Even "plagiarism" is putting way to positive a spin on it. "Rampant copyright infringement" is more accurate.
I'm sure we all have our own feelings about IP law, but remember what happens to regular people who try stuff like this. I don't think the RIAA, Disney, or Nintendo (or the government) are going to be pleased to hear "it's not piracy! It's a transformative experience protected by fair use!"
steveBK123 · 2h ago
Millenials might be the generation that both got threatened with jail for music copyright infringement violations as youth AND gets to have their job threatened by automated mass corporate copyright infringement in adulthood!
svaha1728 · 1h ago
We wanted Aaron Swartz and we got Sam Altman.
hnthrow90348765 · 1h ago
"Haha, yeah, those scrappy Millennials - who knows where their breaking point is but I'm sure there's a fintech app for making that bet"
gojomo · 30m ago
There is no de jure legal requirement that the RIAA, Disney, Nintendo, or the government be "pleased to hear" about new technology.
And, while copyright prohibits some sorts of reproduction of copyrighted materials, it doesn't give rightsholders veto power over all downstream uses of legal copies.
rrauenza · 1h ago
I had this argument presented to me and I wasn't sure what to do with it.
> Humans are allowed to "absorb" art around them into their brains and generate derivative art. People may copy Miyazaki's style... why shouldn't an AI farm be allowed to?
Let's put aside for a moment that AI may have "consumed" some art without a license (e.g., "google books" - did google purchase every book?).
NooneAtAll3 · 38m ago
except lawyers keep saying "fanart is actually technically illegal" and resinging/changing lyrics in songs isn't enough to be protected by "fair use" stuff
if anything, I'd campaign for "we should limit copyright because it already doesn't work for Ai"
SilasX · 56m ago
Learning from copyrighted works to create new ones has never been protected by copyright[1], and has never needed separate licensing rights. Until 2022, no one even suggested it, to a rounding error. If anything, people would have been horrified at the idea of being dinged because your novel clearly drew inspiration from another work.
That narrative only got picked up because people needed a reason to demonize evil corps that they already hated for unrelated reasons.
[1] Yes, if you create "new" works from your learning that are basically copies, that has always been infringement. I'm talking about the general case.
caseyy · 33m ago
> Learning from copyrighted works to create new ones has never been protected by copyright
The term "learning" (I presume from "machine learning") shoulders a lot of weight. If we describe the situation more precisely, it involves commercially exploiting literature and other text media to produce a statistical corpus of texts, which is then commercially exploited. It's okay if that is licensed, but none of the AI companies bothered to license said original texts. Some (allegedly) just downloaded torrents of books, which is clear as day piracy. It has little to do with "learning" as used in common English — a person naturally retaining some knowledge of what they've consumed. Plain English "learning" doesn't describe the whole of what's happening with LLMs at all! It's a borrowed term, so let's not pretend it isn't.
What's happening is closer to buying some music cassettes, ripping parts of songs off them into various mixtapes, and selling them. The fact that the new cassettes "learned" the contents of the old ones, or that the songs are now jumbled up, doesn't change that the mixtape maker never had a license to copy the bits of music for commercial exploitation in the first place. After the infringement is done, the rest is smoke and mirrors...
dragonwriter · 22m ago
> Learning
Human learning doesn't involve making a copy (or any other use of an exclusive rights) as defined in copyright law (the human brain not being a fixed medium), AI training does, because digital storage is.
AI training may fall into the Fair Use exception in the US, but it absolutely does not fall through the same gap that makes human learning not even eequire fair use analysis since it doesn't meet the definitions ser out for a violation in the first place.
satyanash · 51m ago
> narrative only got picked up because people needed a reason to demonize evil corps
Either they aren't evil in which case they're being demonized, or they're already evil in which case demonization is redundant.
Keeping aside the motives of people, what is clear is that scale effects of AI cannot be ignored. An AI "learning" millions of pieces of content in a short span is not the same as humans spending time, effort and energy to replicate someone's style. You can argue that its 'neural nets' in both cases, but the massive scale is what separates the two.
A village is not a large family, a city is not a large village, ... and all that.
Pulcinella · 41m ago
"It's not piracy! I'm learning from all this media I didn't pay for!"
fblp · 34m ago
I wish this wasn't flagged, I find some of these satirical pieces on hn most thought provoking.
codr7 · 31m ago
I can see it's not being well received by the AI apologizing squad.
Let's just flag anything that gets in the way of profit and peace of mind.
Truth will find you.
rrauenza · 2h ago
How could the author not have called it the Giant Plagiarism Tool or Giant Plagiarism Technology ...
nashashmi · 42m ago
Might be a trademark problem?
nh23423fefe · 1h ago
People who live in the past use bad metaphors like this.
readthenotes1 · 1h ago
Disappointed. I thought this was going to be about Harvard.
minimaxir · 2h ago
[edit: retracted kneejerk take]
JonChesterfield · 2h ago
Linkedin has stuff like this on it and I'm pretty sure it's sincere.
Also Google wouldn't give me an antonym for "satire", only the output of a LLM which thinks synonym is the same thing as antonym.
gotoeleven · 38m ago
sincerence ? earnestence? Of course using those words will make whatever you're writing sound like satire.
leephillips · 57m ago
Nouns do not have antonyms.
Edit: I should have said not all nouns have antonyms.
Centigonal · 47m ago
Not true. Some concrete nouns don't have antonyms, but "good," "black," "heat," "invisibility," and many more abstract nouns have clean antonyms.
I'm sure we all have our own feelings about IP law, but remember what happens to regular people who try stuff like this. I don't think the RIAA, Disney, or Nintendo (or the government) are going to be pleased to hear "it's not piracy! It's a transformative experience protected by fair use!"
And, while copyright prohibits some sorts of reproduction of copyrighted materials, it doesn't give rightsholders veto power over all downstream uses of legal copies.
> Humans are allowed to "absorb" art around them into their brains and generate derivative art. People may copy Miyazaki's style... why shouldn't an AI farm be allowed to?
Let's put aside for a moment that AI may have "consumed" some art without a license (e.g., "google books" - did google purchase every book?).
if anything, I'd campaign for "we should limit copyright because it already doesn't work for Ai"
That narrative only got picked up because people needed a reason to demonize evil corps that they already hated for unrelated reasons.
[1] Yes, if you create "new" works from your learning that are basically copies, that has always been infringement. I'm talking about the general case.
The term "learning" (I presume from "machine learning") shoulders a lot of weight. If we describe the situation more precisely, it involves commercially exploiting literature and other text media to produce a statistical corpus of texts, which is then commercially exploited. It's okay if that is licensed, but none of the AI companies bothered to license said original texts. Some (allegedly) just downloaded torrents of books, which is clear as day piracy. It has little to do with "learning" as used in common English — a person naturally retaining some knowledge of what they've consumed. Plain English "learning" doesn't describe the whole of what's happening with LLMs at all! It's a borrowed term, so let's not pretend it isn't.
What's happening is closer to buying some music cassettes, ripping parts of songs off them into various mixtapes, and selling them. The fact that the new cassettes "learned" the contents of the old ones, or that the songs are now jumbled up, doesn't change that the mixtape maker never had a license to copy the bits of music for commercial exploitation in the first place. After the infringement is done, the rest is smoke and mirrors...
Human learning doesn't involve making a copy (or any other use of an exclusive rights) as defined in copyright law (the human brain not being a fixed medium), AI training does, because digital storage is.
AI training may fall into the Fair Use exception in the US, but it absolutely does not fall through the same gap that makes human learning not even eequire fair use analysis since it doesn't meet the definitions ser out for a violation in the first place.
Either they aren't evil in which case they're being demonized, or they're already evil in which case demonization is redundant.
Keeping aside the motives of people, what is clear is that scale effects of AI cannot be ignored. An AI "learning" millions of pieces of content in a short span is not the same as humans spending time, effort and energy to replicate someone's style. You can argue that its 'neural nets' in both cases, but the massive scale is what separates the two.
A village is not a large family, a city is not a large village, ... and all that.
Let's just flag anything that gets in the way of profit and peace of mind.
Truth will find you.
Also Google wouldn't give me an antonym for "satire", only the output of a LLM which thinks synonym is the same thing as antonym.
Edit: I should have said not all nouns have antonyms.