I am exhausted form this discussion. Regardless of how well researched and written this specific article might or might not be, the greater discussion is a lot of bad faith arguments from both sides. There's even less room now for respectful discussion than there was 3 months ago. I doubt I am the only one that feels this way. I want a ruling as fast as possible, so we can start having more nuanced discussions.
The more existential question this lead me to ask is, what aspect of art makes it valuable to me. I believe that the most meaningful art comes from someone that is able to communicate an experience to others through an abstract representation of it. I feel most connected to art that invokes really intense emotions and memories. I personally don't understand the value placed in most classical paintings, maybe it's a consequence of growing up with the internet. Art is not as scarce as it once was and while the process of creating art is absolutely valuable, the final piece is how other people will experience it.
But everyone experiences and appreciates art differently, the only universal truth about art is that it's really hard to predict how it will be recieved. I think artists will be the people who would most benefit from AI tools. Similar to ChatGPT, the quality of input directly impacts the quality of the output. I think people that would otherwise sympathize with the other side will get burned out, if they haven't already. I put AI art related keywords in my twitter filter. I realized I get more frustrated from the constant bad faith arguments from either side much more than the underlying issue.
You can create meaningful art using AI, they're not two mutually exclusive things.
Dear God, no. Let the tech keep moving forward so we can show the legislators and the world the kinds of things we can build unimpeded.
Do you think anyone will be "just an artist" if we can put the entire power of Disney/Pixar in their back pocket? People will be making astonishing things by the time this decade closes out.
AI translates raw thought to material form without requiring the talent, capital, and blood/sweat resources to craft it. It'll improve our society's ability to make sense of one another.
Your average Reddit poster might have a lot that they want to say. Your average engineer might dream of stories they can never tell. That cliff of impossibly, and the opportunity cost to climb it, will no longer stand in our way.
Please let's not stop the biggest, most important series of advances in our lifetimes to squabble over dated copyright. The concept binds us to the past.
The one true equalizer will be when no one is held back by the hard choices they had to make to specialize. The penalties paid for not having time, money, or access. These developments are an evolution of our collective capabilities, an elevation of the things we can accomplish by ourselves or together, and a challenge to dream even bolder.
I didn't indicate which way I care for the ruling to go. I think you're giving current AI models much more credit than they deserve. Additionally, it's hard to have enough computational power to run these models even if you have top of the line consumer hardware, and that's for generating a single frame.
NERFs are interesting from a film-making and art point of view. AI isn't going anywhere. Any sort of ruling would have zero impact on this kind of AI. Tech will move forward regardless of the ruling. The issue is about datasets, not the software itself. I expect all of the suits against the underlying technology to be dismissed. If the lawsuit is successful in blocking AI, it would have a lot of negative implications for fair use and be a gross mischaracterization of the underlying math.
I think we need a clear ruling on how copyright should be handled from things generated using AI. Once you modify it in some way, you clear the bar for making a transformative work, but the difficult questions is how and if the copyright of the input dataset applies to raw generated media.
No one is having the same discussion regarding the input and output of ChatGPT. Even the discussion against CoPilot is weak. But a ruling in a case will affect every other one. It's not really possible for laws to differentiate between text and photos, because photos are stored digitally as text. During my research, my PI explained to me that copyright work is fine to test with and make datasets with, but I can't include benchmarks against it or for it in my final paper. But the weights generated from such work is fine. This is only really a problem because these models are being used in commercial ways.
No, because intellectual property is not real property in the first place. Artists are hypocrites that fight against IP when they want to pirate productivity software and then turn around and defend IP when it would benefit them.
No, it’s still convincing. I’m just more consistent than you are. Intellectual “property” should not have special legal protections. You don’t have the right to prevent me from copying your art or code unless i voluntarily signed a contract agreeing to it. Repeat after me, force is only justified in response to force.
Artists are free to protect their work the same way a software developer might: just keep it private.
I'm confused. Didn't you specify "pirating productivity software" as the supposed crime of artists (the group you also specified)? In your imagined scenario, what's the crime you're perceiving? If the folks who created the productivity software wanted to keep it protected, they should have just made it private -- correct?
I fear that (as in the case of your analogies) your positions may not be as consistent as you believe them to be.
In terms of intellectual property -- if creation of value is the primary means of obtaining a livelihood in a given society (such as ours), and folks value the work an artist creates, they should be paid for that effort. Same as the person valued for tending bar, or for providing medical care, etc. If you propose the creation of an entirely new form of society, then buddy tell me when and where to be because that's something I'd like to be a part of.
But even then "artists pirating software" isn't where I'd start laying the foundations.
I don’t think pirating software should be a crime. That’s my point. I’m consistent on my principle and you aren’t. I don’t decide to support IP when it would benefit me, I’m against it always. Adobe can protect their sources by limiting source access and mandating NDAs for their employees.
I’m not stealing anything from you by copying your art or pirating your software. You still have it. If me and you haven’t signed a contract, I don’t owe you shit. Simple as that.
You keep saying I pick-and-choose when to support IP. Nowhere have I said any such thing. Rather, I consistently support it — in the case of software, art, engineering, and medicine, etc. When an actual alternative financial model with a chance at becoming reality appears, I’ll be first in line.
That I disagree with your position is not inconsistency on my part, it’s a reflection of us having different values. That’s okay. I’d still love to hear your alternative financial model, like I said.
Unless you’re accusing me of being a secret artist? Even then, that assumes your position (“all artists, without exception, support the theft of software tools but do not support the theft of their own material”) is correct, which it is not. For starters, how are we defining artist? For example, do you imagine Mimes are pilfering Adobe on principle?
Philosophically? Not at all. Morally? Depends on the circumstances. Practically? Yes.
I like art, and wish to keep seeing it produced at a high level of quality, and that requires community. So until the world agrees on an economy not premised on extraction of value from the individual, I oppose pirating. Pay people for their work.
That being said, I know I don't speak only for myself when I say I would prefer to be paid for my work, but if the price will prevent someone from seeing it, I'd prefer the work be seen.
Be careful not to confuse artists, who create things, with distributors, who do not. They are the ones you're really angry at.
No. The AI doing generative work is doing the same thing human artists do: observe, consume, be influenced, and then create new work from pieces of what they have consumed. The AIs are like beautiful children who may one day be born but already exist.
And those beautiful, creative children are having their work stolen, by the humans who are taking the output of their creative work, showing it to the world, and saying, "I made this," when in fact, all they did was take it.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 46.7 ms ] threadShould be fairly easy to confirm that by publishing some bullshit and see if it uses it.
The more existential question this lead me to ask is, what aspect of art makes it valuable to me. I believe that the most meaningful art comes from someone that is able to communicate an experience to others through an abstract representation of it. I feel most connected to art that invokes really intense emotions and memories. I personally don't understand the value placed in most classical paintings, maybe it's a consequence of growing up with the internet. Art is not as scarce as it once was and while the process of creating art is absolutely valuable, the final piece is how other people will experience it.
But everyone experiences and appreciates art differently, the only universal truth about art is that it's really hard to predict how it will be recieved. I think artists will be the people who would most benefit from AI tools. Similar to ChatGPT, the quality of input directly impacts the quality of the output. I think people that would otherwise sympathize with the other side will get burned out, if they haven't already. I put AI art related keywords in my twitter filter. I realized I get more frustrated from the constant bad faith arguments from either side much more than the underlying issue.
You can create meaningful art using AI, they're not two mutually exclusive things.
Dear God, no. Let the tech keep moving forward so we can show the legislators and the world the kinds of things we can build unimpeded.
Do you think anyone will be "just an artist" if we can put the entire power of Disney/Pixar in their back pocket? People will be making astonishing things by the time this decade closes out.
AI translates raw thought to material form without requiring the talent, capital, and blood/sweat resources to craft it. It'll improve our society's ability to make sense of one another.
Your average Reddit poster might have a lot that they want to say. Your average engineer might dream of stories they can never tell. That cliff of impossibly, and the opportunity cost to climb it, will no longer stand in our way.
Please let's not stop the biggest, most important series of advances in our lifetimes to squabble over dated copyright. The concept binds us to the past.
The one true equalizer will be when no one is held back by the hard choices they had to make to specialize. The penalties paid for not having time, money, or access. These developments are an evolution of our collective capabilities, an elevation of the things we can accomplish by ourselves or together, and a challenge to dream even bolder.
NERFs are interesting from a film-making and art point of view. AI isn't going anywhere. Any sort of ruling would have zero impact on this kind of AI. Tech will move forward regardless of the ruling. The issue is about datasets, not the software itself. I expect all of the suits against the underlying technology to be dismissed. If the lawsuit is successful in blocking AI, it would have a lot of negative implications for fair use and be a gross mischaracterization of the underlying math.
I think we need a clear ruling on how copyright should be handled from things generated using AI. Once you modify it in some way, you clear the bar for making a transformative work, but the difficult questions is how and if the copyright of the input dataset applies to raw generated media.
No one is having the same discussion regarding the input and output of ChatGPT. Even the discussion against CoPilot is weak. But a ruling in a case will affect every other one. It's not really possible for laws to differentiate between text and photos, because photos are stored digitally as text. During my research, my PI explained to me that copyright work is fine to test with and make datasets with, but I can't include benchmarks against it or for it in my final paper. But the weights generated from such work is fine. This is only really a problem because these models are being used in commercial ways.
https://theaisummer.com/nerf/
I suspect this analogy may be less convincing than intended.
Artists are free to protect their work the same way a software developer might: just keep it private.
I fear that (as in the case of your analogies) your positions may not be as consistent as you believe them to be.
In terms of intellectual property -- if creation of value is the primary means of obtaining a livelihood in a given society (such as ours), and folks value the work an artist creates, they should be paid for that effort. Same as the person valued for tending bar, or for providing medical care, etc. If you propose the creation of an entirely new form of society, then buddy tell me when and where to be because that's something I'd like to be a part of.
But even then "artists pirating software" isn't where I'd start laying the foundations.
I’m not stealing anything from you by copying your art or pirating your software. You still have it. If me and you haven’t signed a contract, I don’t owe you shit. Simple as that.
That I disagree with your position is not inconsistency on my part, it’s a reflection of us having different values. That’s okay. I’d still love to hear your alternative financial model, like I said.
Unless you’re accusing me of being a secret artist? Even then, that assumes your position (“all artists, without exception, support the theft of software tools but do not support the theft of their own material”) is correct, which it is not. For starters, how are we defining artist? For example, do you imagine Mimes are pilfering Adobe on principle?
I like art, and wish to keep seeing it produced at a high level of quality, and that requires community. So until the world agrees on an economy not premised on extraction of value from the individual, I oppose pirating. Pay people for their work.
That being said, I know I don't speak only for myself when I say I would prefer to be paid for my work, but if the price will prevent someone from seeing it, I'd prefer the work be seen.
Be careful not to confuse artists, who create things, with distributors, who do not. They are the ones you're really angry at.
And those beautiful, creative children are having their work stolen, by the humans who are taking the output of their creative work, showing it to the world, and saying, "I made this," when in fact, all they did was take it.