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Comment by cush | Hacker News Reader

If copyright law doesn’t take a massive leap forward in the next year, AI is going throw a wrench in our entire economy. The creative humans that trained these models deserve attribution, compensation, and royalties.

The ongoing AI era is reminding me a lot of early Uber/AirBnB - these companies grew faster than local laws could keep up, and now we have millions of gig workers without insurance and housing crises in most major cities. We need to hit the breaks on this tech so it can be deployed safely.

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Copyright law isn't going to matter here. There are already models trained solely on owned or licensed content and there is more than enough funding to produce more. The big businesses dumping billions of dollars into AI have zero interest in producing counterfeit Calvin and Hobbes strips.

I don't know that I personally know how we get to the ideal outcome here, but I see a lot of ways in which a copyright crackdown will have unexpected ramifications (accidentally banning search indexes, etc.) and consolidate power in the emerging market even further into the hands of extremely well-funded incumbents.

> The big businesses … have zero interest in producing counterfeit Calvin and Hobbes strips

Agree. I’m not suggesting creative authors are attributed and receive royalties based on work generated in their style. I’m suggesting they get compensated for work generated from their training data - based on model weights.

People need to get paid. Again, this is Uber/AirBnB all over again except it applies to literally every industry.

Coincidentally, Business Insider wrote about this topic just a few hours ago. https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-jaron-lanier-ai-ad...

I don't think the question of rights conferred through training data is going to be resolved through copyright law. I think the availability of models trained exclusively on licensed data is going to bypass that controversy. People will get paid to contribute data but probably not a lot.

Sure, and that licensed work was created by people. Those people should get paid upon the creation of new derivative work. That’s exactly what copyright law is.

Copyright law does not currently mandate any particular payment schedule for licensing work. Are you suggesting that it should?

Okay… I feel you understand what I’m getting at but are super keen on nitpicking. I know copyright doesn’t mandate payment schedules. It’s a legal tool that prevents people from distributing derivative work without permission. Currently (most) AI models don’t attribute original creators (let alone pay them royalties), which means it’s impossible to pay content creators even if we wanted to.

It’s a widely known issue that’s a really hot topic right now.

https://hbr.org/2023/04/generative-ai-has-an-intellectual-pr...

I'm not nitpicking, I'm trying to understand what you mean by "copyright law [taking] a massive leap forward in the next year".

> there are already models trained

Any existing models will be irrelevant in 6 months. Regulations enacted today would provide a legal foundation for tomorrow’s models to abide to.

Do you have a sense of how much people tend to get paid for commercial art, stock photography, etc.? That's essentially the ceiling on what contributors to training datasets can expect going forward. Regulation isn't likely to be able to significantly influence that, at least not in the US.

I do. The royalty system for music, TV, and movies are all actually quite mature - artists receive a few pennies per play. It adds up quick and can easily make a living on royalties.

And why would that be the ceiling? AI only expands their existing markets and revenue streams

Royalties are almost 100% a private industry matter in the US. There is compulsory licensing with legally mandated royalties for certain types of musical performance, but that is used quite rarely. The vast majority of US music licensing goes through performance rights organizations like ASCAP and BMI.

I also wouldn't characterize musicians as being happy with the current state of royalties. Ask a moderately successful musician how much they make on Spotify plays sometime.

Right, as I said it’s a mature industry. I feel like you just added to my point.

Also I said in my comment it’s pennies per play. Ask a moderately successful writer how much they make on chatGPT. Oh wait it’s zero.

'hitting the brakes' isnt feasible. If it's done through legislation, it will be circumvented or cause more damage than good.

> it will be circumvented

How so? Circumvention would be illegal. Sure there might be a black market, but you couldn’t scale a real business off it.

The inevitable loopholes.

How is THC being 'legally' sold even in states where it is illegal? Government in the US has proven too inefficient to handle the speed of marketplace innovation. You can't outlaw ingenuity.

I don’t think there’s any value in comparing copyright with American drug laws. They’re not remotely similar and drug law in America is one of the most politically controversial arenas one can enter.

A much more fair comparison would be existing copyright law, which provides avenues for ownership without the ability to create new derivative works. It’s possible to expand these laws.

on the contrary, it's proof that popular support for something can overcome even what was a fairly brutal crackdown by large men with large guns and quasi-military strength. people like dalle and midjourney and chatgpt.

So what? Weed has had popular support for 60 years… You’re giving an example of a law that has very slowly changed across America and arguing that laws are very slow to change. It’s just irrelevant to this conversation. You’re talking about the supply/demand of pot while I’m talking about the economic consequences of copying human work without compensation. I agree ChatGPT is popular. So what?

Certain refrigerants and aerosols were very popular. Then we found they were blowing a hole in the ozone layer, so they were regulated. Popular things are sometimes regulated.

As hardware progresses it will become increasingly possible to train your own dragon in your own catacomb. I'm unsure what kind of edge it would give to do an unethical/illegal employee review, credit rating, investment portfolio etc etc but if it only seems like it would give an advantage people will do it.

Agree. You're talking about Piracy. Yes it will exist (just like today), but not at a scale that would make any economic difference (just like today).

> The creative humans that trained these models deserve attribution, compensation, and royalties.

I would much rather give them nothing. They can participate in the system where we work for a living. Do useful things. People think everything is valuable. The Romans, in the end thought only the circus was important. Turns out you cant wear circus, you cant eat it, the circus makes non of the things we need.

If you could chose what to spend the worlds attention on. Would you pick the circus?

People will continue making things regardless, for fun and contract work.

I know it is the norm but I don't want all 5000 possible variations of the letter E owned by someone.

Trademarks we can keep, those are actually useful.

> People think everything is valuable

By definition, a royalty is the sharing of already realized value. We don’t need to imagine what value may be realized, so the Roman Circus analogy isn’t necessary or accurate.

There is a difference between the [collective] perception of value and what is objectively valuable for our civilization.

We might imagine an island with 100 inhabitants where 3 people own 99% of the wealth and 99% of the produce. Here valuable is for the most part defined by what those 3 people value. If they really enjoy good choreography, 50 people could permanently work to put great dance shows together. It makes senses to cut down on fishing and farming. If there is food for 40% the system works.

China deleted 12,000 cryptocurrency influencers accounts from Weibo and Baidu. Both cryptocurrency and influences are valuable. As the formula creates it's own money everyone could be a cryptocurrency influencer for a living. I don't see why the sector couldn't grow to be bigger than the rest of the economy.

To me the danger starts when wealth and income are increasingly controlled by people who don't make useful contributions to our collective survival.

We can use information to educate people and to do countless productive things.

I'm not willing to sacrifice 1% of that process to rent seeking organizations and individuals or to peoples sensitivities. We are not talking about 1%, we are attempting to design the entire flow of information to cater to these people primarily.

> There is a difference between the [collective] perception of value and what is objectively valuable for our civilization.

No, not perceived value. I’m literally talking about sharing revenue. Dollars. Cold hard cash.

Eg Customer pays to have DALL-E generate an image, then fractions of a penny are shared with contributors of the DALL-E model based on the contributors’ weights that were used.

Again the rest of your analogies are unnecessary because we’re talking about two different things.

can you explain why you think obsoleting the majority of commercial artists will "throw a wrench in our entire economy"? since you're addressing copyright law i'm assuming that's all you're addressing. this sounds like a very small number of people. for the economy as a whole, bringing down the cost of art is probably a positive.

i understand the arguments about artistic value, but those are quite separate from yours.

> artists… a small number of people

The vast majority of artists are working professionals doing the art grunt work, so it’s many more than you’d think (Millions) - not just those working for film/media/galleries. That said, these models won’t only replace artists. They can be trained to do most anything - jobs in marketing, legal, journalism, healthcare, software, etc are all at risk

right, this is why i'm specifically questioning your assertion on copyright law. you weren't talking about ai displacing jobs generally, just copyright law - which doesn't protect jobs in marketing, legal, journalism, healthcare, and probably not software. i don't understand why you believe that "if copyright law doesn't take a massive leap forward in the next year" this sort of thing will happen.

I see what you’re saying. What kind of law or regulation would cover the rehashing of original content then? Isn’t that copyright law? It’s my understanding that published works in these fields would be covered by copyright law.

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