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Paul McCartney and Dua Lipa urge UK Prime Minister to rethink his AI copyright plans. A new law could soon allow AI companies to use copyrighted material without permission.

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  • On the other hand copyright laws have been extended to insane time lengths. Sorry but your grandkids shouldn't profit off of you.

    It's never the grandkids. The Beatles sold the rights to their songs.

  • You've got the details a little wrong. The original two were the Whigs and the Tories, as you say. The Whigs became the Liberals who became the modern day Liberal Democrats, who still exist but haven't been in power outside of being a junior member of a coalition for a century. Tories became the Conservatives, who are still one of the major two and are regularly still called the Tories. There was a faction that broke away from the Whigs called the Liberal Unionists, who merged into the Conservatives, but they're separate from the Liberals. Labour is not a successor to either of them, though they did make some strategic agreements with the Liberals early on. In the early 1900s, Labour replaced the Liberals as one of the two major parties.

    It is still consistently a two-party system. One of the historic parties got replaced and there is a stronger presence for minor parties than there is in the states (see especially the SNP in the past decade and the Tory-LibDem coalition in 2010), but still a two-party system

    Thank you, I tried to condense it and may have condensed a little too hard aha

  • should start up our own ai company anyone is free to join

    I identify as an AI company ☠

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    AI really shows the absurdity of intellectual property as a concept, the very way we learn, every idea we can have, every mental image we can create is the sum of copying and adapting the things we perceive and ideas that have predated our own, you can see this from the earliest forms of art where simple shapes and patterns were transmuted and adapted into increasingly complex ones or through the influence of old innovations into new ones, for example the influence of automatons on weaving looms with punched pegs and their influence on babbage machines and eventually computers. IP is ontological incoherent for this reason you cannot "own" an idea so much as you can own the water of one part of a stream

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    If AI companies can pirate, so can individuals.

  • AI really shows the absurdity of intellectual property as a concept, the very way we learn, every idea we can have, every mental image we can create is the sum of copying and adapting the things we perceive and ideas that have predated our own, you can see this from the earliest forms of art where simple shapes and patterns were transmuted and adapted into increasingly complex ones or through the influence of old innovations into new ones, for example the influence of automatons on weaving looms with punched pegs and their influence on babbage machines and eventually computers. IP is ontological incoherent for this reason you cannot "own" an idea so much as you can own the water of one part of a stream

    I don't disagree with you, but AI companies shouldn't get an exclusive free pass.

  • I don't disagree with you, but AI companies shouldn't get an exclusive free pass.

    Oh yes, I am not saying that at all. I am still very unsure on my views of AI from a precautionary standpoint and I think that its commercial use will lead to more harm than good but if these things are the closest analogs we have to looking at how humans learn and create it shows IP is ridiculous- I mean we do not even need them to see this, if an idea was purely and solely one person's property the idea of someone from the sentinel island (assuming they have not left and learnt oncology) inventing the cure for brain cancer is as likely as a team of oncologists at Oxford doing it.

  • That feels categorically different unless AI has legal standing as a person. We're talking about training LLMs, there's not anything more than people using computers going on here.

    So then anyone who uses a computer to make music would be in violation?

    Or is it some amount of computer generated content? How many notes? If its not a sample of a song, how does one know how much of those notes are attributed to which artist being stolen from?

    What if I have someone else listen to a song and they generate a few bars of a song for me? Is it different that a computer listened and then generated output?

    To me it sounds like artists were open to some types of violations but not others. If an AI model listened to the radio most of these issues go away unless we are saying that humans who listen to music and write similar songs are OK but people who write music using computers who calculate the statistically most common song are breaking the law.

  • It's not a Ponzi scheme. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a scam and even if it was a scam that wouldn't be the type of scam that it was.

    Absolute worst you could call it is false advertising, because AI does actually work just not very well.

    A company that makes negative income every quarter forever, and whose latest edition costs a magnitude more power and is worse than the previous, is worth between $150 Bn and $300 Bn. Many other competing companies equally overvalued.

    These are businesses who are only valuable because people keep investing in them. A Ponzi Scheme.

  • If AI companies can pirate, so can individuals.

    Is the ai doing anything that isn’t already allowed for humans. The thing is, generative ai doesn’t copy someone’s art. It’s more akin to learning from someone’s art and creating you own art with that influence. Given that we want to continue allowing hunans access to art for learning, what’s the logical difference to an ai doing the same?

    Did this already play out at Reddit? Ai was one of the reasons I left but I believe it’s a different scenario. I freely contributed my content to Reddit for the purposes of building an interactive community, but they changed the terms without my consent. I did NOT contribute my content so they could make money selling it for ai training

    The only logical distinction I see with s ai aren’t human: an exception for humans does not apply to non-humans even if the activity is similar

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    Most of us make fun of the stupid everyday masses for supporting laws that only benefit people who are vastly richer than they'll ever be. But I'm almost guaranteed to get douchevoted for pointing out that the vast majority of musicians never get famous, never get recording contracts, but make their living day to day playing little gigs wherever they can find them. They don't materially suffer if AI includes patterns from their creations in its output, because they don't get any revenue streams from it to begin with. Realistically they're the people most of us should identify with, but instead we rally behind the likes of Paul McCartney and Elton John as if they represent us. McCartney's a billionaire and Elton's more than halfway there - they both own recording companies ffs. If you're going to do simple meme-brained thinking and put black or white hats on people, at least get the hats right.

  • A company that makes negative income every quarter forever, and whose latest edition costs a magnitude more power and is worse than the previous, is worth between $150 Bn and $300 Bn. Many other competing companies equally overvalued.

    These are businesses who are only valuable because people keep investing in them. A Ponzi Scheme.

    AI has been around for many years, and a lot has happened in that time. It's had periods of high and low interest, and during its lows, it's been dubbed AI winter.

  • AI has been around for many years, and a lot has happened in that time. It's had periods of high and low interest, and during its lows, it's been dubbed AI winter.

    And the current AI spring is just old people buying into bullshit marketing and putting all their money in a Ponze Scheme.

  • And the current AI spring is just old people buying into bullshit marketing and putting all their money in a Ponze Scheme.

    Throughout history, many things have been spent on useless things, but saying that AI is a Ponze scheme is, I feel, the same as saying that the Apollo program is a Ponze scheme or that government-funded research is another Ponze scheme.

    PS: There were people who were against the Apollo program because they considered it an unnecessary expense, although today the Apollo program is more remembered.

  • Throughout history, many things have been spent on useless things, but saying that AI is a Ponze scheme is, I feel, the same as saying that the Apollo program is a Ponze scheme or that government-funded research is another Ponze scheme.

    PS: There were people who were against the Apollo program because they considered it an unnecessary expense, although today the Apollo program is more remembered.

    The Apollo Program had an achievable goal, lots of beneficial byproducts, and was administrated by public offices.

    Nothing about it is comparable. It's like saying people hate snakes and some people also hate dogs therefor snakes are dogs.

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    What is the actual justification for this? Everyone has to pay for this except for AI companies, so AI can continue to develop into a universally regarded negative?

  • What is the actual justification for this? Everyone has to pay for this except for AI companies, so AI can continue to develop into a universally regarded negative?

    why do you say AI is a universally regarded negative?

    Edit: if you're going to downvote me, can you explain why? I am not saying AI is a good thing here. I'm just asking for evidence that it's universally disliked, i.e. there aren't a lot of fans. It seems there are lots of people coming to the defense of AI in this thread, so it clearly isn't universally disliked.

  • Is the ai doing anything that isn’t already allowed for humans. The thing is, generative ai doesn’t copy someone’s art. It’s more akin to learning from someone’s art and creating you own art with that influence. Given that we want to continue allowing hunans access to art for learning, what’s the logical difference to an ai doing the same?

    Did this already play out at Reddit? Ai was one of the reasons I left but I believe it’s a different scenario. I freely contributed my content to Reddit for the purposes of building an interactive community, but they changed the terms without my consent. I did NOT contribute my content so they could make money selling it for ai training

    The only logical distinction I see with s ai aren’t human: an exception for humans does not apply to non-humans even if the activity is similar

    You picked the wrong thread for a nuanced question on a controversial topic.

    But it seems the UK indeed has laws for this already if the article is to believed, as they don't currently allow AI companies to train on copyrighted material (As per the article). As far as I know, in some other jurisdictions, a normal person would absolutely be allowed to pull a bunch of publicly available information, learn from it, and decide to make something new based on objective information that can be found within. And generally, that's the rationale AI companies used as well, seeing as there have been landmark cases ruled in the past to not be copyright infringement with wide acceptance for computers analyzing copyrighted information, such as against Google, for indexing copyrighted material in their search results. But perhaps an adjacent ruling was never accepted in the UK (which does seem strange, as Google does operate there). But laws are messy, and perhaps there is an exception somewhere, and I'm certainly not an expert on UK law.

    But people sadly don't really come into this thread to discuss the actual details, they just see a headline that invokes a feeling of "AI Bad", and so you coming in here with a reasonable question makes you a target. I wholly expect to be downvoted as well.

  • Is the ai doing anything that isn’t already allowed for humans. The thing is, generative ai doesn’t copy someone’s art. It’s more akin to learning from someone’s art and creating you own art with that influence. Given that we want to continue allowing hunans access to art for learning, what’s the logical difference to an ai doing the same?

    Did this already play out at Reddit? Ai was one of the reasons I left but I believe it’s a different scenario. I freely contributed my content to Reddit for the purposes of building an interactive community, but they changed the terms without my consent. I did NOT contribute my content so they could make money selling it for ai training

    The only logical distinction I see with s ai aren’t human: an exception for humans does not apply to non-humans even if the activity is similar

    Is the ai doing anything that isn’t already allowed for humans. The thing is, generative ai doesn’t copy someone’s art. It’s more akin to learning from someone’s art and creating you own art with that influence. Given that we want to continue allowing hunans access to art for learning, what’s the logical difference to an ai doing the same?

    AI stans always say stuff like this, but it doesn't make sense to me at all.

    AI does not learn the same way that a human does: it has no senses of its own with which to observe the world or art, it has no lived experiences, it has no agency, preferences or subjectivity, and it has no real intelligence with which to interpret or understand the work that it is copying from. AI is simply a matrix of weights that has arbitrary data superimposed on it by people and companies.

    Are you an artist or a creative person?

    If you are then you must know that the things you create are certainly indirectly influenced by SOME of the things that you have experienced (be it walking around on a sunny day, your favorite scene from your favorite movie, the lyrics of a song, etc.), AS WELL AS your own unique and creative persona, your own ideas, your own philosophy, and your own personal development.

    Look at how an artist creates a painting and compare it to how generative AI creates a painting. Similarly, look at how artists train and learn their craft and compare it to how generative AI models are trained. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison. Outside of the marketing labels of "artificial intelligence" and "machine learning", it's nothing like real intelligence or learning at all.

    (And that's still ignoring the obvious corporate element and the four pillars of fair use consideration (US law, not UK, mind you). For example, the potential market effects of generating an automated system which uses people's artwork to directly compete against them.)

  • You picked the wrong thread for a nuanced question on a controversial topic.

    But it seems the UK indeed has laws for this already if the article is to believed, as they don't currently allow AI companies to train on copyrighted material (As per the article). As far as I know, in some other jurisdictions, a normal person would absolutely be allowed to pull a bunch of publicly available information, learn from it, and decide to make something new based on objective information that can be found within. And generally, that's the rationale AI companies used as well, seeing as there have been landmark cases ruled in the past to not be copyright infringement with wide acceptance for computers analyzing copyrighted information, such as against Google, for indexing copyrighted material in their search results. But perhaps an adjacent ruling was never accepted in the UK (which does seem strange, as Google does operate there). But laws are messy, and perhaps there is an exception somewhere, and I'm certainly not an expert on UK law.

    But people sadly don't really come into this thread to discuss the actual details, they just see a headline that invokes a feeling of "AI Bad", and so you coming in here with a reasonable question makes you a target. I wholly expect to be downvoted as well.

    Oh are we giving AI the same rights as humans now?
    On what grounds?