[strogonoff]

I agree that commercially operated LLMs undermine the entire idea of IP, but it is one of the problems with them, not with the concept of intellectual property, which is an approximation of what has been organically part of human society motivating innovation since forever: benefits of being an author and degree of ownership over intangible ideas. When societies were smaller and local, it just worked out and you would earn respect and status if you came up with something cool, whereas in a bigger and more global society that relies on the rule of law rather than informal enforcement legal protections are needed to keep things working sort of the same way.

I doubt anyone would consider it a problem if large-scale commercial LLM operators were required to respect licenses and negotiate appropriate usage terms. Okay, maybe with one exception: their investors and shareholders.

[treyd]

> IP is an approximation of what has been organically part of human society and drove innovation since forever: benefits of being an author and degree of ownership over intangible ideas.

It is not! It's a very recent invention. Especially its application to creative works contradicts thousands of years of the development of human culture. Consider folk songs.

> I doubt anyone would consider it a problem if large-scale commercial LLM operators were required to respect licenses and negotiate appropriate usage terms. Okay, maybe with one exception: their investors and shareholders.

And the issue I'm gesturing at is that you run into different contradicting conclusions about how LLMs should interact with copyright depending on exactly what line of logic you follow, so the courts will never be able to resolve how it should work. These are issues can only be conclusively resolved with writing new laws to decide it's going to work, but that will eventually only make the contradictions worse and complicate the hoops that people will have to jump through as the technology evolves in new ways.

[strogonoff]

> Especially its application to creative works contradicts thousands of years of the development of human culture. Consider folk songs.

First, let’s note that creative work includes a lot more than just arts (crucially, invention).

In music, by your logic you may disagree with recognising song composition as IP, but you have to agree that being able to earn royalties from businesses playing your performance (even if it is a cover) serves as a proxy to people coming to listen and express their appreciation to a performer back when audio recording didn’t exist.

Also, let’s distinguish IP in general and its current legal implementation, such as protections lasting longer than author’s life. It should be noted that complexity in art did also grow since then, but it may or may not (I have no strong opinion here) make sense to grant the author post-humous protections.

> you run into different contradicting conclusions about how LLMs should interact with copyright depending on exactly what line of logic you follow, so the courts will never be able to resolve how it should work.

The courts can identify which ways of LLM use follow the spirit of the IP framework, encouraging innovation and creativity. As it is, current commercial LLMs slowly erode it, creating a feeling of “nothing belongs to anyone in particular, so why bother putting in the hard work”, profiting a minority of individuals while harming society over longer term. It is not difficult to see how applying the copyright as is could put an end to this, ensuring authors have control over their work, with the only consequence being slightly worse bottom lines at a handful of corporations with market caps the size of countries.