[bobthecowboy]

The jist of what you're saying is in the Free Culture movement/philosophy, I think, and it resonates with me as someone who does not like what AI has done with copyrighted works but also dislikes copyright.

The "rent-seekers" is the problem. We collectively inherit and own our shared culture, but large corporations have always wanted to sell it back to us. AI companies are arguing they should have no limitations on their usage of the culture, but that the same shouldn't apply to them. Selling tickets to the commons is anti-commons.

Perhaps if these companies were themselves arguing for the end of copyright and IP for everyone, the conversation would be different.

[jwells89]

Right, I think we’d be having a very different conversation if products of AI could not be sold (what’s taken for free must be given for free and free for others to use as they see fit). Companies will fight this tooth and nail though because that flushes any prospective profit produced by firing humans down the drain.

[visarga]

I think copyright lawsuits against AI companies will force them to develop attribution models. They will do the work of indexing all ideas to their authors. This will also reveal what is common knowledge, and who borrowed from who without attribution.

In order to make attribution models we need text+author+timestamp. We can get that from books, newspaper articles, scientific papers and social network posts. Then we extend to the rest of the training set.

But then we can also make AI models that cleverly avoid infringement while the same strict checking is going to be applied to human made content. Humans are not that good at avoiding pitfalls.