if you consider the massive environmental harm AI has and continues to cause, the people whose work has been stolen to create it, the impacts on workers and salaries, and the abuses AI enables that free lunch starts looking more expensive.
"Stolen" is kind of a loaded word. It implies the content was for sale and was taken without payment. I don't think anyone would accuse a person of stealing if they purchased GRRM's books, studied the prose and then used the knowledge they gained from studying to write a fanfic in the style of GRRM (or better yet, the final 2 books). What was stolen? "the prose style"? Seems too abstract. (yes, I know the counter argument is "but LLMs can do more quickly and at a much greater scale", and so forth)
I generally want less copyright, not more. I'm imagining a dystopian future where every article on the internet has an implicit huge legal contract you enter into like "you are allowed to read this article with your eyeballs only, possibly you are also allowed to copy/paste snippets with attribution, and I suppose you are allowed to parody it, but you aren't allowed to parody it with certain kinds of computer assistance such as feeding text into an LLM and asking it to mimic my style, and..."
AI outputs copyrighted material: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/25/business/ai-i... and they can even be ranked by the extent to which they do it: https://aibusiness.com/responsible-ai/openai-s-gpt-4-is-the-...
AI is getting better at data laundering and hiding evidence of infringement, but ultimately it's collecting and regurgitating copyrighted content.
"even" is odd there, of course Disney is accusing them of violating copyright, that's what Disney does.
> AI is getting better at data laundering and hiding evidence of infringement, but ultimately it's collecting and regurgitating copyrighted content.
That's not the standard for copyright infringement; AI is a transformative use.
Similarly, if you read a book and learn English or facts about the world by doing that, the author of the book doesn't own what you just learned.
Establishing an affirmative defense that it's transformative fair use would hopefully be an uphill battle, given that it's commercial, using the whole work, and has a detrimental effect on the market for the work.
Reproducing a movie still well enough that I honestly wouldn't know which one is the original is transformative?
If I download all content from a website that has a use policy stating that all content is owned by that website and can't be resold. Then allow my users to query this downloaded data and receive a detailed summary of all related content, and sell that product. Perhaps this is a violation of the use policy.
All of this hasn't been properly tested in the courts yet.. large payments have already been made to Reddit to avoid this, likely because Reddit has the means to fight this in court.. my little blog though, fair game because I can't afford to engage.
You’re talking about overt infringement, the GP was talking about covert infringement. It’s difficult to see how something could be covert yet not transformative.
that's literally what happened in innumerable individual cases, though.
Much of the content that is created by people is done so to generate revenue. They are denied that revenue when people don't go to their site. One might interpret that as theft. In the case of GRRM's books - I would assumed they were purchased and the author received the revenue from the sale.
Also, LLMs don’t just imitate style, they can be made to reproduce certain content near-verbatim in a way that would be a copyright violation if done by a human being.
You can excuse it away if you want with reduction ad absurdum arguments, but the impact is distinctly different, and calls for different parameters.
It's just too dangerous to leave it in the hands of people who don't believe in science, and value money, power, and ideology more than anything else.
Its happening now, and there is nothing to stop it happening again in future.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/trump-fires-comm...
"Further, the NRC rejected past attempts to switch to a model based on the "hormesis theory" that Trump seemingly supports—which posits that some radiation exposure can be beneficial. The NRC found there was "insufficient evidence to justify any changes" that could endanger public health, Science reported.
One health researcher at the University of California, Irvine, Stephen Bondy, told Science that his 2023 review on the science of hormesis showed it is "still unsettled." His characterization of the executive order suggests that the NRC embracing that model "clearly places health hazards as of secondary importance relative to economic and business interests.""
— https://andymasley.substack.com/p/individual-ai-use-is-not-b...
> What’s the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT?
— https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/carbon-footprint-c...
https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2025-06-05-green...
> According to the latest edition of the report, electricity consumption by data centers — which power AI development and deployment, among other uses — increased by 12 per cent each year from 2017 to 2023, four times faster than global electricity growth.
> Four leading AI-focused companies alone saw their operational emissions increase in the reporting period by 150 per cent on average since 2020. This rise in energy that is either produced or purchased – known as Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions – underscores the urgent need to manage AI's environmental impact.
> In total, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions reported by the 166 digital companies covered by the report contributed 0.8 per cent of all global energy-related emissions in 2023.
It's worth noting that it's not all gloom and doom. As the report optimistically notes:
> Renewable energy adoption: 23 companies operated on 100 per cent renewable energy in 2023, up from 16 in 2022.
> Dedicated climate reporting: 49 companies released standalone climate reports, signaling greater transparency.
> Scope 3 consideration: The number of companies publishing targets on indirect emissions from supply chains and product use rose from 73 to 110, showing increasing awareness of industry impacts.
So the environmental impact is alarming, but at least companies seem to be growing more conscientious about it. We must continue to hold tech companies accountable for their environmental impact, and keep pushing for renewable energy.
> Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a rule clarification allowing the use of some mobile gas and diesel power sources for data centers. In a statement accompanying the rule, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin claimed that the Biden administration's focus on addressing climate change had hampered AI development.
> "The Trump administration is taking action to rectify the previous administration's actions to weaken the reliability of the electricity grid and our ability to maintain our leadership on artificial intelligence," Zeldin said. "This is the first, and certainly not the last step, and I look forward to continue working with artificial intelligence and data center companies and utilities to resolve any outstanding challenges and make the U.S. the AI capital of the world."
https://www.newsweek.com/ai-race-fossil-powered-generators-a...
> In another move, DOE on Tuesday said it was offering loan guarantees for coal-fired power plant projects, such as upgrading energy infrastructure to restart operations or operate more efficiently or at a higher output.
Please elaborate.
Who are the “relevant technical authorities”?
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/sustainability/amazon-renew...
Meanwhile,
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph...
https://www.newsweek.com/ai-race-fossil-powered-generators-a...
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
""" [G]lobal data centre electricity use reached 415 TWh in 2024, or 1.5 per cent of global electricity consumption.... While these figures include all types of data centres, the growing subset of data centres focused on AI are particularly energy intensive. AI-focused data centres can consume as much electricity as aluminium smelters but are more geographically concentrated. The rapid expansion of AI is driving a significant surge in global electricity demand, posing new challenges for sustainability. Data centre electricity consumption has been growing at 12 per cent per year since 2017, outpacing total electricity consumption by a factor of four. """
The numbers are about data center power use in total, but AI seems to be one of the bigger driving forces behind that growth, so it seems plausible that there is some harm.
0: https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmen... 1: https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2025-06-05-green... 2: (cf. page 20) https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Environment/Pages/Publications/...
see also:
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-ai-data-centers-dr...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-computer-scient...
That seems like very low impact, especially considering training only happens once. I have to imagine that the ongoing cost of inference is the real energy sink.
I am totally on board with making sure data center energy usage is rational and aligned with climate policy, but "10k trips between LA and NY" doesn't seem like something that is just on its face outrageous to me.
Isn't the goal that these LLMs provide so much utility they're worth the cost? I think it's pretty plausible that efficiency gains from LLMs could add up to 10k cross USA trips worth of air pollution.
Of course this excludes the cost of actually running the model, which I suspect could be far higher
Data centers are already significant users of renewable electricity. They do not contaminate water in any appreciable amount.