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Maybe in a present:

- Dominated by a intractable global manufacturer/technologist (China) that doesn't care about copyright

- Proliferated by a communication network that doesn't care about copyright (Internet)

and a future where:

- We have thinking machines on par with human creativity that get better based on more information (regardless of who owns the rights to the original synapses firing)

That maybe, just maybe, the whole "who should pay to use copyrighted work?" question is irrelevant, antiquated, impossible, redundant...

And for once we instead realize in the face of a new world, an old rule no longer applies.

(Similar to a decade ago when we debated if a personal file was uploaded to a cloud provider should a warrant apply)



Even if you believe that every one of these things is correct (which is a big _even_) -- It's a really bad idea to let private actors break the law, then decide not to punish them if it turns out to be useful enough.

It's bad for competitors who didn't break the law, bad for future companies who have to gamble on if they're getting a pass at breaking the next big thing's law, and bad for parties who suffered losses they didn't expect because they were working within the law.

If you want to throw out the copyright system I'm right there with you, but change the laws, don't just reward lawbreaking and cronyism.


Agreed!

Though if you think about it laws typically change after we agree (at the grassroots level) they are irrelevant, not before.


> - We have thinking machines on par with human creativity that get better based on more information (regardless of who owns the rights to the original synapses firing)

For that you need actual AGI and it's nowhere in sight other than in the dreams of a few doom prophets.

Until that is reached, by definition current "AI" cannot surpass its training data.


I think you missed the point.

Technology has made enforcing copyright impossible, and any attempt to enforce it just hinders technological advancement, while still not solving the global enforceability of copyright.

Lets stop wasting our time on this concept, the laws around it and the whole debate. Copyright is dead.

I'm arguing lets move on.


> Technology has made enforcing copyright impossible

Has it? I think not. Governments could require AI training companies on Western markets to respect robots.txt (with strict fines for violators), and nations who do not respect this should be cut off of the Internet anyway.


Let me point to two things

1. China (they don't care about your copyright)

2. No single entity controls internet access. (thank god)


> 1. China (they don't care about your copyright)

They don't but we can (and should have) sanctioned them to oblivion until they care.

> 2. No single entity controls internet access. (thank god)

Force the large telecom providers in Western nations and the banks to cut ties.

We have the possibilites, all we need is politicians with guts to actually pull it off.


A future, where we have limitless clean energy thanks to nuclear fusion, self driving cars that exceed humans in every safety metric, EVs with inexpensive batteries that go 500 miles on a single 5 minute charge, cheap and secure financial transactions thanks to crypto. etc.

is a future that they've been selling us for more than a decade, but somehow doesn't really want to come about.


> We have thinking machines on par with human creativity that get better based on more information (regardless of who owns the rights to the original synapses firing)

We don’t have that and we don’t know if it will happen. Meanwhile, people put in time to create work and they are being exploited by not being paid. I think openai should pay.


Sure, we can debate how creative or not LLM is right now, but that is not the real point that this all hinges on.

The real point is copyright is no longer enforceable, and some of our biggest societal forces incentivize us to not care about copyright.

This debate and these laws are effectively dead, some just don't know it yet.


If the models are so good that "who should pay to use copyrighted work?" is not a relevant question, doesn't that mean that all money that would previously go towards artists is now going towards OpenAI?

How does new art get created for the models to train on if OpenAI is the only artist getting paid?

I'm not saying I even agree with your proposed future, but if it were to happen would it not be a bad thing for everybody but OpenAI?




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