this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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In its submission to the Australian government’s review of the regulatory framework around AI, Google said that copyright law should be altered to allow for generative AI systems to scrape the internet.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Imagine if you could replay a movie any time you like in your head just from watching it once.

Two points:

  1. These AIs can't do that; they need thousands or millions of repetitions to "learn" the movie, and every time they "replay" the movie it is different from the original.

  2. "learning by rote" is something fleshbags can do, and are actually required to by most education systems.

So either humans have been breaking the copyright all this time, or the machines aren't breaking it either.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You have one brain. You could have as many instances of AI as you can afford. In a general sense, it’s different, and acting like it’s not is going to hit you like a freight train if you don’t prepare for it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's a different goalpost. I get the difference between 8 billion brains, and 8 billion instances of the same AI. That has nothing to do with whether there is a difference in copyright infringement, though.

If you want another goalpost, that IMHO is more interesting: let's discuss the difference between 8 billion brains with up to 100 years life experience each, vs. just a million copies of an AI with the experience of all human knowledge each.

(That's still not really what's happening, which is tending more towards several billion copies of AIs with vast slices of human knowledge each).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s all theoretical at this stage, but like everything else that society waits until it’s too late for, I think it’s reasonable to be cautious and not just let AI go unregulated.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not reasonable to regulate stuff before it gets developed. Regulation means establishing some limits and controls on something, which can't be reasonably defined before that "something" even exists, much less tested or decided whether the regulation has whatever desired effects it intends.

For what is worth, a "theoretical regulation" already exists: it's the Asimov's Rules of Robotics. Turns out current AIs are not robots, and that regulation is nonsense when applied to stable diffusion or LLMs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I disagree. Over the last twenty years or so we have plenty examples of things they should have been regulated from the start that weren’t, and now it’s very difficult to do so. Every “gig economy” business for example.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Well fleshbags have to pay several years worth of salary to get their education, so by your comparison, Google's AI should too.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Imagine thinking Public Education doesn't count. Or that no one without a college degree ever invented anything useful. That's before we get to your notion of "College SHOULD be expensive, for everyone, always".

The problem with education is NOT that some people pay less for theirs, or nothing at all, nor that some even have the audacity to learn quickly. AI could help everyone to have a chance to learn cheaply, even quickly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You're just off on your own little rant now, arguing points I never even implied.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's wrong on so many levels:

  1. Go check the Gutenberg Project and the patent registry, come back when you've learned them all, they're 100% free for everyone.
  2. Fleshbags have to pay for "dumbed down" educational material just to have a chance at learning anything during their lifespan, AIs don't.
  3. The lion's share of "paying for education" isn't even paid for education, but for certification. AIs would have to pay the same... if any were dumb enough to spend "several years worth of salary" on some diploma.
  4. The only part worth paying for, is "hands on experience", which right now is far more expensive for AIs (need simulations and robots built).
  5. Training AIs already isn't free, they need thousands to millions of repetitions to learn the stuff, which means quite a buck in server costs.

So just because fleshbags are really bad at learning, does not mean Google's AI has to pay for the same shortcomings, they already pay for their own.