Comment by 20k
12 hours ago
We're having to rediscover in real time the extremely hard way, why enabling mass theft is so incredibly damaging to society. This is literally why we need a functional copyright system
If theft becomes more profitable than genuine creation, then nobody will create anything. Then there's nothing to steal, at which point all progress collapses
What theft? LLM output has never been copyrightable.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. GP was referring to the use of copyrighted material to train LLMs.
Which is not "theft" according to current legal precedent, and also common sense.
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1. using copyrighted material to train LLMs is fair use, not theft
2. The topic we are dissussing concerns LLMs being trained on logs from previous LLM chats. If you're prompting a model and it spits out some unique mathematical insight, you do not have copyright on that.
Nobody owns math and it is ridiculous to suggest someone should.
> why enabling mass theft is so incredibly damaging to society. This is literally why we need a functional copyright system
What is interesting is that LLM's do not directly violate copyright. The settlements we have seen are for how the works were acquired (that was a copyright violation) not the use of the works.
The vectors of a book, or a paper, are not the paper. They are, for all intents, facts about the work itself, and more generally writing. You can not copyright a fact.
It also means that the weights, the things that (mostly) matter can not be copyrighted either.
This is literally why we need a functional copyright system
To block progress. Got it.
This is the literal opposite of progress: stealing from people genuinely creating, and stealing the money they should earn
Funny, the stuff that was stolen is still there. A strange kind of theft.
Copyright maximalism is a bad look on a site called "Hacker News." Perhaps other sites beckon.
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