zlacker

>>ssgodd+(OP)
I hope this results in Fair Use being expanded to cover AI training. This is way more important to humanity's future than any single media outlet. If the NYT goes under, a dozen similar outlets can replace them overnight. If we lose AI to stupid IP battles in its infancy, we end up handicapping probably the single most important development in human history just to protect some ancient newspaper. Then another country is going to do it anyway, and still the NYT is going to get eaten.

>>solard+Aj
I know utilitarianism is a popular moral theory in hacker circles, but is it really appropriate to dispense with any other notion of justice?

I don’t mean to go off on too deep of a tangent, but if one person’s (or even many people’s) idea of what’s good for humanity is the only consideration for what’s just, it seems clear that the result would be complete chaos.

As it stands, it doesn’t seem to be an “either or” choice. Tech companies have a lot of money. It seems to me that an agreement that’s fundamentally sustainable and fits shared notions of fairness would probably involve some degree of payment. The alternative would be that these resources become inaccessible for LLM training, because they would need to put up a wall or they would go out of business.

>>ahepp+vI
I don't know that "absolute utilitarianism", if such a thing could even exist, would make a sound moral framework; that sounds too much like a "tyranny of the majority" situation. Tech companies shouldn't make the rules. And they shouldn't be allowed to just do whatever they want. However, this isn't that. This is just a debate over intellectual property and copyright law.

In this case it's the NYT vs OpenAI, last decade it was the RIAA vs Napster.

I'm not much of a libertarian (in fact, I'd prefer a better central government), but I also don't believe IP should have as much protection as it does. I think copyright law is in need of a complete rewrite, and yes, utilitarianism and public use would be part of the consideration. If it were up to me I'd scrap the idea of private intellectual property altogether and publicly fund creative works and release them into the public domain, similar to how we treat creative works of the federal government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_t...

Rather than capitalists competing to own ideas, grant-seekers would seek funding to pursue and further develop their ideas. No one would get rich off such a system, which is a side benefit in my eyes.