This feels like a "no shit" moment.
Because if LLMs are prediction machines, the original novel would be a valid organization of the tokens. So there should be a prompt that can cause that sequence to be output.
Because if LLMs are prediction machines, the original novel would be a valid organization of the tokens. So there should be a prompt that can cause that sequence to be output.
> So there should be a prompt that can cause that sequence to be output
Is where I think I might disagree. For example, the odds of predicting verbatim the next sentence in, say, Harry Potter should be astronomically low for a large majority of it. If it wasn't, it'd be a pretty boring book. The fact that it can do this with relative ease means it has been trained on the material.
The issue at hand is about copyright and Intellectual Property - if the goal of copyright is to protect the IP of the author, then LLMs can sort of act like an IP money laundering scheme - where the black box has consumed and can emit this IP. The whole concept of IP is a little philosophical and muddy, with lots of grey area for fair use, parody, inspiration, and adaptation. But this gets very odd when we consider it in light of these models which can adapt and use IP at a massive massive scale.
This is not to say that they couldn't write a novel, even a very good one - that is a completely different discussion.