[redcobra762]

It's abusive and wrong to try and prevent AI companies from using your works at all.

The whole point of copyright is to ensure you're paid for your work. AI companies shouldn't pirate, but if they pay for your work, they should be able to use it however they please, including training an LLM on it.

If that LLM reproduces your work, then the AI company is violating copyright, but if the LLM doesn't reproduce your work, then you have not been harmed. Trying to claim harm when you haven't been due to some philosophical difference in opinion with the AI company is an abuse of the courts.

[xdennis]

> It's abusive and wrong to try and prevent AI companies from using your works at all.

People don't view moral issues in the abstract.

A better perspective on this is the fact that human individuals have created works which megacorps are training on for free or for the price of a single book and creating models which replace individuals.

The megacorps are only partially replacing individuals now, but when the models get good enough they could replace humans entirely.

When such a future happens will you still be siding with them or with individual creators?

[whycome]

> A better perspective on this is the fact that human individuals have created works which megacorps are training on for free or for the price of a single book and creating models which replace individuals.

Those damn kind readers and libraries. Giving their single copy away when they just paid for the single.

[DrillShopper]

> The whole point of copyright is to ensure you're paid for your work.

No. The point of copyright is that the author gets to decide under what terms their works are copied. That's the essence of copyright. In many cases, authors will happily sell you a copy of their work, but they're under no obligation to do so. They can claim a copyright and then never release their work to the general public. That's perfectly within their rights, and they can sue to stop anybody from distributing copies.

[redcobra762]

We're operating under a model where the owner of the copyright has already sold their work. And while it's within their rights to stipulate conditions of the sale, they did not do that, and fair use of the work as governed under the laws the book was sold under encompasses its conversion into an LLM model.

If the author didn't want their work to be included in an LLM, they should not have sold it, just like if an author didn't want their work to inspire someone else's work, they should not have sold it.

[827a]

Current copyright law is not remotely sophisticated enough to make determinations on AI fair use. Whether the courts say current AI use is fair is irrelevant to the discussion most people on this side would agree with: That we need new laws. The work the AI companies stole to train on was created under a copyright regime where the expectation was that, eh, a few people would learn from and be inspired from your work, and that feels great because you're empowering other humans. Scale does not amplify Good. The regime has changed. The expectations under what kinds of use copyright protects against has fundamentally changed. The AI companies invented New Horrors that no one could have predicted, Vader altered the deal, no reasonable artist except the most forward-thinking sci-fi authors would have remotely guessed what their work would be used for, and thus could never have conciously and fairly agreed to this exchange. Very few would have agreed to it.

[codedokode]

It is not wrong at all. The author decides what to do with their work. AI companies are rich and can simply buy the rights or hire people to create works.

I could agree with exceptions for non-commercial activity like scientific research, but AI companies are made for extracting profits and not for doing research.

> AI companies shouldn't pirate, but if they pay for your work, they should be able to use it however they please, including training an LLM on it.

It doesn't work this way. If you buy a movie it doesn't mean you can sell goods with movie characters.

> then you have not been harmed.

I am harmed because less people will buy the book if they can simply get an answer from LLM. Less people will hire me to write code if an LLM trained on my code can do it. Maybe instead of books we should start making applications that protect the content and do not allow copying text or making screenshots. ANd instead of open-source code we should provide binary WASM modules.

[redcobra762]

If you reproduce the material from a work you've purchased then of course you're in violation of copyright, but that's not what an LLM does (and when it does I already conceded it's in violation and should be stopped). An LLM that doesn't "sell goods with movie characters" is not in violation.

And the harm you describe is not a recognized harm. You don't own information, you own creative works in their entirety. If your work is simply a reference, then the fact being referenced isn't something you own, thus you are not harmed if that fact is shared elsewhere.

It is an abuse of the courts to attempt to prevent people who have purchased your works from using those works to train an LLM. It's morally wrong.

[CaptainFever]

> Maybe instead of books we should start making applications that protect the content and do not allow copying text or making screenshots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole