It's going to be funny watching the AI bro's turn anti-communism while they also argue why private ownership (such as copyright) is bad and they should be able to digest every book, every magazine, every piece of art in history with zero compensation so that they can create their tools.
Everything is built on previous knowledge. And at some point, things need to transition to public domain and the compensation has to end. Do artists that draw a car, compensate the first guy that drew a wheel? Do kids with crayons need to compensate the inventors of specific pigments for example. It would get absurd.
> they should be able to digest every book, every magazine, every piece of art in history with [as if] zero compensation so that
? That is the state of facts. «So that» is "so that you build up". It does not limit machines: it applies to humans as well ("there is the knowledge, when you have time, feed yourself"). We have built libraries for that. It is not "zero compensation": there is payment for personal ownership of the copy - access is free (and encouraged).
Laws have to change when technology changes. AI will benefit all of humanity, so I'm someone who believes AI should be allowed to train on copyrighted materials, because it's better for society.
However, like you're getting at, there are people who would say personal rights always outweigh society's rights. I think we can get rid of copyright law and still remain a free market capitalist economy, with limited government and maximal personal freedoms.
'Some people's property has to become everyone's property because AI'. Should Microsoft's software be free to everyone because humanity would benefit? Nintendo's? Oracles? Or only movie studios, musicians, and authors property rights should lose protection?
If an AI can look at a bunch of Picasso paintings and "learn" how to then replicate that same style, I don't think that's stealing. And I think the same concept applies to the written word.
However even if you were correct, would you be willing to trade copyright law for having a cure for most diseases? I would. Maybe by allowing 1000s of people to sell books, you've condemned millions of people to death by disease right? Can you not see that side of the argument? Sometimes things are nuanced with shades of gray rather than black and white.
Maybe by having copyright law we have allowed the authorship of books to flourish and critical mass to drive down the costs of books and allowed people to dedicate themselves to writing books as a profession, or made giving up weekends on a passion project worth completing. Maybe the world you want is less literate/less thought provoking because people can't feed themselves on 'your work is free' resulting in less being written because people who would have been authors are no longer rewarded.
All I know is society decided that copyright was worth the tradeoff of having people release their works and now huge corporations want to change the rules so that they can use those works to creative a derivative that the corporation can profit from.
I think both copyright law and AI consumption of copyrighted material can coexist peacefully. I can learn from what I read and then process that information to create my own novel works, and I think that's what LLMs are doing too.
If LLMs were just doing data compression and then spitting out what they memorized then that would violate copyright, but that's now how it works.
Nope, companies always do what's in their "self interest", whereas the Open Source community is concerned with improving the human condition for all. This applies especially to AI/LLM censorship vs freedom.
