TheFriar

Is $25k affordable? How much are cars? 25k sounds like a fuckload of money.

Well, shit I’m glad that I turned off all notifications after reading a similar article a couple months ago.

I wonder when I’ll finally have to stop reading parenthetical describing that mentioning “X” is referring to Twitter.

You kid, but if Taylor swift just talked about a new Twitter alternative, especially any time soon, Twitter would be kaput.

Anything that happens online, with machines, near machines, that were done with a phone in someone’s pocket or within 100 yards of a phone, anywhere under telephone wires, anything that’s happened since the advent of the printing press…

I fucking hate these doorbell cameras. In my building, my neighbor across the hall has one,so EVERY SINGLE TIME I come and go from my apt im being recorded. And there’s another on the floor below me. So they know where I go in my building. It’s fucked up. I literally have zero privacy on when I’m coming and going from my apartment.

Okay, first of all, that was my interpretation. Because “teaching” has always been tied to education. I was extrapolating the point to argue that fair use laws are there for the sake of education and cultural growth. You can use copyrighted works for use that benefits society as a whole, I.e. education. See what I’m saying? Fair use laws were written with the benefit of all in mind, using established works to broaden education and knowledge in the community and for purposes of culture. That’s my interpretation of their entire purpose.

Oh, I actually was just talking of my own interpretation of the point of he laws, but this is from copyright.gov:

Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports.

They’re saying right there the purpose if for news, discussion, and education. Cultural benefits. That proves my point, I think.

But onto this:

why do you feel that a profit motive is at odds with the greater good?

Because…it is. Profit is extremely limited to the entity at the top of the capitalist structure of business (on a case by case basis, I mean. Not the top of capitalism period.) “Profit” is what a business rakes in for itself. The entire concept of profit has exploitation written right into itself. All a company’s payroll is a cost and does not factor into profit. So literally if I pay my workers less, I profit more. If they’re starving? Even more profit. If I eliminate their jobs and outsource them so I can have less expenditure and more profit by making even poorer people work for even less? Boom. Fuck these workers, I can exploit and squeeze some other poor saps even harder for more profit.

“Profit” and “greater good” are diametrically opposed concepts. Profit is limited. Greater good is collective. It’s literally the entire problem with capitalism. Profit needs exploitation. The more you exploit down the line, the more profit (read: the more people I can hurt and cut out of the money, the more profit I have). Capitalism is built on the profit motive and look where that’s led us. To a time with for-profit healthcare, sweatshops, slave labor…profit necessitates exploitation. The more you can take from the greater population—whether in price paid to you or cost cut at the expense of everyone possible—the more you profit.

Like I said, profit motive is almost the exact opposite of doing something for the greater good.

I definitely get your point. But you don’t “teach” a machine. You program a machine. In the case of AI, technically the machine is building its own database and sort of growing and adapting as it gets more advanced.

I get your point, but I just don’t think “teaching” is even what is happening here. Like I said, if the definition were that broad, it would be rendered meaningless. Not to mention, there are so, so, so many examples of the generative AI just reproducing something specifically in the style of a known artist. Writing in the style of a specific author. It does that because we ask it to, but the point is the program is a machine for reproduction. You don’t teach something without sentience. You teach living things, you write code and make a program act in a specific way. And right now, the programs are blatantly reproducing signature pieces of work.

Now, OP mentioned we are “teaching” the machines to do things on its own. But my point is that’s not teaching. It’s reproducing and stealing. It’s not creating anything, it’s spitting out elements of what it’s absorbed. And because these machines can’t think, can’t add their own style—because what’s super fucked up is we are pretty much just discussing the machines replacing artists at the moment—these things are about experience and personality. Neither of which AI has. They ingest everything and spit back out what we ask for. And they’re spitting out elements of this or that—and in these cases, it’s intellectual property of artists and writers. And the most depressing aspect of this whole thing is that we have pretty much moved beyond the “wait, out of everything, we are teaching machines to take human creativity and expression away from…humans?” stage and just moved on to talking about whether it’s technically legal.

I agree, laws will definitely have to be rewritten. But for the sake of argument, I don’t think the letter of the law can be as broad as you’re suggesting. Interesting thought experiment for us, though. Because…no one gives a shit about our takes on the matter lol

Or the take of artists and writers. But that’s a whole different problem.

I think their point is the law is written to benefit people. Not private companies or machines.

If this wide definition of “teaching” were acceptable, then the entire concept would cease to exist.

“You stole my paper and reproduced it for profit!”

“NOO, I’m just teaching my employees to write better. It’ll happen eventually, but we’re at the stage where reproducing something incredibly similar to your paper is necessary!”

I’d argue that the community benefit aspect of the “scholarship or research purposes”language preclude for-profit AI companies from falling under fair use. These aren’t education programs. They’re not research for the greater good. They are private entities trying to create a machine that can copy until it creates. For their own needs, not the greater good. Education has a net positive effect on society, and those stipulations in the law are meant to better serve the whole.

If these generative AI machines were being built by students, it would fall under these specifications of fair use. But the profit motive changes everything.

I’d say “fair use” pretty much covers educational and community benefit. Private companies do neither. They are stealing and reproducing for themselves, not society.

True. Well, at least the lucky ones will die from the super hurricanes and mega tornadoes and torrential floods.

How fucking stupid would it be if, with almost every single piece of AI media from the last…60+ years we gave ourselves a warning about AI…and then wiped ourselves out with it anyway.

I mean, it’s something so intrinsically human. So that’s probably where we’re heading. But at least they’ll take our lives before they take our jobs and the capitalist pigs leave us to die penniless in the gutter because they somehow figured out how to make a self-sustaining economy by simply passing all available money around between the same 100 rich white dudes.

Fuck capitalist scum.