this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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I don't follow why calling it a tool matters. If a python script renders someone's job redundant (hypothetically; this is unlikely in reality) does it matter if the script was written by a human or a LLM?
@effingjoe I imagine it matters to the person who wrote it. Were THEY paid for this?
I mean, it's a shitty thing that consultants and such remove jobs, but at the very least the exploitation there is only on one side, the poor guy kicked out. If an LLM is removing someone's job, then the people used to train the LLM are getting exploited too.
Plus, a certain amount of the law is for deterrence. We don't want the companies replacing creatives with AI. It would be beneficial to discourage that. We DO want things like fruit-picking and weeding and other backbreaking manual labor replaced by AI, so we can push for laws that encourage THAT. But right now they are trying to replace the wrong end.
You're going to need to strictly define "exploited", I think. I don't know what you mean when you use that term.
If I read a book on Python and write a script to replace someone's job, did I exploit the person who wrote the book? What about the people that created and/or maintain python?
Why don't we want companies replacing creatives with AI? Should we roll back other technological advances that resulted in fewer humans being employed? No human routes phone calls anymore, but they used to. Should their jobs be protected, too? What about people that used to carve ice out of mountain lakes and deliver it to businesses? Should refrigeration technology be held back by the law to protect those jobs? If not, why artists? What makes them more deserving of being protected?
Intent is a big deal in this one. Your Python book writer intended for people to read it to learn Python.
A romance book writer does not intend for an AI to use it to learn to generate sentences. But because there was no obvious barrier and they could get away with it, the companies grabbed the romance book and used it. That's an exploit.
And again, you're ignoring the quality of labor. Back-breaking jobs that hurt people's health should be improved with technology. A migrant worker might lost his job to a mechanical fruitpicker but he's likely bilingual and eligible for a translator job. Unless that job, which is better for health and longevity, and allows someone to stay in one place, is taken by an AI.
The promise of automation was that it would RAISE the quality of human life. Taking away the jobs of creatives lowers the quality of human life. Using automation to carve ice out of mountain lakes raises the quality of human life. Things are not neutral here.
The large companies want to keep manual labor in human hands and put creative work and decision making in AI hands. This is going to make life worse for everyone.
I really don't see where intent falls into this, still-- but feel free to change the hypothetical to looking at other people's python code to learn how to use python. It still doesn't change the equation. Did I exploit the people who wrote the python code that I learned from? Does my source of learning matter when it comes to what I produce? Do you really believe that artists create new art in a total vacuum, without drawing inspiration from prior art?
I am somewhat stunned by the obvious bias you seem to have against manual labor. You really think having an active job is less healthy than sitting in a chair, looking at a screen all day? (Please note: 90% of my job is sitting in a chair, staring at a screen all day.)
There was no "promise of automation". Technology was always going to take everyone's jobs-- the only change is the order it has taken it in. It was assumed that human creativity was some special thing that was so difficult to define in software that it would be towards the end when it came to getting replaced, but it turns out that we're a lot more like computers than we believe, and you can train software-- with relative ease-- to figure out how to achieve an end result without explicitly defining how.
Large companies want to reduce overhead, increase productivity, and maximize profit. I assure you there's no bias as to what kind of jobs get replaced when it comes to those goals. It just happens that creative jobs seem to be easily replaced.
Do you really, honestly, think that it's even possible to hold back a technological advance using legislation? You can already host your own LLMs and train them on whatever material you desire, to better tailor their output. That's today. Even if we assume, for sake of argument, that the law does decide that people have a "right" to control how their art is consumed. (again, very unlikely imo), that won't even slow down the people spinning up their own instances, and even if they follow the rules, how much worse do you really think the models would be using only public domain and open source training materials?
I don't know, but there is no good reason to just sit there while the rich replace all the creatives with machines built using their work.
Hell, even if your point about manual labor being replaced is just as bad, I can think of a company that makes you BUILD the robot that will replace you before you get fired.
But honestly, there's a reason people aspire to music and art and not to moving boxes at the dock, and it's not because the moving boxes job is low class but because it is backbreaking, unpleasant labor where you don't get to express yourself. But music and art and writing are forms of self-expression and some of the few places you can do self-expression during work. So those jobs should be preserved.
Maybe we can't get some sort of justice in the system, but people should at least try.
You still seem to have a very specific idea of what manual labor is. You may not think you'd find manual labor jobs fulfilling or expressive, but that doesn't mean no one does.
Could it be that you care more about creative jobs because you have one, and if you had a manual labor job you'd be arguing the opposite?
Edit: what, specifically, does "justice" in the system look like to you?
Maybe.
Edit: An end to large tech companies scraping the internet and collecting everyone's data with impunity.
I caution you from repeating phrases you've read but don't fully understand. "Scraping the internet and collecting everyone's data" is just how the internet works. It's certainly how every single search engine works. (even privacy focused ones, like duckduckgo). If you don't want something to be read or viewed on the internet, you shouldn't put it on the internet.
I don't mind people reading what I put on the internet, I mind them selling it and I mind them making machines to replace my work.
The problem of course, is that we don't actually have control over what goes on the internet, do we? I can write a book, and it could be put online. I put a picture online, the metadata shows my location. This may be "how the internet works" but it doesn't have to. There could be laws protecting us.
There could even be laws protecting us that exist right now, but are being ignored.
So here's my question for you. Corporations like OpenAI and Facebook/Meta and Google put millions into lobbying and public relations to discourage us from even looking into registering our problems with what they do. Why argue their side for free?
You are trying to muddy the water, but I don't see why.
We aren't talking about location exif data on pictures, and people can and should strip that off (there are tools to do so) before posting online, but that has nothing to do with LLMs and their like. Privacy violations are certainly fair game for legislation-- but as you are finding out, you don't get a say in how people consume your work. I could buy your work and burn it, or read it to my dog, or put it on a shelf, or study it daily to better learn how to make similar works. Once you make it available for public consumption, the public can consume it, even if that consumption eventually hurts you financially.
One of the many problems with IP laws is that it is so ingrained in our society that people who benefit from it directly forget that it's not all encompassing, nor is it a law of nature. For instance, I am free to make a drawing of the main characters in Stranger Things, drawn in the style of The Simpsons. That violates no IP laws. If a computer learns a specific style of painting from a specific artist and can recreate that style on command, there is still no violation of IP laws, just as it would be if a human did it. And it's plausible (though, unlikely) that someone could learn a specific style of animation (like, the simpsons) and then go on to replace the originator of that style in the show. Styles aren't copyrightable.
Your job is very likely to be replaced and there very likely nothing you can do about it. That's the bottom line. Mine may as well-- I am in the field of Software QA right now, for military robots. I feel like my time to be replaced isn't quite here-- I can't imagine it's that far off. Acknowledging this is just prudent.
Dude, the key to your freedom to draw Stranger Things characters in the Style of the Simpsons is that you don't make a shitton of money doing that and you don't compete with the actual Simpsons production.
But an AI is making a shitton of money for companies AND competing with the writers that it was trained on. So the stuff that makes it legal for you to draw Stranger Things characters in the Style of the Simpsons does not apply to AI.
Yeah, even with copyright protections they will probably deploy AI for tech writing, and my job will become editing all the mistakes on the output. But prudence doesn't mean just letting someone take advantage of you, and it doesn't mean you have to like it, and it doesn't mean you have to stop bitching about it, and it doesn't mean you have to accept trosy-lens pro-AI arguments on the Internet.
You have taken a turn towards anger, if I'm reading the correct context, but I'm just a messenger. I also wasn't expecting you to like it, and I guess you can complain all you'd like, but I was expecting to help you accept it. To be sure, whether or not you accept it won't change whether it happens.
Anyway, thanks for the discussion.
It's not anything about you, I'm just a passionate person. I appreciate the discussion too, but I think you have identified the point where it's become unproductive.