Thousands of authors demand payment from AI companies for use of copyrighted works::Thousands of published authors are requesting payment from tech companies for the use of their copyrighted works in training artificial intelligence tools, marking the latest intellectual property critique to target AI development.
This is tough. I believe there is a lot of unfair wealth concentration in our society, especially in the tech companies. On the other hand, I don’t want AI to be stifled by bad laws.
If we try to stop AI, it will only take it away from the public. The military will still secretly use it, companies might still secretly use it. Other countries will use it and their populations will benefit while we languish.
Our only hope for a happy ending is to let this technology be free and let it go into the hands of many companies and many individuals (there are already decent models you can run on your own computer).
So, in your “only hope for a happy ending” scenario, how do the artists get paid? Or will we no longer need them after AI runs everything ;)
To be honest, I don’t think AI is going to get good enough to replace human creativity. Sure, some of the things that AI can do is pretty nice, but these things are mostly already solved problems - sure, AI can make passable art, but so can humans - and they can go further than art, they can create logical connections between art pieces, and extrapolate art in new reasonably justified ways, instead of the direction-less, grasping in the dark methods that AI seems to do it in.
Sure, AI can make art a thousand times faster than a person, but if only one in thousand is tolerably good, then what’s the problem?
It only becomes a problem if it is “good enough” to replace working artists. Companies have shown time and time again that they would be willing to cut corners for cheaper production costs. Hollywood would happily sell us AI generated stuff if we were willing to buy it. So consumers would really need to care and push back hard against AI art for artists to remain employed. I don’t see it happening.
AI is still very much in its infancy, and seeing the sort of progress that has been made even over the past 12 months, I don’t see how anyone can imagine that it will remain a small and discrete slice of the pie, that it doesn’t have radical transformative power.
My vision - gen z artists will reflexively use AI to enhance their material as artist and AI become entangled to a point where they’re impossible to distinguish. AI art will increase in fidelity, until it exceeds the fidelity that we can create with our tools. It will become immediately responsive to an audience’s needs in a way that human art can’t. What do you want to see? AI will make it for exactly your tastes, or to maybe confront your tastes and expand your mind, if that’s what you’d like. It will virtualize the artistic consciousnesses of Picasso, Goya, Michelangelo, and create new artists with new sensibilities, along with thousands of years of their works, more than a person could hope to view in a lifetime. Pop culture will be cheaper than ever, and have an audience of one - that new x rated final season of Friends you had a passing thought about is waiting for you to watch when you get home from work. Do you want 100 seasons of it? No problem. The whole notion of authorship is radically reformed and dies, drowned in an unfathomable abyss of AI creations. Human creativity becomes like human chess. People still busy themselves with it for fun, knowing full well that it’s anachronistic and inferior in every way.
Donno, just a thought I have sometimes.
I don’t know. I only believe that things will be worse if individuals cannot control these AIs.
Maybe these AI have reached a peak (at least for now), and so they aren’t good enough to write a compelling novel. In that case, writers who produce good novels and get lucky will still get paid, because people will want to buy their work and read it.
Or maybe AI will quickly surpass all humans in writing ability, in which case, there’s not much we can do. If the AI produces books that are better, then people will want AI produced books. They might have to get those from other countries, or they might have to get them from a secret AI someone is running on a beefy computer in their basement. If AI surpasses humans then that’s not a happy day for writers, no way around it. Still, an AI that surpasses humans might help people in other ways, but only if we allow everyone to have and control their own AI.
As the industrial revolution threatened to swallow society Carl Marx wrote about how important it was that regular people be able to control “the means of production”. At least that part of his philosophy has always resonated with me, because I want to be empowered as an individual, I want the power to create and compete in our society. It’s the same now, AI threatens to swallow society and I want to be able to control my own AI for my own purposes.
If strong AI is coming, it’s coming. If AI is going to be the source of power in society then I want regular people to have access to that power. It’s not yet clear whether this is the case, but if strong AI is coming it’s going to be big, and writers complaining about pay isn’t going to stop it.
All that said, I believe we do a terrible job of caring for individuals in our society. We need more social safety nets, we need to change to provide people better and happier lives. So I’m not saying “forget the writers, let them stave”.
I agree with most of the things you are saying, but without some kind of policy to either give artist more power or money during the transition it sounds a lot like the “Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make” meme.
I see you are saying that you don’t want the artists to starve, but the only things I see you proposing would make them starve. Even if it is for the “greater good”.
Edit: It would help me feel more comfortable with your statements if you were to propose UBI or something like that so the artists have a solid ground to keep making good art and then let the AIs grow from that. Or just let the process happen. Let Artists sue companies, let laws get created that slow down the process of AI development. There is no need to make human sacrifice here. AI will get developed either way.
