this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
88 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
104 readers
2 users here now
This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the latest developments, trends, and innovations in the world of technology. Whether you are a tech enthusiast, a developer, or simply curious about the latest gadgets and software, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and more. From the impact of technology on society to the ethical considerations of new technologies, this category covers a wide range of topics related to technology. Join the conversation and let's explore the ever-evolving world of technology together!
founded 2 years ago
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
LLMs are not book reports. They are not synthesizing information. They're just pulling words based on probability distributions.Those probability distributions are based entirely on what training data has been fed into them.
You can see what this really means in action when you call on them to spit out paragraphs on topics they haven't ingested enough sources for. Their distributions are sparse, and they'll spit out entire chunks of text that are pulled directly from those sources, without citation.
If you write a book report that just reprinted significant swaths of the book, that would be plaigerism, and yes, would 100% be called copyright infringement.
Importantly, though, the copyright infringement for these models does not come at the point where it spits out passages from a copyrighted work. It occurs at the point where the work is copied and used for purposes that fall outside what the work is licensed for. And most people have not licensed their words for billion dollar companies to use them in for-profit products.
@Kichae
The exact same thing a human does when writing a sentence. I'm starting to think that the backlash against AI is simply because it's showing us what simple machines we humans are as far as thinking and creativity goes.
Do you have an example of this? I've used GPT extensively for a while now, and I've never had it do that. If it gives me a chunk of data directly from a source, it always lists the source for me. However, I may not be digging deep enough into things it doesn't understand. If we have a repeatable case of this, I'd love to see it so I can better understand it.
This is the meat and potatoes of it. When a work is made public, be it a book, movie, song, physical or digital, it is placed in the public domain and can be freely consumed by the public, and it then becomes part of our own particular data set. However, the public, up until a year ago, wasn't capable of doing what an AI does on such a large scale and with such ease of use. The problem isn't that it's using copyright material to create. Humans do that all the time, we just call it an "homage" or "parody" or "style". An AI can do it much better, much more accurately, and much more quickly, though. That's the rub, and I'm fine with updating the laws based on evolving technology, but let's call a spade a spade. AI isn't doing anything that humans haven't been doing for as long as their has been verbal storytelling. The difference is that AI is so much better at it than we are, and we need to decide if we should adjust what we allow our own works to be used for. If we do, though, it must effect the AI in the same way that it does the human, otherwise this debate will never end. If we hamstring the data that an AI can learn from, a human must have the same handicap.