Dr. Holly WaltersDec 12, 2022

AI's aren't sentient. They can't "steal."

Programmers and institutions select the data with which to train the model. They take art and writing from artists and authors without credit or payment. The software then remixes and mimics what it is given.

Displacing agency by attributing intent to the AI is exactly how people and institutions erase human action in the creation of technology. It also leads to further perceptions of technology as acultural, unbiased, and, in essence, magical.

Show threadMatt BlazeDec 12, 2022

@Manigarm This is an interesting point, and certainly correct.

It's also exactly how humans learn to become artists and writers - by studying, mimicking, and eventually adding to the existing body of work. We don't generally consider that theft, unless the copying is exact or deceptive.

Yet AI feels somehow different, much more like plagiarism. Perhaps it's that the ONLY input an ML system has is others' art, with no real-world human experience of its own to contribute.

Show threadMatt BlazeDec 12, 2022
@Manigarm I think part of it is that we expect art and literature to have a creator, an actual person whose work expresses a human point of view, one that encompasses something beyond the literal work itself. By lacking an author who stands behind it, is AI-generated art somehow inherently fraudulent? Maybe.
Show threadPwnallthethingsDec 12, 2022

@mattblaze @Manigarm I think a substantial part of the reason also comes down to market effects.

What makes plagiarism grate for creators (artists, writers etc) is that their work is high-intensity, and they object to plagiarists in part because those plagiarists avoid the costs of developing the creative talent/expertise to produce cheaper alternatives and that impacts the creator's ability to get ROI on their work. AI does that to an *insane* scale, essentially annihilating the whole market.

Show threadMatthew GreenDec 13, 2022
@mattblaze @Pwnallthethings @Manigarm Playing devil’s advocate here: isn’t the whole point of technology to take things that are hard for humans to do, and build machines that make that work effortless?
Show threadPwnallthethingsDec 13, 2022
@matthew_d_green @mattblaze @Manigarm I guess I would say that the point is more to improve people's lives. Making them more efficient and removing repetitive tasks often aids that, but it will be a cold comfort to artists who enjoy doing art who used to get lots of commissions that get fewer once AI prices them out.
Show threadTindra

@Pwnallthethings @matthew_d_green @mattblaze @Manigarm

There’s also a danger to automating tasks away: what happens when no one knows how to do it manually anymore? And the automation fails?

If we look away from art to… all of the other stuff that people do that it would be awesome if I could just get a computer to do. Many tasks absolutely would be improved with automation. Just look at (real) autopilot! There are many tasks the autopilot can do better, more consistently, more accurately than a human.

But what happens when you find yourself in an edge case? Something the autopilot can’t do? Or it starts to do something that is definitely bad? You need a highly skilled pilot to, say, realize that your best choice is to make a water landing on the Hudson River, and then execute that landing.

I’m not saying don’t use automations - I would *hate* to go back to doing laundry by hand! But we need to ensure that we don’t use collective knowledge/skills.

Dec 13, 2022 at 12:37amWeb