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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Technology
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I don't know what the authors are complaining about. All the AI is doing is trawling through a lexicon of words and rearranging them into an order that will sell books. It's exactly what authors do. This is about money.
Hi, it's me the author!
First of all, thanks for reading.
In the article I explain that it is not exactly what authors do, we reading and writing are an inherently human activity and the consumption and processing of massive amounts of data (far more than a human with a photographic memory could process in a hundred million lifetimes) is a completely different process to that.
I also point out that I don't have a problem with LLMs as a concept, and I'm actually excited about what they can do, but that they are inherently different from humans and should be treated as such by the law.
My main point is that authors should have the ability to decree that they don't want their work used as training data for megacorporations to profit from without their consent.
So, yes in a way it is about money, but the money in question being the money OpenAI and Meta are making off the backs of millions of unpaid and often unsuspecting people.
I think it's an interesting topic, thanks for the article.
It does start to raise some interesting questions, if an author doesn't want they book to be ingested by a LLM, then what is acceptable? Should all LLMs now be ignorant of that work? What about summaries or reviews of that work?
What if from a summary of a book an LLM could extrapolate what's in the book? Or write a similar book to the original, does that become a new work or is it still fall into the issue of copyright?
I do fear that copyright laws will muddy the waters and slow down the development of LLMs and have a greater impact more than any government standards ever will!
I'm all for muddy waters and slow development of LLMs at this juncture. The world is enough of a capitalist horrorshow and so far all this tech provides is a faster way to accelerate the already ridiculously wide class divide. Just my cynical luddite take of the day...
One of the things they are alleging is that the books were acquired illegally
That is a separate crime. And it's the distribution part that's illegal, so the lawsuit should be aimed at Library Genesis for that part.
They’re “complaining” about unique qualities of their art being used, without consent, to create new things which ultimately de-value their original art.
It’s a debate to be had, I’m not clearly in favour of either argument here, but it’s quite obvious what they’re upset with.
If it's a debate to be had then it's something that should have been debated hundreds of years ago when copyright was first invented, because every author or artist re-uses the "unique qualities" of other peoples' art when making their own new stuff.
There's the famous "good authors copy, great authors steal" quote, but I rather like the related one by C. E. M. Joad mentioned in that article: "the height of originality is skill in concealing origins."