Comment on The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem

Lemmist@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  If humans have to pay for knowledge with expensive student loans and book purchases, why should AI get that same knowledge for free?

  source

  • Grimy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Because if AI has to pay, you kill the open-source scene and give a fat monopoly to the handful of companies that can afford the data. Not to mention that data is owned by a few publishing house and none of the writers are getting a dime.

    Yes it’s silly that students pay so much, but we should be arguing for less copyrights so we can have both proper prices in education and a vibrant open source scene.

    Most people argue for a strengthening of copyrights which only helps data brokers and big AI players. If you want subscription services and censorship while still keeping all the drawbacks of AI, this is how you do it.

    source

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Because if AI has to pay, you kill the open-source scene

      lemmy.ml/post/27465728

      source

      • Grimy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        How does that change if copyrights are strengthened? The open source scene dies and the big players will still keep scraping.

        source
    • doodledup@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The entire open-source scene grew out of that exact system before LLMs even existed. What are you talking about?

      source

      • Grimy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        AI has always been able to train on copyrighted data because it’s considered transformative.

        If this changes, seeing the huge amount of data needed for competitive generative AI, then open source AI cannot afford the data and dies. Strengthening copyrights would force everyone out of the game except Meta, Google and Microsoft.

        That system that open source AI grew out of is exactly what is being attacked.

        source

        • -> View More Comments
  • Lemmist@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Has Trump dismantled libraries already?

    source

    • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      As it so happens…

      www.edweek.org/policy-politics/…/03

      He did dismantle library funding.

      source

      • Lemmist@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        In this case, AI reading for free should be your least important problem :)

        source
• BertramDitore@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  The article explains the problems in great detail.

  Here’s just one small section of the text which describes some of them:

  All of this certainly makes knowledge and literature more accessible, but it relies entirely on the people who create that knowledge and literature in the first place—that labor that takes time, expertise, and often money. Worse, generative-AI chatbots are presented as oracles that have “learned” from their training data and often don’t cite sources (or cite imaginary sources). This decontextualizes knowledge, prevents humans from collaborating, and makes it harder for writers and researchers to build a reputation and engage in healthy intellectual debate. Generative-AI companies say that their chatbots will themselves make scientific advancements, but those claims are purely hypothetical.

  (I originally put this as a top-level comment, my bad.)

  source

  • Enelop@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The claims aren’t entirely hypothetical, LLM AI has mapped nearly every known protein which humans were unable to do…

    www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02083-2

    source

    • BertramDitore@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      That’s an interesting article, but it was published in 2022, before LLMs were a thing on anyone’s radar. The results are still incredibly impressive without a doubt, but based on how the researchers explain it, it looks like it was accomplished using deep learning, which isn’t the same as LLMs. Though they’re not entirely unrelated.

      Opaque and confusing terminology in this space also just makes it very difficult to determine who or which systems or technology are actually making these advancements. As far as I’m concerned none of this is actual AI, just very powerful algorithmic prediction models. So the claims that an AI system itself has made unique technological advancements, when they are incapable of independent creativity, to me proves that nearly all their touted benefits are still entirely hypothetical right now.

      source

      • Enelop@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I guess that is true.

        I hope we are far off from AIG myself. The upheaval it will cause will be catastrophic to society.

        source
  • General_Effort@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    YSK that scientists, engineers, and mathematicians are not paid for the knowledge they create. The knowledge is public domain.

    When they publish articles, they typically transfer the copyright to the publisher, which is why they will happily assist you in pirating articles.

    Patents are public with the express purpose that others may learn from them. Only the actual use of an invention requires permission. Even that lasts only 20 years rather than 100+ years as is the case with copyrights.

    So, this quote is not an explanation of any problems. It is (probably deliberately) misleading. Researchers will not receive any license fees. Rather, these fees will subtract from research budgets.

    source
• br3d@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  These authors (and my work is in there) did not write so that Mark Zuckerberg could steal our work and profit from it

  source

  • MyOpinion@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This is just a perfect breakdown of the problem. Keep Zuckerberg away from your work.

    source
  • Grimy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Those authors aren’t in the equation anymore. They gave their work to publishing houses and won’t be asked about what it is to be used for.

    source