Writers: Generative AI models were built on our stolen works, are deeply unethical, and risk devaluing our entire profession.

@owlex @the_other_jon

I'd say with local models you are on the right track. The issue with most genAI is that there is no true OpenSource. Even OpenWeight models are trained on closed training data and can only be trained by intransparent entities (Meta).

'Informed use' of models that you control and 'demanding regulation' of the companies pushing the models is what I'm for as well.

However, I would expect the AI bubble to burst in the next few years. The ratio of investment to potential revenue is just too large for it to be economically viable in a sustainable fashion. That's why OpenAI et al. are pushing so hard. They need to keep the investment capital to pour money in and keep the overvaluation going up.

After that we'll have a new AI winter (I remember the end of the first, and lived through the second, having done some AI work before the second) - which will mean all the real AI applications will suffer.

I actually was enthusiastic when the LLMs came out, because they solved the natural language processing problem we tried to work out in the 80s. I really hoped we'd get the Star Trek computer, but we got MaaS (Mansplaining as a Service).

We'd need LLMs combined with a reliable knowledge engine. Scaling the NN won't lead to any emergent AGI - only to a collapse of personal computing (see shortage in RAM, HDDs, ...), and the environment.

You may be the avantgarde, running a local LLM on your old cobbled together hardware Gibson-style.

I read the same books the tech-bros reference as their inspiration, but I read them as warnings.

@jamesthomson OTOH, we give away tons of our results for free some of which you're using daily.

@owlex @the_other_jon

Btw, the Luddites didn't really have a choice, either. As history shows, the machines were forced on them after all.

It wasn't the machines they were against, it was the abuse of them to increase/create a power imbalance that allowed the owners of the machines to create something similar to the slavery that was moving out.

Some parallels to how the means of computing are now seized and used against the same people who have built it in the first place.

@jamesthomson
Now a question that comes to mind, if AI generated content, be it graphics, music, plot lines or the code that binds this all together, can't be copyrighted, can we, theoretically speaking, copy modern games that use AI in development freely?

@firepoet Thank you, Stephen. While we still don’t have the same position. This post captures what I am looking out for in my employees and myself

@colincornaby
@jaredwhite @jamesthomson

A post suggesting precisely this:
https://zomglol.wtf/@jamie/116059523957674208

@jamesthomson I’m not sure what exactly surprises you. If you look at cultural norms of the trades this attitude appears to be downright inevitable.

Writers basically invented copyright to legally prevent others from using their works. Nowadays writers don’t edit others’ work or lift parts of others’ works. All this is relegated to fanfics which are deemed extremely unserious, a training exercise at best.

Visual artists are similarly cagey about ownership. Copying is somewhat allowed only in training. Even remote similarities in the final work would immediately be pointed out. They even have a concept of a forgery—an exact copy, which is an absolute no-no.

Meanwhile programmers from the earliest days felt very little attachment to the code they produced.

Bob: my dudes, look what I came up with over the weekend!
Dave: very cool! There was a bug, here’s a patch.

Programmers are much more collectivist about the code. They invented a license that legally binds others to give away their code.

As an example of difference of attitude let’s take a look at id software. They open sourced engine code for their games fairly quickly. While assets—which are mostly art: graphics, music—remain restricted to this day.

So I don’t see what’s so surprising about them not caring much about the plagiarism issue now given that they never really did.

Speak for yourself, I have the same message as artists and writers. AI gen code feels super gross, uncomfortable, and stolen. Not worshipping the ground LLMs walk is likely one of the reasons I was laid off a year ago. LLMs were directly the reason my non-coder friend didn't hire me to fix his Wix site. I feel like I'm forced to use them against my will or risk never getting a paycheck again.

@the_other_jon @owlex uh, I definitely disagree on your stance about tests: A test that checks if something is working is really useful when you need to refactor something and needs to be sure the changes haven't affected existing behaviour

@jamesthomson As a developer who hates AI, the one pushback I would make against this framing is that it was a mistake to grant computer code "literary copyright protection" in the first place. It's literally computer instructions, and just like a recipe instructions are not copyrightable, computer instructions should not be copyrightable. Patentable, sure, but not copyrightable.

@jamesthomson I just need to trick Claude into organizing everyone who uses it into a union.