Comment by jasonsb
7 hours ago
Ask yourself: who owns the IP you're defending? It's not struggling artists, it's corporations and billionaires.
Stricter IP laws won't slow down closed-source models with armies of lawyers. They'll just kill open-source alternatives.
Under copyright laws, if HN's T's & C's didn't override it, anything I write and have written on HN is my IP. And the AI data hoarders used it to train their stuff.
Let's meet in the middle: only allow AI data hoarders to train their stuff on your content if the model is open source. I can stand behind that.
Uh no.
a) The model and the data
b) Why are we meeting in the middle?
Calling a HN comment “intellectual property” is like calling a table saw in your garage “capital”. There are specific regulatory contexts where it might be somewhat accurate, but it’s so different from the normal case that none of our normal intuitions about it apply.
For example, copyright makes it illegal to take an entire book and republish it with minor tweaks. But for something short like an HN comment this doesn’t apply; copyright always permits you to copy someone’s ideas, even when that requires using many of the same words.
People seem to either intentionally or unintentionally (large from being taught by the intentional ones), to not know what training an AI involves.
I think most people think that AI training means copying vast troves of data onto ChatGPT hard drives for the model to actively reference.
How do you expect open source alternatives to exist when they cannot enforce how you use their IP? Open source licenses exist and are enforced under IP law. This is part of the reason why AI companies have been pushing hard for IP reform because they to decimate IP laws for thee but not for me.
I never advocated "stricter IP laws". I would however point out the contradiction between current IP laws being enforced against kids using BitTorrent while unenforced against billionaires and their AI ventures, despite them committing IP theft on a far grander scale.