[ben_w]

I don't need a card to read in the library, nor to use the photocopiers there, but it's merely one example anyway. (If it wasn't, you'd only need one library, any of the deposit libraries will do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit).

You also don't need permission, as a human, to read (and learn from) the internet in general. Machines by standard practice require such permission, hence robots.txt, and OpenAI's GPTBot complies with the robots.txt file and the company gives advice to web operators about how to disallow their bot.

How AI should be treated, more like a search index, or more like a mind that can learn by reading? Not my call. It's a new thing, and laws can be driven by economics or by moral outrage, and in this case those two driving forces are at odds.

[triceratops]

We started with libraries and books, now you're moving the goalposts to websites.

Sidenote: I wouldn't even be mad if OpenAI built robots to go into all of the libraries and read all of the books. That would be amazing!

[ben_w]

I started with libraries. OpenAI started with the internet.

The argument for both is identical, your objection is specific to libraries.

IIRC, Google already did your sidenote. Or started to, may have had legal issues.

[triceratops]

> The argument for both is identical

How so? I don't have to pay to read most websites. To read most books I have to pay (or a library has to pay and I have to wait to get the book).

> IIRC, Google already did your sidenote

Not quite. They had to chop the spines off books and have humans feed them into scanners. I'm talking about a robot that can walk (or roll) into a library, use arms to take books off the shelves, turn the pages and read them without putting them into a scanner.

[philipkglass]

They had humans turn the pages of intact books in scanning machines. The books mostly came from the shelves of academic libraries and were returned to the shelves after scanning. You can see some incidental captures of hands/fingers in the scans on Google Books or HathiTrust (the academic home of the Google Books scans). There are some examples collected here:

https://theartofgooglebooks.tumblr.com/

[ben_w]

> How so? I don't have to pay to read most websites. To read most books I have to pay (or a library has to pay and I have to wait to get the book).

"or" does a lot of work, even ignoring that I'd already linked you to a page about deposit libraries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit

Fact is, you can read books for free, just as you can read (many but not all) websites for free. And in both cases you're allowed to use what you learned without paying ongoing licensing fees for having learned anything from either, and even to make money from what you learn.

> Not quite. They had to chop the spines off books and have humans feed them into scanners.

Your statement is over 20 years out of date: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7508978B1/en