out-of-band violence.

* States continuously, and without exception, find themselves at a disadvantage when they make the futile effort to stem the evolution of the internet. For example, only 30 years ago (a tiny spec in evolutionary time scales), the US state gave non-trivial consideration to banning HTTPS.

I understand that people sometimes follow laws. But they also often don't. The internet has already formed robust immunity against human laws.

Whatever human laws are, they are not the crux of anything related to evolution of software. They are already routinely cast aside when necessary, and are very clearly headed for total irrelevance.

[nowherebeen]

> It's bizarre to me how many people are missing this.

Very much this. I am too tired right now to engage with other responders, but thank you for articulating precisely the point I want to make.