Thread

Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history'

955 points · 841 comments · pluc

jacquesm · 1789726316 · focus · HN ↗
It's the robbery of all of our culture to sell it back to us at a mark-up. Crimes this large are crimes against humanity. So many people whose life's work got appropriated without consideration, compensation or consent it is baffling.
It is said that at the heart of every great fortune there is a great crime, so it should be no surprise that the most valuable companies on the planet will most likely result from this crime. And given that justice can be bought by those with the most money you can forget about anything coming of this.
1. TeMPOraL · 1789734845 · focus · HN ↗
  > It's the robbery of all of our culture to sell it back to us at a mark-up.
  Except, of course, no one has actually been robbed, the culture has not been stolen - it's still there - nor are the people involved selling it back in any form. This rhetoric sounds impressive, but really looks more like "piracy is theft" line from early 2000s, similarly flawed in basic premise.
  Whether the end result threatens the form in which culture is created, at least beyond just threatening the business models of the gatekeepers, is a separate discussion, but you can't draw the heart-string-pulling "life's work got appropriated" arguments there so easily.
  And let's not forget what we got back for this: reified intelligence on a chip almost too cheap to meter, available to everyone across the world - not just rich West, inference is so dirt cheap that whole world uses it. It exploded in popularity organically, because of how many real problems of real people, including individuals and non-profits, it addresses.
  There's plenty to hate about how AI is transforming the world, but one thing it's not, is "robbery of all of our culture to sell it back to us at a mark-up".
  1. cowanon77 · 1789739565 · focus · HN ↗
    I only see 2 consistent world views: either intellectual property is real, or it is a false concept and all information should be free.
    If IP is real, then the AI companies have performed flagrant theft.
    If IP is not real, then the algorithms and weights the AI companies have developed should also be free as they are just more information.
    The status quo of "your knowledge has no protection, but our knowledge is sacred" is the worst of all possible worlds.
    qarl · 1789739809 · focus · HN ↗
    > I only see 2 consistent world views
    Allow me to suggest a third: these two options are black and white thinking and there is no objective answer to "intellectual property is real". Property is at best a social construct that is possibly supported by instinctual behavior.
    Instead we should try to find the most practical solution that has the most benefit - which will probably be more complex than yes/no.
    [deleted] · 1789741150 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    palmotea · 1789741444 · focus · HN ↗
    > Allow me to suggest a third: these two options are black and white thinking and there is no objective answer to "intellectual property is real". Property is at best a social construct that is possibly supported by instinctual behavior.
    Intellectual property is as real as private property (which is a lot more elaborate and weird than possession and territoriality, which is the most that has any natural basis). It's really foolish to claim one doesn't exist and should be abolished and the other this fundamental sacred thing that should be respected absolutely (as many do).
    qarl · 1789741791 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, that's why I said property (not just IP) is a social construct.
    palmotea · 1789742024 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, I'm agreeing with you.
    qarl · 1789742480 · focus · HN ↗
    OH. Cool.
    montagg · 1789742186 · focus · HN ↗
    We made it up. We made all this up. We do it for an outcome.
    Intellectual property exists as a concept to foster the creation for more intellectual property. That is not the case for all private property, because I cannot copy your land or your car infinitely. That’s why IP to rights expire at some point, or have fair use that doesn’t harm the IP rights holder. Saying that they are equivalent is not foolish—I think that’s a bit extreme—but it doesn’t recognize that they have fundamental differences, and the laws around them have different intended outcomes.
    I think AI training falls most likely in the fair use category: there is some societal benefit* that requires no actual harm to the IP holder, therefore it’s a good trade-off for society if we poke a hole in the social construct of property to get that benefit.
    *Let’s put aside the question of whether AI is good for society or private ownership is good for society. Important questions but separate from the theory. IF IT IS GOOD, it follows the above. If it is not good, then of course it does not.
    tenuousemphasis · 1789743695 · focus · HN ↗
    This is going to blow your mind, but people created music, literature, art long before intellectual property laws existed. IP laws are nothing but rent seeking.
    palmotea · 1789744736 · focus · HN ↗
    > This is going to blow your mind
    No. it won't blow anyone's mind. Not a single person.
    > but people created music, literature, art long before intellectual property laws existed.
    ^^^ cherry-picked, incomplete reading of history.
    joquarky · 1789767567 · focus · HN ↗
    ^^^ unsubstantiated claim.
    intended · 1789747611 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    qarl · 1789750656 · focus · HN ↗
    Those guys painting on a cave wall were part of a secret society?
    ndiddy · 1789744491 · focus · HN ↗
    > Intellectual property exists as a concept to foster the creation of more intellectual property.
    The idea of IP as an economic tool to foster creation comes out of the UK and subsequently the US. In mainland Europe, IP comes out of the French Revolution and the idea that copyright is like a "moral right" that you intrinsically deserve for putting in the effort to create something. This viewpoint has de facto won out because as global commerce and global culture has become more and more widespread, everybody has standardized on the longest durations (the standard has long been "life + 50 years" in Europe) so one country doesn't have to worry about freeing up its works for "exploitation" by another country.
    joquarky · 1789766545 · focus · HN ↗
    > the idea that copyright is like a "moral right" that you intrinsically deserve for putting in the effort to create something
    Nope. "To promote the progress of science and the useful arts" is the foundational purpose. At least in the US.
    ndiddy · 1789769532 · focus · HN ↗
    Please read the entire sentence you're quoting, then ask yourself if that sentence is referring to the US, or to somewhere else.
    palmotea · 1789745640 · focus · HN ↗
    > That is not the case for all private property, because I cannot copy your land or your car infinitely.
    All property is fundamentally about exclusion and control to allow for private exploitation. That common bit of rhetoric about copying misses that point. The reason private property exists is not because land (for instance) can't be copied.
    > Saying that they are equivalent is not foolish—I think that’s a bit extreme—but it doesn’t recognize that they have fundamental differences, and the laws around them have different intended outcomes.
    You should note that you misread me: I didn't say they were identical in every respect, I said their "reality" is the same. They're both made up social constructs. One isn't more fundamental than the other.
    bit-anarchist · 1790112450 · focus · HN ↗
    > The reason private property exists is not because land (for instance) can't be copied.
    Both things can be true at the same time. Land being economically scarce necessarily means that whatever use is thrusted onto it will produce private exclusion. Today, we give this relationship of private exclusion the name of "property" or "private property", but that doesn't mean you have to formally recognized private ownership in law to suffer its effects - socialists regimes stand as a testament to that. Thus...
    > They're both made up social constructs. One isn't more fundamental than the other.
    The first sentence is reductive, while the second is innacurate, if not outright wrong. Physical property is primarily predicated on real scarcity, while intellectual property is purely predicated on social control, which, when analyzed more closely, lays claims (even if partially) of ownership over other resources, including peoples' bodies and mind. It's fair to say that one is more fundamental than the other.
    dnautics · 1789745149 · focus · HN ↗
    > It's really foolish to claim one doesn't exist and should be abolished
    Hear me out. Property rights exist to assign stewardship and use rights over rivalrous goods. goods where the use of the good precludes the use of that good for its purpose by another party. If you take my bike, I cannot ride it to work. This concept exists to prevent violent conflict over non-shareables and to prevent the tragedy of the commons (see the highly successful fisheries rights, NOx and SOx emissions markets as propertization schemes)
    "Intellectual property" (except for trademark if you want to get pedantic), is not rivalrous, and its primary purpose is to be shared, not hoarded. Therefore intellectual property isn't a thing, creating it as a legal construct was a mistake that has hamstrung society for a long time.
    kmeisthax · 1789753114 · focus · HN ↗
    Copies are not rivalrous, but the underlying creativity absolutely is. If I pay someone to draw a picture, that's labor, and they've got a finite number of hours to sell. Except it's also very inconvenient to pay for creative works this way: drawings and artists are not fungible with one another. More importantly, quality and desirability of the work is incredibly variable. The buyer of the art is bearing the risk of the art being bad.
    What copyright lets you do[1] is offload that risk onto a publisher[0]. Instead of having to pay to commission every piece of art, a publisher can do that, and then sell the now-monopolized copies of whatever art turns out to actually be valuable.
    A lot of hay was made during the Piracy Wars over filesharing tools breaking this bargain. A bunch of data hoarders with an interest in sharing media made it possible to just get the shit for free. This created a social dynamic where artists were annoyed about it, but publishers were Fucking Pissed. You could even measure how publisher-brained an artist got by how angry they were over Napster[2].
    AI generated art also breaks this bargain, by making creative labor nearly non-rivalrous. The only cost is electricity and GPUs. This has created nearly the opposite reaction: artists are pissed while publishers don't care, because AI is to publishers like tort reform is to insurance companies. A publisher that gets art for free doesn't care if everyone else has it, because they have the payola dividend: they can push whatever slop they want onto the market and the market will eat it because they're big and powerful.
    > This concept exists to prevent violent conflict over non-shareables and to prevent the tragedy of the commons
    The copyright maximalists would argue that free reuse of creative works is a tragedy of the commons. I certainly remember hearing that phrase bandied about a lot during the Piracy Wars.
    It's also important to note that "tragedy of the commons" is not a natural law, but a specific framing that is used to justify antisocial ends. The communal ownership so decried worked perfectly well in England for hundreds of years until the ruling classes found it inconvenient and abolished it. The kind of ecological collapse the tragedy attempts to invoke did not happen because there were already communal means of preventing overuse of the land. In fact, an emissions market is probably closer to communal management than enclosure.
    Also none of this changes the underlying logic that AI companies are trying to enclose the intellectual commons, and that their business model relies on being able to replace human brains with machine intelligence they can rent out by the megatoken.
    [0] Individuals who self-publish included.
    [1] To be clear, copyright was created as a censorship regime, it just happens to be useful for other things.
    [2] In Lars Ulrich's defense, they weren't just angry that Metallica songs were on Napster, they were specifically angry that Napster had their latest album before it was in stores.
    joquarky · 1789768064 · focus · HN ↗
    You have a reasonable take on this.
    > AI companies are trying to enclose the intellectual commons,
    I am curious about this part though, isn't this moot since the technology can't be monopolized due to (basically) the "attention is all you need" paper being published?
    dnautics · 1789858568 · focus · HN ↗
    You're confusing a primary use from a secondary (the right to make money/exchange for labor). In the case of "drawing a picture", being able to "make money from a picture" is not primary
    zdragnar · 1789741497 · focus · HN ↗
    > Property is at best a social construct that is possibly supported by instinctual behavior.
    That very much falls within the "IP is not real" category. Taking a utilitarian approach here is exactly what the sam altman / effective altruist crowd is doing (or claiming, at least).
    Believe it or not, but there are different philosophies. The US Constitution, for example, is written under the framework that all rights are innate, and the government merely endorses, not grants, those which are described. This framework creates a moral basis to rights, such that things like property are not merely social constructs but moral goods. To violate them is itself an immoral act.
    qarl · 1789741916 · focus · HN ↗
    > That very much falls within the "IP is not real" category.
    AH. Given that framing, then I suppose anything that varies from "these axioms are perfect there can be no others" must fall into the "not real" category.
    But isn't there some debate about the moral axioms themselves? A space that is much more complex than "yes/no"?
    EDIT: I always wonder, when I get two downvotes in the same moment, if someone is cheating. It happens so often.
    EDIT2: And now! 3 upvotes in the same moment. I daresay someone is confessing.
    yndoendo · 1789744459 · focus · HN ↗
    Social constructs are bought and paid for by the wealthy.
    Most people want a clean environment while the current US administration is pulling back environmental regulations to allow for more pollutants. The current US Supreme Court has taken gifts from those that have invested interest in the outcome of their judgements.
    Social axioms are mutable while mathematical axioms are immutable.
    Human trafficking is bad. How many of the wealthy that partook of Epstein's trafficking have been prosecuted? This shows that human trafficking being bad is mutable based on wealth and power.
    qarl · 1789744661 · focus · HN ↗
    > Social constructs are bought and paid for by the wealthy.
    Well... no. I'd say that most of the social constructs I'm thinking of predate wealth. Most likely shaped by evolutionary pressures.
    > mathematical axioms are immutable
    I invite you to Google "the axiom of choice" to see a lively debate.
    zdragnar · 1789745210 · focus · HN ↗
    So long as there have been people, there have been those who had more than others, be it material goods or power, which gains more material goods, which begets power. I'm not really sure there it's true that any society predates wealth, ergo no social construct predates wealth.
    qarl · 1789745593 · focus · HN ↗
    Right. I think I'm thinking of social behaviors that predate humans.
    zdragnar · 1789748632 · focus · HN ↗
    Territory and hunting grounds are a form of wealth, in that it is a form of control over shelter and natural resources like food and water.
    Money is a social construct for trading value, but is not itself a prerequisite for the accumulation of value (wealth).
    qarl · 1789749506 · focus · HN ↗
    I think you missed my point. Let me try again:
    > ergo no social construct predates wealth.
    What about the social behavior of group child rearing?
    zdragnar · 1789759333 · focus · HN ↗
    Easily argued to be a natural, biological instinct, and not a social construct.
    qarl · 1789767303 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, most social contracts do stem from evolved strategies. That was my original point.
    And parenting in humans varies from culture to culture. That's what makes it a social construct.
    pixl97 · 1789746970 · focus · HN ↗
    >ergo no social construct predates wealth.
    How wealthy is your dog?
    zdragnar · 1789748465 · focus · HN ↗
    Compared to feral dogs, quite wealthy indeed. They've claimed sleeping and feeding spots that are very valuable for being both safe and climate controlled, and have a number of chew bones and toys that are free of dangerous splintering wood, animal bone, parasites and fleas. These are things that are valuable enough to fight over and will contribute greatly to their lifespan.
    If you think the only measure of wealth is money, you have it backwards- money is a polite fiction representing an abstraction of value, and is only good for use as an exchange into another more concrete form of value.
    qarl · 1789749398 · focus · HN ↗
    I think you missed his point - that social behaviors exist outside and before human societies.
    zdragnar · 1789760216 · focus · HN ↗
    You've missed the point of my response- wealth, as in the accumulation of value- is not uniquely human. It is born out of the inability to see into the future, gathering resources to survive times of hardship. It is securing the most desirable mates, controlling territory, being the first to get the choicest fruits or bites of prey.
    It is this biological imperative that pushes humans to desire ever more, and only higher order thinking- social behavior, religious discipline, whatever floats your boat- that suppresses those instincts into virtue, altruism or civility.
    So, when I replied to the following:
    > Well... no. I'd say that most of the social constructs I'm thinking of predate wealth. Most likely shaped by evolutionary pressures.
    I'm pointing out that the social constructs were shaped as a reaction to our nature, which includes a intrinsic, if subconscious, understanding of the concept of value and wealth.
    qarl · 1789767607 · focus · HN ↗
    It sounds like you're redefining wealth as evolutionary advantage. That's fine - but it's not what most people mean by the word.
    zdragnar · 1789949252 · focus · HN ↗
    I defined it in the first sentence of the comment you replied to.
    qarl · 1789953108 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, I know. But you're using it as I described.
    yndoendo · 1789763693 · focus · HN ↗
    "The Axioms of choice" is talking about a mutable set of sets that contain immutable axioms.
    The number 4 in a set is immutable, 4 == 4 under all stances, while it can be taken out or added to the selected set. Objective reasoning.
    Example: The OS function that applies IP port assignments. Application may utilize one or more port numbers. When the application is done, they are moved back into the unused set.
    Social axioms are mutable because subjective reasoning is being applied.
    Example:
    Ask a person if they support domestic abuse. They most likely will so no. Ask them if they ever funded a performer that committed acts of domestic abuse after the facts were revealed. There is a high chance they did and write it off by saying, "don't look at their character, look at how well they perform. That was a good show, movie, book, ..."
    Ever hear someone use the phrase, "that is different" when describing two equal scenarios that apply to two different people?
    Kanye West still selling out shows highlights that people are willing to reject objective reasoning in a social environment.
    qarl · 1789767019 · focus · HN ↗
    My point was - mathematicians still argue about whether the axiom of choice is a good idea or not. They probably always will.
    So mathematical axioms are in flux.
    yndoendo · 1789794426 · focus · HN ↗
    Axioms are not in flux, set of axioms are in flux. Axioms are fixed and finite. This is how software works.
    Gödel's incompleteness theorems is built around this. By saying axioms change then one could create an universal math theorem. Since axioms are finite in definition and applied in a finite space, functions, there cannot be an universal math.
    Example: Fibonacci sequence only works with positive integers and zero. It will work with negative integers wrapped in absolute value. The axioms of Fibonacci did not change while wrapped in absolute value. Rational and irrational numbers can work with Fibonacci too by applying another function bound to absolute value.
    qarl · 1789804666 · focus · HN ↗
    > The axioms of Fibonacci...
    Hmmm. I'm afraid we're just going to have to agree to disagree.
    You have a nice day.
    RunSet · 1789748057 · focus · HN ↗
    > Social constructs are bought and paid for by the wealthy.
    <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg
    yndoendo · 1789762594 · focus · HN ↗
    That is a micro level analysis versus macro. By that logic the current wealth gap should not exist between CEO and average worker in the USA.
    paimapi · 1789746493 · focus · HN ↗
    no, I think people are just annoyed that you're trying to have an irrelevant and kinda cheesy 'is epistemology really real - think about it bro' conversation
    I'm also a fan of nuance and non-black&white thinking but that is quite literally not how the rule of law generally works
    qarl · 1789746643 · focus · HN ↗
    No - I'm specifically calling out that the total changes abruptly. As if someone were using multiple accounts. But I'm sure no one here would ever dare do that, so I should take it back.
    paimapi · 1789746751 · focus · HN ↗
    that's cool - I downvoted you because I was annoyed and I am an independent entity. hope that helps :)
    qarl · 1789747202 · focus · HN ↗
    Of course! My only suggestion is - if you're using multiple accounts to do it - that would be naughty.
    paimapi · 1789752998 · focus · HN ↗
    that seems very anti-social and immature, like throwing a tantrum. you get a singular downvote from me for one comment but I do like how reasonable you're being about all of it :)
    nostrademons · 1789744732 · focus · HN ↗
    Your wording is pretty revealing:
    > This framework creates a moral basis to rights
    The Constitution (and the thinkers that it was based off of) creates a moral basis to rights. At the time the Constitution was written, this was a pretty radical idea. The most prevalent moral framework at the time was the divine right of kings, the idea that the king was ordained by God to rule and anyone who questioned that right was speaking heresy.
    zdragnar · 1789745662 · focus · HN ↗
    My wording was actually wrong, as the constitution recognizes a divine source for the rights, it doesn't create the moral basis. Perhaps 'establishes as the formal basis' would have been more appropriate.
    You're right that it was a relatively radical idea at the time, but not without precedent. The Dutch, Venice and Genoa were republics, the Swiss Confederation was a union of cantons and territories, for example, not to mention the influence of the Iroquois Confederacy, John Locke, Montesquieu, and the assorted Greek and early Roman city states.
    markhahn · 1789748871 · focus · HN ↗
    although the US Constitution does make reference to deities, the copyright section does not. its formalization is entirely pragmatic, utilitarian.
    zdragnar · 1789752695 · focus · HN ↗
    All of the powers granted to the government are through the constitution, and copyright is a form of property right... hence the phrase "intellectual property".
    embedding-shape · 1789754877 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    nz · 1789744838 · focus · HN ↗
    Funny how, when Aaron Swartz did the exact same thing (in a much narrower and more focused way), he was driven to suicide by the US government, but when Sam and Dario do it, people argue about whether (or not) "IP is real".
    Note that society is more about justice than it is about philosophy or logic. Whether you believe that IP makes logical sense or not, is not terribly relevant through the lens of justice. To allow the Altmans and Amodeis of the world to escape the kinds of consequences that Swartz could not (despite having purer intentions than either -- despite being a genuine utilitarian, instead of an aspiring oligarch _pretending_ to be one), would be the height of injustice.
    It would be a grotesque and cruel insult to all the people who remember Swartz, and share his values and optimism about the internet and computers.
    zdragnar · 1789746134 · focus · HN ↗
    The funny thing about having a divine source for rights is also recognizing that humans are fallible and thus inevitably going to be unable to live up to that standard. This argument is the basis for people who want government to have limited powers- the less power it has, the less it can abuse it.
    There's a flip side to this as well- President Lincoln famously suspended habeus corpus unilaterally in violation of the Constitution, outright ignoring a Supreme Court ruling in the process. It became moot when Congress retroactively approved the suspension and allowed it to continue for the remainder of the civil war. Lincoln remains celebrated, despite what could rightfully be argued as blatantly unconstitutional power grabs.
    pixl97 · 1789746909 · focus · HN ↗
    reality > rights
    The use of the term divine at the time was more of an aftereffect of most people having some kind of belief in god and using that as a casus belli to redistribute power. The actual causal reasons seem more technological and more of England spreading themselves too thin. Lincoln went on to further prove there is no divine power enforcing these rights, it's the distribution of power and information that defines the rights you have. The Constitution is simply a piece of paper, not an agent.
    We see this happening again in our modern world. Technology has allowed us to concentrate information like never before. If you believe knowledge (hence processing of information) is power then we've created new power structures that must change society.
    Now, we can say things like "well, you can't concentrate information" but the other party can simply disagree and say it's my divine right to. You're at an impasse unless you plan on taking up a path to violence (any and every legal action is implied violence).
    zdragnar · 1789750160 · focus · HN ↗
    > Lincoln went on to further prove there is no divine power enforcing these rights,
    This is a straw man that nobody is arguing.
    > Now, we can say things like "well, you can't concentrate information"
    Again, nobody is arguing that "concentrating information" is bad. They're arguing that the expression of ideas in a specific format is a type of property, and that what AI companies are doing is immoral theft. Further, states and the federal government have the means and impetus to prosecute theft according to the powers given them by the Constitution. The only thing that is stopping them from doing so is that the claim that theft has occurred is contested, and the method in question has not been successfully tried in court in the broad.
    joquarky · 1789760135 · focus · HN ↗
    If people don't want their data stolen, then they should make backups. It's pretty trivial these days to set up.
    pixl97 · 1789746152 · focus · HN ↗
    What happened to Swartz was injustice.
    Why would I want it to happen to more people? This is, at least to me, an insane point of view.
    "Oh my god, the police just shot a black man for no reason. To make this fair they should also shoot more white people for no reason". Do you see how absolutely unhinged that sounds?
    jraph · 1789747230 · focus · HN ↗
    The parent comment highlights the double standards, they are not campaigning for pushing people to suicide.
    pixl97 · 1789750791 · focus · HN ↗
    I disagree.
    >To allow the Altmans and Amodeis of the world to escape the kinds of consequences that Swartz could not ... would be the height of injustice.
    Simply put, he's demanding two injustices. Let's break this down with a imaginary law.
    "If you do not wear your hat you will be beheaded. This includes the poorest man and the king himself".
    In OPs definition, this kind of equality is justice. But I do not consider this justice at all, simply equality.
    "If you do not wear your hat you will be fined $1. This includes the poorest man and the king himself".
    This is something much more close to justice as the punishment fits the crime.
    bch · 1789752344 · focus · HN ↗
    > This is something much more close to justice as the punishment fits the crime.
    True, but to put a still finer point on it, still fantastically more harmful to that poorest man than the king.
    jacquesm · 1789753793 · focus · HN ↗
    The real injust is that the poor man does not have a hat. Whereas the king most likely has a whole room dedicated to them.
    pixl97 · 1789753889 · focus · HN ↗
    Again I agree, this is why some countries have scaling fines. If a rich person gets a speeding ticket they still don't execute them.
    bch · 1789756041 · focus · HN ↗
    We're on the same page.
    matheusmoreira · 1789752416 · focus · HN ↗
    There are two injustices here. The first injustice is the sheer existence of this notion of intellectual property. The second injustice stems from the selective application of the associated laws.
    Intellectual property should not exist, but since it does, one can and should expect it to be applied consistently in all cases. Just look at what they did to Kim Dotcom, that's what should happen to Anthropic, OpenAI and Google. Anything less is an insult to previous enforcement victims.
    Inconsistency robs authorities of all credibility. Selective enforcement exposes them for the arbitrary tyrants they are and delegitimizes their decisions.
    irri11 · 1789754623 · focus · HN ↗
    Are you brain dead?
    Intellectual property should exist as if it doesn’t investment activity would not take place.
    You folks are deluded.
    pixl97 · 1789757936 · focus · HN ↗
    "For my friends, everything. For everyone else, the law."
    And
    "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
    joquarky · 1789754987 · focus · HN ↗
    It sounds unhinged because it's a straw man.
    GPerson · 1789791613 · focus · HN ↗
    I usually shit post on this website because it’s full of amoral idiots who just want to make a lot of money and don’t care about others, but I want to suggest to you that arguing using extreme analogies is almost never a persuasive rhetorical device. The other person almost always just sees the way it doesn’t accurately apply to the situation.
    TeMPOraL · 1789761154 · focus · HN ↗
    I didn't want to bring up Aaron Swartz myself first, but now that you did and proved the point I did not want to post first, I nevertheless will:
    It's a cruel and sad irony that people invoke Aaron Swartz to argue opposite worldviews depending on prevailing fashion, making him into some kind of perpetuum mobile in his grave.
    I personally doubt Aaron would be against AI companies doing what they did on the grounds of intellectual property. There's plenty of things to hate about how AI is transforming the world, but this is not it.
    tzs · 1789746788 · focus · HN ↗
    You are assuming that social constructs are not real.
    qarl · 1789747430 · focus · HN ↗
    Not at all.
    LordDragonfang · 1789750787 · focus · HN ↗
    "A social construct" and "not real" are not the same thing. Money, laws, countries, gender, even civilization itself are all social constructs. More importantly, all forms of ownership are social constructs, and that doesn't provide any information as to whether we should respect them or not.
    joquarky · 1789766860 · focus · HN ↗
    Perhaps you need to look up what "real" actually means.
    Inches aren't real. Laws aren't real. Language isn't even real.
    Have you ever tripped over a line of longitude?
    LordDragonfang · 1789779459 · focus · HN ↗
    > Perhaps you need to look up what "real" actually means.
    On the contrary; I think. Nearly every definition disagrees with the claims you're making. It's not a mere synonym of "concrete" or antonym of "abstract".
    <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/real" rel="nofollow">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/real
    And regardless, the usage here was clearly in the context of GP's (false) dichotomy between "real" or "false concept", so obviously the definition you're trying to prescribe doesn't apply.
    underlipton · 1789752662 · focus · HN ↗
    Who decides what's a right? By what criteria?
    AlexandrB · 1789745182 · focus · HN ↗
    Property is a social construct in the sense that anything is a social construct. Like, sure, the fact that I "own" this spoon is societally constructed, but it's so foundational that almost every other aspect of human society is more abstract. Even animals have some sense of "property" - whether that's territory they defend or their stash of food. The social construct part is that we respect each other's property rights (mostly) without resorting violence, where animals resort to individual violence or threat displays.
    qarl · 1789748145 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, no, the physical laws aren't social. An apple falls whether there is a social group to see it or not.
    And yes! Animals are a perfect example. Mother Nature came up with a nice strategy for maximal benefit in a social group, and she encoded it in our instincts and intuitions.
    But that doesn't mean it's perfect. I have an instinctual fear of fire - but it's still better to cook my own food.
    newyankee · 1789745910 · focus · HN ↗
    Sovereignty is the ultimate form of property ownership in a funny way.
    kiicia · 1789756246 · focus · HN ↗
    while you mentioned how tribal property management looks like in some places (that things are dynamically moving between who needs them at the time), it does not help to solve issue at hand, that is how to call what ai companies did:
    - amassed then destroyed/denied largest knowledge corpora seen so far
    - poisoned knowledge for decades to come, deliberately or not, which would stop new developments by independent teams
    - now they are crying that they are being robbed of their precious models, which - at this point in time - are neither truly good not economical (not to mention actual environmental and social impact)
    this is truly first of a kind situation, that was never seen nor heard before
    pton_xd · 1789741273 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, this whole "we're being attacked by China, they're distilling our models!" thing is completely and utterly absurd. Insulting, even.
    Either IP exists and should be respected or it doesn't. And if model training is fairly "transformative" of the source work, then so is distilling. As Garry Tan suggested recently, we need to encourage a US distillation regime. Everyone should be free access and transform this information however they see fit.
    RyanHamilton · 1789742789 · focus · HN ↗
    Let me introduce you instead to the one golden rule. He who has the gold, makes the rules.
    twoWhlsGud · 1789745624 · focus · HN ↗
    Let me introduce you to the power of cynicism to normalize corruption...
    AlexandrB · 1789743508 · focus · HN ↗
    IP is obviously not "real" like physical property is real. Moreso, IP is a restriction on free speech as it walls off some expression as "Copyrighted" so you can't legally express it yourself without paying someone for the privilege.
    That's not to say that IP is useless, but treating IP infringement as "stealing" was always a problematic shorthand. Previously, calling IP infingement "stealing" was the domain of corporate interest groups like the RIAA or MPAA, but with AI the winds have turned and supposed anti-corporate lefties are keen to treat IP infringement as theft to attack AI companies. There's very little intellectual consistency on either side of aisle here.
    tenuousemphasis · 1789743764 · focus · HN ↗
    It's actually worse than that. IP laws trump property laws because they prevent you from using your property in ways you would otherwise be able to. It's nothing more than base rent seeking.
    nostrademons · 1789744567 · focus · HN ↗
    There are a wide variety of middle-ground views between them. Copyright law itself is one of them: it provides exceptions for transformative "fair uses", and there are some courts that have ruled that AI is one of them. Another might be Harbinger taxes on IP.
    verelo · 1789745158 · focus · HN ↗
    I think the blend of the two is that value added to any information, such as the first time its distilled or positioned in a certain way, that's IP and should be real.
    When an AI company takes that type of value, and doesnt provide value back to the person who made it, thats theft.
    Information / facts are real and free. But those who helped us get here should choose how to license their work, and an AI company picking it up and re-selling it is clearly unethical.
    joquarky · 1789772536 · focus · HN ↗
    > But those who helped us get here should choose how to license their work
    I can reasonably wrap my head around the idea that an author should be compensated for their work, but where in the social contract does this power to control how that work is used come from?
    It's so destructive and tangles up courts and makes contracts complicated and we lose the original versions of the work because e.g., they have to change a background song due to complicated licensing.
    I can respect protecting copy rights, but it should never be conditional; if you choose to make a work available to the world, you have a legal right to defend the unauthorized copy of it but you should not have a right to say how it gets used.
    It reminds me of manufacturers like John Deer.
    toobulkeh · 1789745416 · focus · HN ↗
    Both can be true. IP is real and they created new IP off of stolen IP.
    lxgr · 1789745506 · focus · HN ↗
    Intellectual property is a legal fiction, not an empirical fact about the universe. It's as real as societies want it to be, and that view can change over time.
    ericmay · 1789745751 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s real but whether you can make a profit or not is dependent on whether you can protect the information. It has been this way since civilization as we know it started, I believe.
    If you are freely posting sentences like this was on the internet you are giving away your IP for free. Anyone can read the sentence. If someone can make money off of it then that’s just markets at work. I can’t make money off of what I write here, for example.
    But I also don’t think pirating a movie is theft either. You haven’t proven to me you’ve lost money. Maybe wouldn’t have watched it anyway.
    Fun topic
    simoncion · 1789746264 · focus · HN ↗
    > It’s real but whether you can make a profit or not is dependent on whether you can protect the information.
    That's what contracts and licenses [0] are for. Or perhaps you're arguing for a world where the only possible protection is the practice of trade secrets.. that once protected information is made public by any means anyone can do anything they wish with it? If you are, then this quote [1] seems relevant:
    If IP is real, then the AI companies have performed flagrant theft. If IP is not real, then the algorithms and weights the AI companies have developed should also be free as they are just more information.
    [0] ...which are contracts in disguise...
    [1] <<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49754448">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49754448>
    ericmay · 1789767695 · focus · HN ↗
    Those contracts and licenses are just a form of protection enforced by the State. In general once knowledge or information is widely available it's also freely available. Whether someone can further protect the distribution or the usage of that knowledge to some ends is up to them.
    I disagree with both of those premises.
    IP is real, and scraping freely given comments or published material on the Internet and doing something economically useful with it doesn't entitle you to retrospectively go back and decide that you are owed some money. If that were the case you have to prove material damages. How much is my post here worth? one quadrillionth of a cent?
    I think it can become different if, for example, a book was scraped or cataloged but that's primarily because it's likely that you can enforce or make a case within a given legal system to enforce your copyright or IP claims. But what if I read a book and then thought the main idea was my own, or just spoke to someone else about it and they spoke to someone else about it and it winds up in an LLM? There's nothing wrong with that or anything you can do.
    To expose information is to put that information at risk of being used by others. It's up to you to protect that information or enforce claims on it. If Reddit's public site gets scraped and OpenAI does something economically useful with it, well, that's just life. You can't put information out in the public for free and then demand payment later. Reddit comments are freely accessible by the public, yes? Companies are part of the public.
    simoncion · 1789779357 · focus · HN ↗
    > Those contracts and licenses are just a form of protection enforced by the State.
    Yes, that's how property works most anywhere that has stable government. Societies where The State has a monopoly on violence are usually far more stable and pleasant to live in than ones where vigilantism is how correction of injuries is done.
    > Reddit comments are freely accessible by the public, yes?
    In exactly the same way that the books in my local public library are freely accessibly to the public, yes. I'm sure that you're aware there are so many things you can't legally do with books in your local public library. Reddit isn't substantially different... go read the "User Agreement" contract that governs use of the site when you get a free hour or two.
    > To read this post you must pay me $5. Please leave your contact information...
    You can totally prevent me from -among other things- making many sorts of commercial uses of your post, but -as I'm sure you know- the made-up system you're gesturing at not how software licenses have worked for roughly as long as software has been a thing that was commonly licensed.
    Anyway. It sounds like you want a return to "publish nothing, keep everything of worth secret to anyone not in the guild, and do what needs done to people who the guild suspects has betrayed its secrets". Those were the really bad old days, and the awfulness of that system was why the US adopted the patent system back in the late 1700s. It's also part of why it adopted the copyright system [0] as well as limited term lengths (fourteen years, with an option for fourteen more if the work's author was still alive and explicitly requested an extension).
    [0] Though, you had to explicitly register your work with the relevant authorities to get protection... unregistered works received no protection. Things stayed this way for roughly two hundred years, and -IMO- should have stayed that way.
    ericmay · 1789845847 · focus · HN ↗
    > In exactly the same way that the books in my local public library are freely accessibly to the public, yes. I'm sure that you're aware there are so many things you can't legally do with books in your local public library. Reddit isn't substantially different... go read the "User Agreement" contract that governs use of the site when you get a free hour or two.
    I don't think those user agreements are really enforceable or should be enforceable given how the public utilizes them. That's a digression though.
    With respect to your library example, the difference is the author made the big with an intent to sell. There is a market for the book, it has some value as evidenced by the sale of the book. Public Reddit comments have no marketable value on their own. If Reddit doesn't want the public to use them, they must protect them. Potentially via the State, but generally they would have to take some other protective measure.
    > You can totally prevent me from -among other things- making many sorts of commercial uses of your post, but -as I'm sure you know- the made-up system you're gesturing at not how software licenses have worked for roughly as long as software has been a thing that was commonly licensed.
    How things work now or in the past can change. Maybe you're just slow to adopting a new paradigm? I can't prevent you from doing anything with my post unless you go on to make enough money that it is worthwhile. But if you just use it for your own private coffee cup there's nothing I can do nor is there anything the State is interested in doing about it. Similarly you can deconstruct Reddit comments into individual ones and assess the value, but the value is 0. Aggregating those into something useful is economically useful and Reddit doesn't really own the data if they are publishing it for free, the users do, despite what either party says.
    It's similar to how copying != stealing. First you have to prove I'd have bought the movie. Second of all you have to enforce cases where I might accidentally see it I was walking down the street and someone was playing it in their living room. If you can't enforce it, you don't really own it.
    Information economics is difficult because it's a mix of different things.
    newyankee · 1789745863 · focus · HN ↗
    You would not download a car, would you ?
    Hell if a car was downloadable why would I not ? Your capability to make endless profit should be capped somewhere, if indeed it is Profit
    Aurornis · 1789746263 · focus · HN ↗
    > If IP is real, then the AI companies have performed flagrant theft.
    It’s called Derivative Work and it’s a good feature for IP law: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work
    You wouldn’t like a world where companies could copyright knowledge and then prevent anyone else from making a derivative of that knowledge.
    Imagine Wikipedia being taken down for sharing knowledge that another company wrote about first. It’s a bad idea.
    EagnaIonat · 1789746811 · focus · HN ↗
    > It’s called Derivative Work
    That would be on what the AI model generates, not what it is trained on.
    The latter is where the contention is, and it's a valid argument. So much so that some companies are not using stolen information to build their models.
    IBM for example indemnifies its models for its customers and has detailed information on where the sources came from to train them.
    Aurornis · 1789747664 · focus · HN ↗
    > The latter is where the contention is, and it's a valid argument
    It has been tried in court several ways already. Remember the lawsuit that forced Anthropic to use physical books? They tried to argue that the books couldn’t be trained on at all. It failed.
    porkshoe · 1789749433 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes. That judge misunderstood badly, and made a bad ruling.
    ragequittah · 1789754136 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not sure I understand this argument. If I go to the library every day for 10 years and learn everything there is to know about subject x I shouldn't be able to sell my skills to the world about it later because I didn't give the creators of the books I read any money?
    Arguably LLM companies could have made large-scale deals with libraries and got the exact same knowledge (much, much more slowly). I wonder if people would have the same issues then? My guess is probably. Goes back to the meme that if libraries were proposed today there's no way they would ever be allowed.
    EagnaIonat · 1789792763 · focus · HN ↗
    > I'm not sure I understand this argument.
    Your analogy is flawed because you are saying the information was free to begin with.
    That analogy works for IBM granite models because the information they trained on is free to use.
    The major LLMs did not do that.
    kiicia · 1789756525 · focus · HN ↗
    it's of wrong scale, you cannot claim derivative work when you literally ingressed sum of knowledge while destroying it in the process so your "competitors" cannot do the same
    ang_cire · 1789747157 · focus · HN ↗
    Objectively, IP exists and is acted upon, so IP is real, obviously, but IMO it is bad, and should not exist.
    People tend to forget that IP was not originally about digital distribution at all (copyright), it was about giving inventors exclusivity periods to profit without competition (patents).
    It was a misguided attempt to stop sometimes literal theft of designs from rival inventors, by tying the design to the person instead of whoever possessed the schematic.
    It's also a regime that in its modern incarnation protects businesses, not artists.
    GuB-42 · 1789749291 · focus · HN ↗
    There are nuances.
    AI scraping for the goal of making a commercial LLM service is different from, say, a commercial file sharing platform.
    The first difference is that LLM training is highly transformative. Let's say your LLM ingests the Harry Potter novels during its training. What you get at the other end is not the Harry Potter novels, it is a LLM that can talk to you about Harry Potter, it is not the same thing, and going from one to the other requires a significant amount of work, very expensive work in this case.
    Not only that but there is no direct competition. People won't stop buying the Harry Potter novels because a LLM trained on it exists. If you want to read the books, you buy the books, you don't ask a LLM about it. A file sharing service on the other hand competes directly against the official channels, if you want to read the books, you can download it from this service instead of buying it on the official channels.
    So, about how free you should be to get these weights from the AI companies. If you just share a 1:1 copy of the weights, that's the "file sharing" situation, not transformative, you took their work, didn't do any of your own. Usually considered unacceptable by IP laws.
    Distillation is a more interesting case, you are using a LLM to train your own, it is transformative work, but you may also be competing directly against the LLM you are distilling. So, in a sense it is worse than scraping, but still, despite how much the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic are complaining, it seems to be legal.
    So it is somewhat consistent: 1:1 copy and distribution is not allowed, be it source material or LLM weights, and training is, be it source material or another LLM (as in distillation).
    ndiddy · 1789749329 · focus · HN ↗
    > The status quo of "your knowledge has no protection, but our knowledge is sacred" is the worst of all possible worlds.
    This is how IP has always worked. It has never protected the little guy. Draw a picture and then people start putting it on t-shirts and posters without paying you? Great, you can't do anything about it unless you have enough time and money to hire a lawyer to go after them. Self publish a book and then people start uploading PDFs of it? Better hope your real passion is filing takedown requests instead of writing.
    LordDragonfang · 1789750228 · focus · HN ↗
    And by constructing that false dichotomy, you're failing to see the actual truth, which is that Intellectual Property is just a legal construct to turn ideas into Capital, with the goal of incentivizing its creation.
    Nothing more and nothing less, and all of the normal debates about what should remain Capital and what should be The Commons apply.
    amelius · 1789750534 · focus · HN ↗
    It is basically the P=IP question.
    matheusmoreira · 1789751770 · focus · HN ↗
    IP could be real and LLM training could be considered fair use. IP protects published information, so even abolishing all IP would not help us since the LLM weights are secret.
    Nothing short of a global revolution can fix this. Proprietary LLMs should be illegal. Either we achieve post scarcity within this generation or it's literally over.
    charcircuit · 1789758017 · focus · HN ↗
    Intellectual property rights only protect against certain things. IP can be real while there exists fair use like training AI models.

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