Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by CamperBob2 521 days ago
That, coupled with the obvious ideological motivations. Success could alter the course of human history, maybe even for the better.

If you feel that what you're doing is that important, you're not going to let copyright law get in the way, and it would be silly to expect you to.
2 comments
SketchySeaBeast 521 days ago
I can't say I believe that. If that were the case, they'd focus more on results and less on hyping up the next underwhelming generation.
link
CamperBob2 521 days ago
For one thing, they are focused on money because they need lots of it to do what they're doing.

For another, the o1-pro (and presumably o3) models are not "underwhelming" except to those who haven't tried them, or those who have an axe to grind. Serious progress is being made at an impressive pace... but again, it isn't coming for free.

link
2muchcoffeeman 521 days ago
Oh please. OpenAI and I guess every other AI company are for-profit.

The only change they are motivated by is their bank balances. If this were a less useful tool they’d still be motivated to ignore laws and exploit others.

link
CamperBob2 521 days ago
Hard to say what motivates them, from the outside looking in. There have been signs of cultlike behavior before, such as the way the rank and file instantly lined up behind Altman when he was fired. You don't see that at Boeing or Microsoft.

Obviously it's a highly-commercial endeavor, which is why they are trying so hard to back away from the whole non-profit concept. But that's largely orthogonal to the question of whether they feel they are doing things for the benefit of humanity that are profound enough to justify blowing off copyright law.

Especially given that only HN'ers are 100% certain that training a model is infringement. In the real world, this is not a settled question. Why worry about obeying laws that don't even exist yet?

link
maeil 520 days ago
> Hard to say what motivates them, from the outside looking in.

It isn't.

> There have been signs of cultlike behavior before, such as the way the rank and file instantly lined up behind Altman when he was fired.

This only reinforces that the real drive is money.

link
2muchcoffeeman 520 days ago
>Especially given that only HN'ers are 100% certain that training a model is infringement. In the real world, this is not a settled question. Why worry about obeying laws that don't even exist yet?

This is exactly why people are against it.

Your argument is that there is no definitive law. Therefore the creators of the data you scrape to train, and their wishes are irrelevant.

If the motivation was to help humanity, they’d think twice about stepping on the toes of the humanity they want to save and we’d hear more about nontrivial uses.

link
CamperBob2 520 days ago
Your argument is that there is no definitive law. Therefore the creators of the data you scrape to train, and their wishes are irrelevant.

Correct, that is the position of the law. Here in America, we don't take the position, held in many other countries, that everything not explicitly permitted is forbidden. This is a good thing.

If the motivation was to help humanity, they’d think twice about stepping on the toes of the humanity they want to save

Whether it is permissible to train models with copyrighted content is up to the courts and Congress, not us. Until then, no one's toes are being stepped on. Everybody whose work was used to train the models still holds the same rights to that work that they held before.

link
2muchcoffeeman 520 days ago
>Until then, no one's toes are being stepped on. Everybody whose work was used to train the models still holds the same rights to that work that they held before.

And yet artists don’t feel like their work should be used for training.

I’m not sure how you can argue that the intentions are unknowable, when clearly you and the AI companies don’t care about the people whose work they have to use to train their models and these people’s wishes. Motivation is greed.

link
CamperBob2 520 days ago
And yet artists don’t feel like their work should be used for training.

The law isn't really all that interested in how "artists feel." Neither am I, as you've surmised. The artists don't care how I feel, so it would be kind of weird for me to hold any other position.

In any case, copyright maximalism impoverishes us all.

link