| ▲ | cowanon77 2 hours ago |
| 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 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > 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. |
| |
| ▲ | zdragnar 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > 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. | | |
| ▲ | tzs 15 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | You are assuming that social constructs are not real. | | | |
| ▲ | nostrademons an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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 34 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
| |
| ▲ | nz an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | pixl97 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | 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 8 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The parent comment highlights the double standards, they are not campaigning for pushing people to suicide. This is a strawman. Yeah, this double standards thing is profoundly unjust. |
| |
| ▲ | zdragnar 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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 13 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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). |
|
| |
| ▲ | qarl 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > 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 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | 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 an hour ago | parent [-] | | > 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 42 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | pixl97 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | >ergo no social construct predates wealth. How wealthy is your dog? | |
| ▲ | qarl 35 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Right. I'm thinking of social behaviors that predate humans. |
|
|
| |
| ▲ | paimapi 20 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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 18 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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 16 minutes ago | parent [-] | | that's cool - I downvoted you because I was annoyed and I am an independent entity. hope that helps :) | | |
| ▲ | qarl 8 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Of course! My only suggestion is - if you're using multiple accounts to do it - that would be naughty. |
|
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | palmotea 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > 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). | | |
| ▲ | montagg 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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 of 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 rights expire at some point, or have fair use that doesn’t harm the IP rights holder, something other forms of property don’t have. 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 of intellectual property: 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 of AI models 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. **Also not a fully settled question. Again, an important debate to have and the tradeoffs here matter. If the harms are small enough, the societal benefit could be worth it. Both notes have to be true for this to be worthy of “fair use”. | | |
| ▲ | ndiddy an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > 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. | |
| ▲ | palmotea 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > 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. | |
| ▲ | tenuousemphasis an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | intended a minute ago | parent | next [-] | | [delayed] | |
| ▲ | palmotea an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > 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. |
|
| |
| ▲ | dnautics 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > 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. | |
| ▲ | qarl 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, that's why I said property (not just IP) is a social construct. | | |
| |
| ▲ | newyankee 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Sovereignty is the ultimate form of property ownership in a funny way. | |
| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | AlexandrB 42 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. |
|
|
| ▲ | ang_cire 9 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
|
| ▲ | Aurornis 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > 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: 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. |
| |
| ▲ | EagnaIonat 15 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > 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 a few seconds ago | parent [-] | | > 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? |
|
|
|
| ▲ | verelo 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
|
| ▲ | ericmay 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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 24 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > 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 that 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] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49754448> |
|
|
| ▲ | nostrademons an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
|
| ▲ | newyankee 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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 |
|
| ▲ | lxgr 37 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
|
| ▲ | RyanHamilton an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Let me introduce you instead to the one golden rule. He who has the gold, makes the rules. |
| |
|
| ▲ | pton_xd 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
|
| ▲ | toobulkeh 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Both can be true. IP is real and they created new IP off of stolen IP. |
|
| ▲ | AlexandrB an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| 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 an hour ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
|
