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Comment by rose_ann_ | Hacker News Reader

You might want to learn how the models work before making inflammatory comments.

To simplify the entire concept: Imagine you were an alien. You decide to work as an artist on earth. So you go on this thing the Humans call 'the internet', view millions of images & works of art, then start creating images & art pieces of your own based on the underlying rules you've gleaned from those millions of images you've viewed, without in any way keeping or saving a single copy of any of those images or artworks.

Would you call the above copyright infringement?

Or are you now claiming its 'copyright infringement' if anything or anyone apart from a human being views an image?

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Perhaps we are in new legal territory, where existing copyright laws and legal theory doesn't cover the issues completely?

I wonder how things will go if (or when) similar AI technology enters the realm of production industries e.g. manufacturing or chemical. One can imagine that data of actual production plants and processes are obtained using drone cameras, pictures, schematics, text books etc. This data is then analyzed and synthesized into improved production flows, using the same method, which basically claims (it seems to me): we did not use any of your actual production knowledge, we just let the AI learn the principles. None of the original IP is in the AI working data. No patents are violated etc.

If this technology is sold to the manufacturing companies - that can choose to opt out or opt in by buying or not bying - there probably isn't a problem. If this technology is used to establish competing manufacturing companies, where the economy can be significanty improved, and thus drive the existing companies out of business, then what?

I think in the latter case, the AI company would be obliterated using lawsuits, without any thought given to the merit or legality of the AI tech. Or at least the AI company would be bought out using an "you can't say no" offer. And thus effectively shut down.

Now I think of it, this seems to boil down to some philosphical issues where these thought experiments are needed and have value in order to work out what the issues really are. Perhaps an issue here is that there isn't much value on artists and works of art in general (with some economically strong exceptions like movies), but there is very strong protection of other industries - industries with vested interests, strong economies and monetary resources to defend against attackers.

Great points. The one thing I would respectfully disagree with is the idea that this stuff can be shut down by buyout, legal action or whatever. The fact that the technology and process is now 'out of the bottle' so to speak, means that it won't go away. Progress is progress, and whether it's open source or foreign countries as actors, means that love it or hate it, we're going to have to live with the consequences of our actions.

It's going to be fascinating to see how we deal with androids which integrate advanced AI and therefore perfectly mimic human beings. The mind boggles.

These are thought experiments. So other sensible viewpoints are only a contribution. I am myself also trying to work out where AI leaves us. Not just in this case, but because we will be hit by AI in the computer science field - hardware, software, everywhere - and potentially many places in general society.

I do not immediately see why strong market actors would not be able to close an attacker down in this way. I buy the argument that tech can be 'out of the bottle'. But this does not necessarily mean that it is feasible to use for market competition. It is often more likely that the tech is absorbed by existing strong market players. But as happens right now, you can influence markets, professions and peoples behaviour by making free (no pay) market tests on a large enough scale. Which is interesting in itself.

I did business studies at university and we had a lot of work on market forces. And the text books were full of examples of market situations where competitors attacked and was succesfully fended off using legal action - both warranted and unwarranted. And by other means. And wipe out by buy out is completely normal. I do not have much data on this, but I would think that a lot of acquihires, are actually done as market defence. With the basic intention to close down competitive tech. Maybe the acquired tech, knowledge and brains is used sometimes, and then probably incorporated into existing tech, but I think this is not always the main purpose of the acquihire. It is probably counter intuitive to think like this for tech people (I am one myself). But business people think in market dynamics (and money) first. The tech can often be a surprisingly long way down in the list of priorities - where we think it should be much higher up.

I have myself worked in companies that did a merger, where the merging entity was spun off by a parent company - in all cases a tech department that was no longer wanted by the parent company - and in the aftermath of the merger, the business entity was in reality obliterated by the new company, much more than it was merged or absorbed. Made a lot of people in the merged entity unhappy and rightfully so.

Your analogy with a company processes doesn't quite work because patents works differently from copyright:

With copyright, you are allowed to use the original work as your own if you transform it enough (basically, you can get inspiration from it, but not exact copy).

With patents, you infringe a patent when you use the work described in it without the license, even if it's just as an inspiration and if you transform the method. It also doesn't matter if you rediscovered the content of the patent independently from the inventor, even if you can prove it.

So in this case, the original manufacturing company can defend its IP even if its work has been learned then rediscovered by an AI.

> Perhaps we are in new legal territory, where existing copyright laws and legal theory doesn't cover the issues completely?

Not only there is probably no law but there is no precedent in human history to define the morality of these tools. Until now it was universally accepted that people could see public art and learn from it. But here it's not a person, it's an algorithm.

Inflammatory comments should be welcome. New technologies, when not scrutinized, become tomorrows problems.

Just because the model does not save any imagery directly does not change the fact that the model cannot exist without copyrighted imagery. These diffusion models are being made by humans, not aliens and should be judged as such.

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