> People share arts because they want to help other humans grow too, not the AI.
Hold on just a second here. How do you know what "people" "want"? Who put you in charge of speaking for them?
Yes, there have been some loud complaints, but given that millions of people are involved, the overwhelming majority of whom haven't expressed an opinion one way or the other, I think it's a bit premature for this kind of blanket statement.
Secondly, there's a difference between what people want and what people are legally entitled to. If you ask people if they want a million dollars, most of them will say "Sure!". That doesn't mean they're going to get it.
Existing copyright controls the making of copies. That's it. There's a fudge factor in there called "fair use" that controls whether or not something constitutes an infringing copy.
Whether AI training data falls within that or not is going to have to be decided in the courts or by some type of government action. It's clearly not an exact copy...the actual pixels in the original work aren't anywhere in the database. But is what is in there close enough to be considered a "derivative work"? I don't know, and neither do you.
Again, it's way too soon to be making blanket statements on the issue.
More important than an opinion of a court is the opinion of lawmakers. After all, copyright laws have a purpose and AI subverts that purpose. Lawmakers will have to decide whether the benefit of AI to society is greater than the benefit of having works published. We will see laws adapted accordingly.
> After all, copyright laws have a purpose and AI subverts that purpose.
While it may differ in other countries, in the United States the purpose of intellectual property laws, as expressed in the Constitution, is to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries".
Enriching the copyright holders (on the rare occasions that actually occurs) is a secondary consequence, not the prime purpose.
Does AI "subvert" "promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts"? I don't think so. Quite the contrary... I think it advances the progress of science and the useful arts, if anything.
It's pretty well established that a description of a copyrighted work is not protected, even an extremely-detailed description (see, for example, the way that Phoenix assigned one team to write an extremely-detailed description of the IBM PC BIOS, then gave that description to a second clean-room team that hadn't seen any of the actual source code. The second team then produced a clone of the BIOS that could be sold without paying IBM anything).
The data stored in these models seems more like a "description" rather than a "copy" to me -- though, of course, there's no guessing what a court or legislature will decide.
> Does AI "subvert" "promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts"? I don't think so. Quite the contrary... I think it advances the progress of science and the useful arts, if anything
It does subvert that purpose to the extent that it makes some people no longer willing to share their works. The entire purpose of copyright is to encourage the sharing of works.
Okay, I shouldn’t have used “want”. But helping others and collaboration is not something alien in the art world. Artist publish their work almost for the same reason programmers do:’
1. To showcase their work
2. To get feedback
Also, I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait for the majority response before we can form an opinion of whether or not something is good for them. Do we have to ask millions of people if they like it if their health benefits, social security or left thumb gets removed before we can say that they definitely won’t like it?
I think it is pretty safe to say that artists don’t like having their whole livelihood overnight. (Inb4 get better jerbs)
Hold on just a second here. How do you know what "people" "want"? Who put you in charge of speaking for them?
Yes, there have been some loud complaints, but given that millions of people are involved, the overwhelming majority of whom haven't expressed an opinion one way or the other, I think it's a bit premature for this kind of blanket statement.
Secondly, there's a difference between what people want and what people are legally entitled to. If you ask people if they want a million dollars, most of them will say "Sure!". That doesn't mean they're going to get it.
Existing copyright controls the making of copies. That's it. There's a fudge factor in there called "fair use" that controls whether or not something constitutes an infringing copy.
Whether AI training data falls within that or not is going to have to be decided in the courts or by some type of government action. It's clearly not an exact copy...the actual pixels in the original work aren't anywhere in the database. But is what is in there close enough to be considered a "derivative work"? I don't know, and neither do you.
Again, it's way too soon to be making blanket statements on the issue.