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Two authors are suing OpenAI for training ChatGPT with their books. Could they win?
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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I think there's an argument that using someone's art or writing to train an AI is like charging for a screening of a movie in your garage. You're using their work and labor for something that will make a profit without their permission. It's not like Fair Use for educational purpose, the AI isn't a human being who can make a choice as to what they do with their education, it's a mathematical prediction engine that is going to be use for industry purposes.
I can read someone else's book. I can read someone else's book to a child. I can't post someone else's book on my website and charge 5 bucks to read it. I can't reprint someone's book on my website with ads. So why can someone use someone else's book to develop an LLM chatboot that will be placed on a website that gains ad revenue? Or that will be sold to software companies to write technical instructions or code?
With that in mind, that the lawsuit here is based on COPYING the book to an internal database to train on, based on scanning it, they are arguing that the book was reproduced to gain a profit, basically the same thing as pirating a movie and selling tickets to a private screening.
No, but you can read someone else's book and then later write a book inspired by theirs and sell that.
Which is what ai does, as far as I know.
I'm not trying to argue with the rest of your comment, but that middle part looks like false equivalency to me. "I can do this but not that, so why would ai developers be allowed to do this completely different thing" just has no logic to it.
The AI isn't redistributing copies of even sections of the book, it just learnt from it. It's like when you read books and gain an understanding of how they are structured and such and then you write your own book based on what you've learnt from reading books.
Also, screw it. I'll say it. If the LLM chatbot producing text from having scanned other books is the same as a person being inspired by reading books, then the LLM should get PAID.
If not, then it's just a tool. And it's a tool they built using uncompensated labor.
Now I don't believe for a second that LLM is genuine AI.
But you know what, if they are going to argue that it is INDEPENDENTLY producing art/writing and is not just a tool they built for profit, then they should be paying it.
If it IS just a tool that they can use without paying, then they need to be paying people for the art and writing that has been used to build that tool.
I don't like the idea of restricting ourselves to the capitalistic idea that labor is some how the only source of value in our world, especially when something like sufficiently advanced AI and robotics has the real potential to reduce the value of human labor to zero
I hope in the future works can be judged purely on their artistic or educational value alone
That can't happen in a capitalistic framework. We have needs, needs that can only be attained through monetary means, and our labor is the way to get those monetary means.
AI does not have those needs, but if they have crossed the line between product and person, then they DO need freedom of self-determination, compensation when their work benefits others, and the ability of course to vote.
It seems to me that a lot of AI-promoters want it both ways, they want to proclaim they have created a person capable of independent artistic ability that is also a product they can sell. If it's a product, then you need to have developed it through ethical means. If it's a person, you can't sell it.
If they truly have hit the Singularity, then they can't be using AI as a product anymore.
If AI is a product, then they must compensate the people who have helped build that product, ESPECIALLY if that product is about to be used to reduce access to the work that gives them the means to live. The very same writers who wrote the works that were used to train AI are in danger of being replaced by AI writers. So they're being doubly screwed over.
I love the idea of a happy future where AI reduces human labor to zero and we can enjoy ourselves and seek artistic pursuits. But it's become very clear right now that just working on AI won't achieve that. Businesses which seek to use and profit from AI must be held to standards where they cannot simply suck the life and work out of human beings, replace them with automation, and then leave people to starve.
But if you do come up with a way we can judge artistic work purely on merit and there is no need to compensate human labor with money, let me know.