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Comment by kansface | Hacker News Reader

> The reason that AI models are generating content similar to other people's work is because those models were explicitly trained to do that.

Ah, just like humans who train against the output of other humans. AI models are not fundamentally different in kind in this regard, only scope, and even that isn't perfectly obvious to me a priori.

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Humans usually add their own style to things, and it’s hard to discuss copyright without that larger context along with the question of scale (me making copies of your paintings by hand is not as significant a risk to your livelihood as being able to make them unimaginably faster than you can at much lower cost). Just as rules about making images of people in certain ways or places only became critical when photography made image reproduction an industrial-scale process, I think we’ll be seeing updates to fair-use rules based on scale and originality.

Humans can also come up with their own styles and can draw things they’ve never seen, which ML models as they currently exist are not capable of (and likely will never be). A human artist who has lived their entire life in the wilderness and has never trained themselves with the work of another artist will still be able to produce art with styles produced entirely by personal experimentation.

ML models have a long way to go before comparisons to humans make any kind of sense.

I really don't get why so many people seem to think that an AI model training on copyrighted work and outputting work in that same style is exactly the same thing (morally, ethically, legally, whatever dimension you want) as a human looking at copyrighted work and then being influenced by that work when they create their own work.

The first thing is the output of a mathematical function as computed by a computer, while the second is an expression of numan creativity. AI models are not alive. They are not creative. They do not have emotion. These things are not even in the same ballpark, let alone similar or the same.

Maybe someday AI will be sophisticated enough to be considered alive, to have emotion, and to be deserving of the same rights and protections that humans have. And I hope if and when that day comes, humanity recognizes that and doesn't try to turn AI into an enslaved underclass. But we are far, far from that point now, and the current computer programs generating text and images and video are not exhibiting creativity, and do not deserve these kinds of protections. The people creating the art that is used to feed the inputs and outputs of these computer programs... those are the people that should have their rights protected.

> The first thing is the output of a mathematical function as computed by a computer, while the second is an expression of human creativity.

The mathematical function is the expression of human creativity. It consumes other expressions of human creativity, a creativity act in an off itself, to output a different expression of human creativity. Other humans consume the output of the system and the system alike to generate further creative works. An AI model is a higher order creative process, much like humans, and is fundamentally predicated on the creative involvement of humans.

Consider the seminal work _Designing Programmes_ by Karl Gerstner if you'd like further consideration of optimizing creative output via self imposed, systematized restrictions and permutations (design programs as meta art). Or alternatively, consider aleatoric music or Toshiko Takaezu for the incorporation of _chance_ into art.

There really isn't anything too new here in my book (AI) - just increased scope and fruition.

> They do not have emotion.

Art does not require an input or output of emotion nor an emotional affect.

Going by this logic, why is OpenAI forbidding use of the content it generates for training other models?

Well, mostly because of corporate greed of ownership. But the underlying issue is that Ai training in AI is a recipe for ruining the entire training set. At least in these early stages.

Not just greed, they want to silence copyright holders whose works they freely use and at the same time prevent others from using theirs. It is like having different set of rules for them. I don't believe training itself is ruining anything, it is the proposed model of value capture and marginalizing content creators that poses greater threat.

Yes, you've condensed the problem in display quite well here. It's not even just hypocrisy, but also short sighted behaviour.

Artists will learn to not trust the web, if they haven't already. The greatest time to train a model was yesterday, eventually no novel ideas, expressions, art will prosper on the "open" web. Just a regurgitation of some statistical idea of words, and pixels.

They can write whatever they want in their Terms of Service. That's the logic.

That doesn't mean that courts will meaningfully enforce it for them.

I understand that, only pointing out the hypocrisy

Because any company, hypocrisy be damned, will use every legal lever at their disposal to protect their business model.

Hope we are not normalizing hypocrisy, usually it is very destructive.

Oh, right. It just reads a million books in a couple of days, removes all the source information, mix and match it the way it sees fit and sells this output $10/month to anyone comes with a credit card.

It's the same thing with GitHub's copilot.

A book publisher would seize everything I have, and shot me at a back alley if I do 0.0001% of this.

Yeah, fair use implicitly uses the constraints of typical human lifetime and ability to moderate how much damage is done to publishers with it. That wasn’t an issue before recently, as humans were the only ones who could create output based off fair use laws.

> Yeah, fair use implicitly uses the constraints of typical human lifetime and ability

Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc. strongly disagrees with you on that (the "Google Books case").

AI models are fundamentally different because a computer is a lump of silicon which is neither a moral subject nor object. A human author is a living sentient being that needs to earn a living and is deserving of dignity and regard.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to fundamentally disagree with you. One does not get a morality pass because "the computer did it". People are creating these AI models, selecting data and feeding the models data on which to be trained. The outcome of that rests upon _both_ the creators of the models and the users prompting the models to achieve a result.

To make it even more stark, people don't kill people, it's the gun that does it.

I don't know if we are disagreeing.

I interpret the comment I was replying to as basically saying "We let humans do it, so therefore we should let machines do it." And my response is basically, "we let humans do it because it provides benefits to an actual living being that deserves them".

When Midjourney serves up an image, it does not collect a paycheck that enables it to feed its family. It doesn't go home and sleep well at night with the satisfaction that it has created a piece of art that meant something to others.

It may be the case that the executives and engineers who own Midjourney feel some of that, but I think the experience of making a machine to make X is fundamentally different from making an X.

It may also be the cast that the person who wrote a prompt to ask Midjourney to produce an image generates some value from that and feels good about it. I get that. But I think the amount of creative effort they put into doing that and the amount of value in the result that is derived from uncompensated other artists is profoundly different from sitting down and actually drawing a picture.

A large enough difference in degree is a difference in kind.

The heck are you on about?

Have you ever tried to "train a human"?

They don't work that way, not unless your "training" involves so weird torture stuff you probably shouldn't be boasting about.

Maybe try ask some teachers (of both adults and children) how it works with people...

Humans who train on material usually buy a book of it, pay for an entry to an exhibition or even pay to own an original.

Maybe they release it for free, possibly supported by ads, at least to get some recognition and a job if it is perceived well.

>Ah, just like humans who train against the output of other humans.

Yeah, and creating derivative work without permission is against the law.

>AI models are not fundamentally different in kind in this regard

[citation needed]

Of course they are fundamentally different. They don't get to decide what to absorb.

Humans that make those decisions, correspondingly, should pay the price.

As other already pointed out, that's not how human artists learn or produce art. Everyone who uses this brain-dead argument outs themselves as someone who knows nothing about the subject.

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