AI Panic?

[starshipcat]

I've been watching the increasing polarization of the art and writing world on the subject of generative AI (Large Language Models). In particular, I'm uneasy about the rapid disappearance of any sort of middle ground and the growing demand of the extremes for their position to be treated as the only legitimate one

Comments

[kalimac]

I'm not sure that I follow the argument that it's OK to copy from other people's work if you don't have the money to pay them a legitimate fee.

[curiouswombat]

I understood this to mean using a fully public domain or fully licensed AI system .

[starshipcat]

Exactly. There's one that's all public-domain, although I haven't been able to figure out how to get onto it. And I've mentioned at least one company (Getty, IIRC) that has an AI trained on their licensed images, and that will fully indemnify any user who is sued for using their product. So the market response I'd expected is happening - but instead of rejoicing and helping it move more in that direction, the critics are hostilely complaining that it's no real improvement, that the payments the artists and photographers will get are "mere pittances" - never mind that it's additional income those people wouldn't have otherwise, and if it's ongoing royalties rather than a single payment, it's plugging them into the power of residual income.

Or as a friend of mine commented about another platform's small stream of monthly payments, "That's one bill I don't have to stress-cry about every month."

[starshipcat]

I was talking about the people who were saying that even a bot using fully-licensed training data wasn't good enough. These critics don't understand that such an extreme stance actually hurts artists, because they get nothing at all for projects that get shelved, as compared to what they would get from ongoing royalty payments from the company running such a bot. (What people do for their own private amusement probably falls under fair use, much like the reams of fanfic that get written for the proverbial dresser drawer, at most shared among a few friends for the enjoyment of it).

[curiouswombat]

Thank you for this - it is a very clear explanation.

At the moment it seems as if the anti-AI brigade are Very Angry.

On a local page someone posted 'pictures of Teddy and I on holiday on your beautiful island', showing what appeared to be a child-sized teddy bear frolicking in the sea, sitting in a deck chair eating ice-cream, sitting in a carriage on the steam railway, and so on. There was a comment in all capitals THIS IS AI with a row of angry faces.

I commented to it -'You mean there wasn't a 4ft high teddy dancing in the sea at Port Erin? I am devastated...' To then be told I was clearly an ignorant old woman if I didn't understand how dangerous this was...

[starshipcat]

And a lot of the anger is fear-driven. When scared people become angry, they can end up destroying the very things they're trying to protect.

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[starshipcat]

Wow!