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Personally I think framing this as some kind of double-standard regarding copyright or even a copyright-specific issue misses the forest for the trees. The pro

by cdata 2y ago

Personally I think framing this as some kind of double-standard regarding copyright or even a copyright-specific issue misses the forest for the trees. The problem I see is that the generative AI economy hinges on an injustice: the presumption that all art on the internet - no matter the medium, or means or relative notoriety of the artist - shall be candidate training data, and no burden of attribution whatsoever shall be laid upon those who leverage it. Most graphic artists that I know bemoan copyright. But, it's a tool that the law has given them. Also: most graphic artists that I know exist under low economic circumstances - some near poverty - relative to most of the people I know who are building the next great wave of technological innovations with generative AI. I don't see a struggle over copyright. Artists, who exist towards the bottom of the economic ladder as it is, are doing what they can to survive.

SkyBelow 2y ago
>no matter the medium, or means or relative notoriety of the artist - shall be candidate training data Why is this a special case? When people were viewing it, reposting it, using it to learn... those were all accepted uses. Passing it off as your own wasn't allowed, but outright plagiarism has pretty consistently been unaccepted. The problem seems to stim from using it in a way that directly competes with the artist, and given your other point about their financial position, is a direct financial threat to them. The morality of the situation seems to be that it is wrong because of the financial harm, but recognizing that such an argument is rarely accepted, it must instead be justified by some other argument, any other argument, that condemns the outcome. I don't think this is anything particularly unique. How often do we find things wrong because of a logical argument as to why it is wrong, and how often do we find a logical argument to justify our felling that something is wrong? There is also a element of helplessness. No matter what the government does, pandora's box has been opened and it can't be closed. While it might slow down the development of better AI, it isn't going to stop it and banning existing software isn't going to be possible. The damage has been done, and even if the artists have an overwhelming victory, they are only going to recover a fraction of lost ground only to eventually lose it again.
- cdata 2y ago
  The tricky part is that the ongoing training of ever-more-interesting generative AI *depends* on the ongoing labor of artists. Proponents of the current economic model like to frame the artist rejection of AI as an obvious case of Luddism. Of course the artists reject this, it threatens their economic station! And: it's not even wrong. But, it is a high modernist foible: at some point the raw resource is fully exploited and the wave of companies that rode high on its vast-but-unrenewable quantity will reckon with reality. Their businesses are unsustainable (who could have foreseen it!). In the mean time, artists won't disappear. Most likely what will happen is that they will continue to subsist - they are essential in this economic loop, whether fairly compensated for their labor or not - but with an even lower economic posture than before. I don't think there is a moral crisis here, but an economic one. Incidentally, an injustice is perpetrated upon an entire class of laborers. I'll leave it to others to decide the morality of that, considering all the trade-offs.
  - __loam 2y ago
    Yeah one thing that's often missed in these discussions is that the AI companies still need the artists! When you overexploit the commons, there will be consequences. We'll see if the synthetic data is good enough or not for future models I guess.
  - uaserussia 2y ago
    >ongoing training of even-more-interesting generative AI depends on the ongoing labor of artists. What does that mean? That you need artist to produce "even-more-interesting" art to train new iterations of generative AI? Could you point out some of these superfresh new art artist are doing that are completely different than things already done to exhaustion in the 1970s (other than anime)? I don't think you need artists for that anymore. Certainly you don't need them for commercial purposes. If they are going to survive as an artist professionally, it will be because of the people that refuse to use AI art for whatever reason, but I don't see how that won't be short lived in the market. Artists will survive, not professionally, but because they are doing it for the arts sake, even if that doesn't offer them any financial reward.

by cdata 2y ago

SkyBelow 2y ago

>no matter the medium, or means or relative notoriety of the artist - shall be candidate training data Why is this a special case? When people were viewing it, reposting it, using it to learn... those were all accepted uses. Passing it off as your own wasn't allowed, but outright plagiarism has pretty consistently been unaccepted. The problem seems to stim from using it in a way that directly competes with the artist, and given your other point about their financial position, is a direct financial threat to them. The morality of the situation seems to be that it is wrong because of the financial harm, but recognizing that such an argument is rarely accepted, it must instead be justified by some other argument, any other argument, that condemns the outcome. I don't think this is anything particularly unique. How often do we find things wrong because of a logical argument as to why it is wrong, and how often do we find a logical argument to justify our felling that something is wrong? There is also a element of helplessness. No matter what the government does, pandora's box has been opened and it can't be closed. While it might slow down the development of better AI, it isn't going to stop it and banning existing software isn't going to be possible. The damage has been done, and even if the artists have an overwhelming victory, they are only going to recover a fraction of lost ground only to eventually lose it again.

cdata 2y ago
The tricky part is that the ongoing training of ever-more-interesting generative AI *depends* on the ongoing labor of artists. Proponents of the current economic model like to frame the artist rejection of AI as an obvious case of Luddism. Of course the artists reject this, it threatens their economic station! And: it's not even wrong. But, it is a high modernist foible: at some point the raw resource is fully exploited and the wave of companies that rode high on its vast-but-unrenewable quantity will reckon with reality. Their businesses are unsustainable (who could have foreseen it!). In the mean time, artists won't disappear. Most likely what will happen is that they will continue to subsist - they are essential in this economic loop, whether fairly compensated for their labor or not - but with an even lower economic posture than before. I don't think there is a moral crisis here, but an economic one. Incidentally, an injustice is perpetrated upon an entire class of laborers. I'll leave it to others to decide the morality of that, considering all the trade-offs.
- __loam 2y ago
  Yeah one thing that's often missed in these discussions is that the AI companies still need the artists! When you overexploit the commons, there will be consequences. We'll see if the synthetic data is good enough or not for future models I guess.
- uaserussia 2y ago
  >ongoing training of even-more-interesting generative AI depends on the ongoing labor of artists. What does that mean? That you need artist to produce "even-more-interesting" art to train new iterations of generative AI? Could you point out some of these superfresh new art artist are doing that are completely different than things already done to exhaustion in the 1970s (other than anime)? I don't think you need artists for that anymore. Certainly you don't need them for commercial purposes. If they are going to survive as an artist professionally, it will be because of the people that refuse to use AI art for whatever reason, but I don't see how that won't be short lived in the market. Artists will survive, not professionally, but because they are doing it for the arts sake, even if that doesn't offer them any financial reward.