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Comment by dkjaudyeqooe | Hacker News Reader

That makes no sense. OpenAI must lose and it must not be possible to have proprietary models based on copyrighted works. It's not fair use because OpenAI is profiting from the copyright holders work and substituting for it while not giving them recompense.

The alternative is that any models widely trained on copyrighted work are uncopyrightable and must be disclosed, along with their data sources. In essence this is forcing all such models to be open. This is the only equitable outcome. Any use of the model to create works has the same copyright issues as existing work creation, ie if substantially replicates an existing work it must be licenced.

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Just because something is not copyrightable doesn’t automatically mean it must be disclosed. If weights aren’t copyrightable (and I don’t think they should be, as the weights are not a human creation), commercial AI’s just get locked behind API barriers, with terms of usage that forbid cloning. Copyright then never enters the picture, unless weights get leaked.

Whether or not that’s equitable is in the eye of the beholder. Copyright is an artificial construct, not a natural law. There is nothing that says we must have it, or we must have it in its current form, and I would argue the current system of copyright has been largely harmful to creativity for a long time now. One of the most damning statements I’ve read in this thread about the current copyright system is how there’s simply not enough unlicensed content to train models on. That is the bed that the copyright-holding corporations have made for themselves by lobbying to extend copyright to a century, and it all but assured the current situation.

> Just because something is not copyrightable doesn’t automatically mean it must be disclosed.

No I'm saying that's what they law should be, because models can be built and used without anyone knowing. If it's illegal not to disclose them you can punish people.

Copyright is something that protects the little guy as much as big corps. But the former has more to lose as a group in the world of AI models, and they will lose something here no matter what happens.

> I would argue the current system of copyright has been largely harmful to creativity for a long time now

I'd love to hear that argument.

How has the current system of copyright been harmful to creativity?

For what it’s worth, I agree with your second paragraph. But it would take legislation to enforce that. For now, it’s unclear that OpenAI will lose. Quite the opposite; I’ve spoken with a few lawyers who believe OpenAI is on solid legal footing, because all that matters is whether the model’s output is infringing. And it’s not. No one reads books via ChatGPT, and Dalle 3 has tight controls preventing it from generating Pokémon or Mario.

All outcomes suck. The trick is to find the outcome that sucks the least for the majority of people. Maybe the needs of copyright holders will outweigh the needs of open source, but it’s basically guaranteed that open source ML will die if your first paragraph comes true.

Proposal: revenue from Generative AI should be taxed 10% for an international endowment for the arts. In exchange, copyright claims are settled.

With a minimum rate, such that no-one can pretend they’re getting no income from it.

We might apply that as a $5000 or so surcharge on AI accelerators capable of running the models, such as the 4090.

> But it would take legislation to enforce that.

Absolutely true. That's the end game and we should be working toward influencing that. It's within our power.

> I’ve spoken with a few lawyers who believe OpenAI is on solid legal footing

No one knows anything, this is too novel, and even if OpenAI gets some fair use ruling, it will be inequitable and legislation is inevitable. OpenAI is between a rock and a hard place here. If you read the basis for fair use and give each aspect serious consideration, as a judge should do, I can't see it passing fair use muster. It's not a case of simply reproducing work, which in unclear here, it's the negative effect on copyright holders, and that effect is undeniable.

> All outcomes suck.

I don't think so. It's possible to fashion something equitable, but people other than the corporations have to get involved.

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