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I sometimes worry that qualms about copyright & ethics will make us lose the machine learning arms race with China. If « The unreasonable effectiveness of data

by c1sc0 2y ago

I sometimes worry that qualms about copyright & ethics will make us lose the machine learning arms race with China. If « The unreasonable effectiveness of data » still holds true then we are in big trouble.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
snowwrestler 2y ago
I wouldn’t worry about it; in the U.S. the people with the qualms are not the people who are actually building the machine learning systems.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
  Of course they aren’t the customers. That doesn’t stop them from having a disproportionately loud voice in the matter. Once you really understand what ESG is, you will understand why every company gets a rainbow logo this month, why companies seem eager to push their actual customers aside, and why the constantly-offended are catered to instead of mocked. Look at every AI press release. They all use “safety” over and over. Without that dogwhistle, they wouldn’t be in line for investment funding.
SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
No need to worry about it happening, it already has. In terms of diffusers alone: Stable Diffusion 3 came out recently and immediately fell flat on its face. Terrible anatomy and basically unusable for human forms unless you use so many “unsafe” negative words that it’s “safety” training doesn’t destroy the result. In the meantime… Chinese models Lumina, PixArt, and Hunyuan are all Chinese projects or heavily contributed by Chinese researchers and companies. These are rapidly gaining steam. They’re far less “safe” with far less lobotomization. We are already losing the AI race in this realm exactly because of an over-reaction to “safety”.
- musicale 2y ago
  It seems like the cat is out of the bag, and it may take a catastrophic disaster before any risks are taken seriously.
- zarzavat 2y ago
  There’s three kinds of AI safety: 1. “AI is going to (help someone) take over the world”. We don’t need this yet but it’s better to think about it before you need it rather than afterwards. 2. AI is going to do genuinely bad things: generate CP, teach people to make dangerous chemicals. 3. AI is going to do things that people in California think are dangerous: generate a picture of a boob, generate picture of a group of people who are not a mixture of different ethnicities, or sexes, give an answer to a question that isn’t aligned with how people in California think. China is not concerned with any of these, although it is concerned with its own version of point 3: 3b. Generate criticism of the CCP or anything that the CCP doesn’t like people to know about.
lithiumii 2y ago
Don't worry, in China they need to worry about a different set of "ethics". It's not just your LLM should never speak against Xi. They probably also need to include a big propaganda corpus so that the models are aligned with CCP's value, which is very likely to be bad for reasoning capabilities.
- silver_silver 2y ago
  > which is very likely to be bad for reasoning capabilities. As opposed to our aligned models which refuse to answer questions with controversial answers?
dorkwood 2y ago
You think OpenAI, Meta or Microsoft care about those things? They've already trained on all the world's copyrighted data without asking for permission. Any hand-wringing you see from them is performative.
- exodust 2y ago
  Why should AI need permission to perform the equivalent of "human looking" at content? We humans don't need permission, why should AI? I could paint a picture of a Disney character after looking at nothing but public promotional material already out in public view, online or in print etc. The tools I use to paint with are capable of all the same colours and lines used in Disney characters. We don't blame the tools for that, but we seem to be blaming AI for being too good?
  - diputsmonro 2y ago
    Selling a picture you made of a Disney character is IP infringement. If the work you create is substantially derivative and competes against the IP holders work (which is pretty arguable given the prevalence of prompts containing the names of specific artists/characters/companies), then it is infringement. The same would be true if I paid you to produce art/merch/etc. of a Disney character.
    - CaptainFever 2y ago
      Is this a good thing? Taken to the logical conclusion, fandoms are illegal.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
        Are you saying I can make money from my Vader/Popeye fic?
      - diputsmonro 2y ago
        What if we flip the script - would it be cool if Disney scraped DeviantArt and created merchandise, movies, etc. based on the art and characters of small creators? Rules need to exist to protect the little guy. Technically a lot of the merch people sell at conventions is infringing, but Disney, Nintendo, etc. recognize that pursuing action against them would ultimately be worse for their brand. Generally speaking, whether a fandom existing around a creator's work is good is ultimately up to the creator. If the fandom economy chokes out the product of the artist, then the artist should have legal recourse (this is effectively the same scenario as counterfeits / knock offs). But if the creator's work is able to flourish alongside the fandom, then the creator may well decide that keeping the fandom engaged is worth more than being a legal prude. The protection should exist legally, and the creator should be allowed to exercise it as they deem necessary.

by c1sc0 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

snowwrestler 2y ago

I wouldn’t worry about it; in the U.S. the people with the qualms are not the people who are actually building the machine learning systems.

SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
Of course they aren’t the customers. That doesn’t stop them from having a disproportionately loud voice in the matter. Once you really understand what ESG is, you will understand why every company gets a rainbow logo this month, why companies seem eager to push their actual customers aside, and why the constantly-offended are catered to instead of mocked. Look at every AI press release. They all use “safety” over and over. Without that dogwhistle, they wouldn’t be in line for investment funding.

SV_BubbleTime 2y ago

No need to worry about it happening, it already has. In terms of diffusers alone: Stable Diffusion 3 came out recently and immediately fell flat on its face. Terrible anatomy and basically unusable for human forms unless you use so many “unsafe” negative words that it’s “safety” training doesn’t destroy the result. In the meantime… Chinese models Lumina, PixArt, and Hunyuan are all Chinese projects or heavily contributed by Chinese researchers and companies. These are rapidly gaining steam. They’re far less “safe” with far less lobotomization. We are already losing the AI race in this realm exactly because of an over-reaction to “safety”.

musicale 2y ago
It seems like the cat is out of the bag, and it may take a catastrophic disaster before any risks are taken seriously.
zarzavat 2y ago
There’s three kinds of AI safety: 1. “AI is going to (help someone) take over the world”. We don’t need this yet but it’s better to think about it before you need it rather than afterwards. 2. AI is going to do genuinely bad things: generate CP, teach people to make dangerous chemicals. 3. AI is going to do things that people in California think are dangerous: generate a picture of a boob, generate picture of a group of people who are not a mixture of different ethnicities, or sexes, give an answer to a question that isn’t aligned with how people in California think. China is not concerned with any of these, although it is concerned with its own version of point 3: 3b. Generate criticism of the CCP or anything that the CCP doesn’t like people to know about.

lithiumii 2y ago

Don't worry, in China they need to worry about a different set of "ethics". It's not just your LLM should never speak against Xi. They probably also need to include a big propaganda corpus so that the models are aligned with CCP's value, which is very likely to be bad for reasoning capabilities.

silver_silver 2y ago
> which is very likely to be bad for reasoning capabilities. As opposed to our aligned models which refuse to answer questions with controversial answers?

dorkwood 2y ago

You think OpenAI, Meta or Microsoft care about those things? They've already trained on all the world's copyrighted data without asking for permission. Any hand-wringing you see from them is performative.

exodust 2y ago
Why should AI need permission to perform the equivalent of "human looking" at content? We humans don't need permission, why should AI? I could paint a picture of a Disney character after looking at nothing but public promotional material already out in public view, online or in print etc. The tools I use to paint with are capable of all the same colours and lines used in Disney characters. We don't blame the tools for that, but we seem to be blaming AI for being too good?
- diputsmonro 2y ago
  Selling a picture you made of a Disney character is IP infringement. If the work you create is substantially derivative and competes against the IP holders work (which is pretty arguable given the prevalence of prompts containing the names of specific artists/characters/companies), then it is infringement. The same would be true if I paid you to produce art/merch/etc. of a Disney character.
  - CaptainFever 2y ago
    Is this a good thing? Taken to the logical conclusion, fandoms are illegal.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
      Are you saying I can make money from my Vader/Popeye fic?
    - diputsmonro 2y ago
      What if we flip the script - would it be cool if Disney scraped DeviantArt and created merchandise, movies, etc. based on the art and characters of small creators? Rules need to exist to protect the little guy. Technically a lot of the merch people sell at conventions is infringing, but Disney, Nintendo, etc. recognize that pursuing action against them would ultimately be worse for their brand. Generally speaking, whether a fandom existing around a creator's work is good is ultimately up to the creator. If the fandom economy chokes out the product of the artist, then the artist should have legal recourse (this is effectively the same scenario as counterfeits / knock offs). But if the creator's work is able to flourish alongside the fandom, then the creator may well decide that keeping the fandom engaged is worth more than being a legal prude. The protection should exist legally, and the creator should be allowed to exercise it as they deem necessary.