Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by danielmarkbruce 591 days ago
You say that as though there isn't a choice though. There will always be a good offering who doesn't water mark.

And there is no good reason for a provider to watermark - they aren't helping the customer. They'd be helping some other party who isn't paying them.

This will never be a thing.
2 comments
alach11 590 days ago
> There will always be a good offering who doesn't water mark

There's a possible future where this gets legislated, right? Of course, there are lots of implementation challenges to this and it's probably a bad idea...

link
danielmarkbruce 590 days ago
Sure, it's possible. I'd lay 100-1 against though.
link
mhuffman 590 days ago
>There will always be a good offering who doesn't water mark.

I wouldn't bet on that! I can see legislation to require this for many reasons ... related to intellectual property, cheating, detecting the root of hate-speech or harassment, "stealing" from employers by not performing work or putting them at legal risk, "stealing" from artists by duplicating their style, political speech that can not be traced (it could be from a bad actor!), tracking down generated revenge porn (or much worse!), tracking down people using LLMs to grift the elderly, and on and on. Why, if you are not using a watermarked LLM, it could be an op by Russia, China, or Iran! In fact, part of the legislation could be a requirement of social media or office tools or government tools or political tools or educational tools to check for a watermark and not work if an approved one is not found. Ideally this list will be private, because you want companies to be able to automate away workers, and do the least possible for customers, you just want to make sure you're doing it above-board, you see.

>And there is no good reason for a provider to watermark - they aren't helping the customer.

No one cares about customers, they care about money. And you know what helps make a lot of money? A legally defined moat for yourself and a couple of others that blocks anyone else.

>They'd be helping some other party who isn't paying them.

Yes! That party is themselves!

link
danielmarkbruce 590 days ago
It seems extremely unlikely in the US that such legislation could come about.

Even then, open source will almost certainly always exist. Services running offshore will exist. It would seem impossible to enforce.

link