Considering this, I find it incredibly obnoxious to use the term vegan in this fashion, somehow equating training a software on copyrighted material to literally torturing living, feeling and thinking animals for their short lives. It is so completely out of touch with reality that I'm just speechless.
avoider?
teetotaler?
conscientious objector?
On the other hand, government is what can end factory farms. No market mechanism can do it since it actually makes a factory farm more competitive the more it cuts corners and costs on housing animals and fattens them with antibiotics.
The people who don’t care about animal welfare might be persuaded if they realized just how much factory farms contribute to the rise of antibiotic resistant MRSA bacteria and other superbugs. They could make the past pandemic look like a cakewalk.
- Artists: you’re comparing us to animals raised for meat now?
- Animals: you’re saying killing and eating us is equivalent to stealing someone’s picture?
Honestly though, the more I think about this particular analogy the more I like it.
The key to the analogy isn't meant to be about eating animals compared to ripping off art though - it's about personal ethical choices. From the article:
> ... my current mental model is to think about this in terms of veganism, as an analogy for people making their own personal ethical decisions.
how about AI Cannibal? apt, i feel...by your logic. and better than "AI vegan".
everyone has access to human flesh and sadly only a few indulge in this opportunity. how about we leave vegans out of this?
I believe that harming to animals is bad. And yet I still chose to eat them. I am not a vegan, even though I understand the moral reasoning for being one.
I am uncomfortable that generative AIs are trained on images without the artists consent. And yet I still chose to use those models.
If I _was_ a vegan with respect to animal products but chose to use AI models the analogy would not be as fitting for me.
Note that I am not saying that either of my moral choices here are the correct ones!
1. Do you believe harming humans is bad?
2. Would you choose to eat them if they taste just like chicken?
Perhaps the reason you choose not to eat humans is because it is illegal and is punishable to kill humans for food whereas killing animals for food is still acceptable in society. And hence it is an easy low hanging moralistic fruit to be vegan.
It is also likely that you might be harmed if you consume human flesh.(Hello, prions!) There are multiple deterrents to becoming a cannibal vs eating like a non vegan.
You haven’t made a moral choice at all when you consume animal flesh while still believing that harming animals is bad. Just like you haven’t made a moral choice at all when you appropriate other artists’ work without their consent. There is no ‘moral choice’ made here because you chose not to choose when there is no stick to be afraid of..
The only reason why it would be easy for AI art to exist is because it is not punishable. There is no law against it.
In other words, people will continue indulging in their whims as long as there is no stick to punish them.
Your thought?
You seem to be making my argument for me here: this is why I used the vegan analogy.
Note that I am not saying that I have made the moral choice here, in either case!
In both cases here I have decided to prioritize my own convenience over what can be argued as the morally "right" thing to do.
You keep bringing up ‘moral choice’ or the lack of it. That’s very confusing. Is this a morality issue or a legality issue?
Why bring up veganism as the base construct when you don’t identify with it?
Make a better argument.