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54 points elektor | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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dpacmittal ◴[] No.44389729[source]
Is it only me who feels its incredibly unfair for publishers, that not only did big tech trained their LLMs on free content authored by these publishers, but it's also killing their future revenue. It's like stealing from someone and then making sure they never make money again.
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csallen ◴[] No.44389956[source]
I'll be the voice of dissent. I don't think it's unfair.

1. I don't believe that training LLMs on publicly-available content is morally bad. Nor do I believe that it should be prosecutable as copyright infringement, any more than I believe that we should prosecute humans for studying books/art/essays/movies/etc and "downloading" that information into their brains. I'm not a big fan of IP law in general (I think it's largely a crime against the people's freedom to share and riff on ideas and expression), but to the extent that we need to bring IP law into this, I only think it should be prosecutable to publish a near-exact copy of an existing work. Creating a tool/AI capable of reproducing a Lady Gaga song is not the same thing as actually reproducing and selling a Lady Gaga song.

2. Capitalist markets depend on constant competition and innovation. This is a good thing for consumers, as things generally tend to get better and better over time (look at cars, clothing, medicine, food choices, etc). The cost comes to business owners, who are endlessly forced to compete on cost/speed/availability/value at the risk of being disrupted. As a business owner myself, I am okay with this cost and do not find it morally wrong, unfair, or reprehensible. It's for the greater good, and business owners imo are the societal group least in need of charity or prioritization. And, again, the rules help consumers. When a business is being outcompeted, that's because consumers are voting with their feet for what they think is the better option.

3. Pure artists are unaffected. If you're a craftsperson, artist, writer, chef, programmer, etc who is creating for the love of creating, that's amazing. You are unaffected. Nothing under the sun can stop you from doing what you love. If you make a great burger for yourself or your friends and family, it does not matter that McDonald's has sold a billion burgers. However, once you start trying to sell your creations to others, you are no longer purely an artist, you are a business, and you will be subject to the aforementioned rules of the market. Which, once again, I think are fair.

4. Trying to skirt the rules of the market to avoid competition or disruption, imo, is not cool. It generally amounts to rent-seeking "I got here first" behavior, which benefits no one in society except for business owners who don't want to innovate. "My profession/industry was here first, and this is how it's always been since I got into it, and I like making money this way, and it's unfair for anything to happen in the market that disrupts my flow of money or causes me to change, and I'm going to use my incumbency/popularity/authority to try to change the law to stop newcomers from out-competing me or to force them to give me a cut, consumers be damned."

It is not a tragedy for a business model that used to thrive to decline. It's a natural process that has happened many tens of thousands of times, and it's the flip side of the coin called progress.

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AstroBen ◴[] No.44390375[source]
Our society should have a way of protecting people that invest a decade into mastering a field from being made obsolete overnight. They're not business owners banking money the whole time and now needing to pivot, they're regular people being screwed out of their livelihoods. I agree that stifling innovation and disruption isn't the way, but we need something

That initial investment in time/energy is what we need to protect to encourage people to do it. This goes for IP law also in the exact same way - why invest the resources into R&D if the end product will just be ripped off before you've had a chance to recoup anything?

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1. csallen ◴[] No.44393620[source]
I agree with you that we should help people who fall on hard times, and I agree with you that stifling innovation isn't the right way to do so.

I'm glad we have high ceilings as a country, but I think we're a rich enough society that we can afford to have a much higher floor, too. Our problem is that we simply won't tax rich people or businesses. (I say this as a fairly well-off person myself, and as a business owner.)

I don't necessarily agree with your final point. People are incredibly motivated to take risks and try new things and to experiment with innovative business models. Just look at the web and the millions of creative things that people have put tons of time and effort into, often with no payment. It's not that money doesn't motivate people, it certainly does. I just think that people are creative about figuring out how to profit, and we don't need to create artificial monopolies and means of profit in order to motivate people to create. If there's a problem that exists in America, it's certainly not that there's a lack of ambitious innovators and creators.