Ask HN: How are we going to counter idea theft in the age of AI? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How are we going to counter idea theft in the age of AI?

2 pointswinternett11 comments

I've posted opinion pieces here a few times and quickly noticed paraphrased clones of my ideas being posted soon after (that subsequently reach the front page) while my OC posts sink.

Many times it seems as if I get many followers on social sites like Twitter and TikTok that follow just to observe and siphon ideas as well. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Are we getting to a point where we'll need to be more secretive about our opinions and ideas because of Ai and people who are leveraging it to copy others?

It's going to become increasingly complex to negotiate copyright issues now that "Ai" tools (that sample pre-existing online content and ideas) are being deployed everywhere... As people talk about Ai replacing jobs, it's also killing independent opportunity as Ai can be used to steal credit from original authors of ideas.

If independent authors and content creators suddenly went on strike and unpublished the majority of their work, that could potentially send a powerful message to the people exploiting online idea sharing, it could also devastate a lot of services that rely/profit on/off of those free data sources. As we are authors of many ideas, there should be a sense of companies that run Ai tools to be transparent concerning their data sources and a new system to give better and accurate credit to authors of original ideas.

How are we going to counter idea theft in the age of AI?

I think the same way as prior to machine learning perhaps. Copyrights, trademarks, patents, etc... It might be harder to prove someone stole an idea so maybe that will require the arms race of machine-learning vs machine-learning bots. Given none of them show their work this will be challenging and litigious. Lawyers will need more advanced machine-learning for discovery, probably hiring new corporations that focus on this. With each new implementation of a tech usually comes new business models and countering business models. such as anti-malware, anti-virus, anti-spam all of which were preventable but whack-a-mole was less friction and led to new business models.

I personally hope this leads to a swath of legal suits that push machine-learning sites to show their work. I would expect nothing less than a debug audit trail of data sources. Here [1] is one potential start of the battles.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35370915

>I personally hope this leads to a swath of legal suits that push machine-learning sites to show their work.

Agreed, it seems as there are too many iterations of the very same thing... A website you type text prompts into or an Ai image generator... All stuff that can be easily faked with scripting of some sort... Also, most of these tools are cleverly tied to a tiered subscription model in order to really see any demos, none of which are really impressive nor useful before you sign up...

I don't think "idea theft" is a useful way to frame this, especially since you talk mostly about copyright -- and copyright overtly does not protect ideas.

However, your underlying point is something I worry a lot about. I've already joined a number of people in removing everything I had on the publicly accessible web, because I don't want to contribute to these LLMs and there is no other way to prevent my own work from being used for that.

I don't know what the solution is. Or if one is even necessary. It may very well be that the number of people like me is small enough that it won't make any real difference in the big picture.

A song is generated from an idea, so is a skit you create on your phone as a video... A concept about how to decrease gun violence in schools posted from an individual's Twitter account is also an idea, that others may be able to read, but shouldn't take and repost as an idea of their own... The word "idea" is used to encompass everything from a corporate to an individual item posted online... In many ways, the original post is a record of the first time that idea is created, but somehow Twitter shows the most popular instance of a post, and not the original instance of a post on trending timelines... That's kind of contributing to the problem.

Right. So is your position that people should be able to have a monopoly on ideas themselves rather than on a particular expression of those ideas?

I don't think I can be on board with that. It seems to me that would be the death of art and culture.

No, just proper credit for their ideas... Most people wouldn't mind letting their ideas be shared across the world, it's that the credit isn't properly attributed in most cases now... That's why manual content watermarks are so popular...

It is apps like TikTok that allow content to be stripped of origin info and reposted without any sort of responsibility, not even copyright control needs to be asserted in most cases, it's a matter that sites like Youtube and TikTok do not allow a method of sharing that properly links back to the originating account, they'd rather foster content theft and reposting than create a fair accreditation model.

People almost certainly just had similar ideas to you. The idea that someone is reading your posts and then copying your ideas to write posts that get more attention is pretty far fetched.

It's too easy to say that... I'm not saying my suspicions are the total issue, my issues are just an example of the larger context...

I am citing that idea theft is real all across the Internet for everyone, and that measures need to be addressed.

In a small community like HN, posts can easily be monitored to find trends and capitalize on unique ideas. There is fierce competition on sites like Twitter and HN to make the front page because it means money for companies and enterprising individuals. Reddit alone has been cited for cases of moderators asserting sever control over their subreddits to dominate their own front pages and to charge users in many ways for visibility, why? because there is profit involved in taking credit for original ideas.

Can you honestly say you have a clear and direct means of expressing and owning your own original ideas on the Internet (beyond publishing them on your own web site)?

Ideas are cheap, and always have been.

I think people will need to be less possessive over "their" ideas. More like a MIT license mindset, like mod community or something.

This goes both ways, as there is less profit incentive for stealing ideas in a more open ecosystem.

As many people conduct their life's work online, they shouldn't just feel that their ideas can be open sourced without credit... Especially by for-profit companies that want to use those ideas in their paid products.

We've already got thousands of musicians contributing their music to Spotify (A profitable company) for highly underpaid streaming, and many other content creators making high quality videos for many social media platforms unpaid as well, in hopes of going viral. As Ai threatens jobs, people should be able to find other opportunities for business by sharing their unique ideas. Our ideas should not be opened to being hijacked by companies just because keeping track of origins is difficult... Finding the authors of ideas should be important because ideas often generate the need for complete development and follow-up discussions.

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