I believe it was already known that anything trained on The Pile contained references to copyrighted material from scihub. It seems unlikely that folks who chose to use these sources were completely unaware of the nature of the data. Presumably, given the urgency in the last 2-3 years to be a leader in this space, a number of shortcuts were taken.
You talk about morals, but did you consider that they are releasing the model as open source, and given that OpenAI and others do the same, Zuck is really the only current option to have a reasonably comparable open source model? Also, did you consider that it might be more moral to create an AI model than to uphold copyright law, which actually many on this site deem immoral?
When I read about this I immediately thought about Aaron Swartz. He was persecuted for downloading copyrighted stuff, while Meta and other Corps will get a slap on a wrist. Such a sad story. And it's his death's anniversary today... RIP
On true for all - you’d need to split it by era I think
During the early Llama 1 days The Pile dataset was in heavy use by many. Bit later people figured out that a subset of it - Books 3 - was especially problematic.
I’m guessing all the big houses threw that piece out in later models since it’s extra radioactive
It's not absurd hyperbole. If I took the text of, say the NYT Bestseller this week, stored the text along with various Projects Gutenberg books, then created a program to randomly deliver you a chapter from any such book. That would probably get me a lawsuit.
This is just that with lots of levels of indirection.
Given how things are going, maybe it will be ruled as "fair use" whereas something like controlled digital lending at the internet archive was ruled as "infringing" disgusting. So AI might become the only "legal" way to access a lot of knowledge for free you otherwise wouldn't have access to.
We're literally extracting, refining, and re-using the information, art, and thoughts of fellow humans to make billionaires money.
This isn't the 90s. Computing isn't about discovery, not in the big leagues. Its about grinding up authenticity and feeding it into a machine to convert it into shareholder value.
If they want the value, let them pay for it or release the models open source for all to benefit.
They have released all the models for free so far unlike other companies like OpenAI who are most likely doing the same but keeping it private and proprietary.
Does it mean that they should be removed entirely? Surely we can agree on the fact that I should not be allowed to make a copy of a book, put my name on it instead of the real author, and sell it? Or even claim that I wrote it and put it on my resume?
> Does it mean that they should be removed entirely?
Maybe. I think it means we're at a spot where I'm not reasonably convinced that existing copyright laws are actually better than the free-for-all you're describing.
I'm definitely with you that it'd be ideal if we had a way to handle direct plagiarism like described in your comment (Although if you dropped the "put my name on it" part, I don't really see much issue).
But we also have all the fun today of companies using copyright to silence critique, shut out competitors, take educational information offline, demonetize videos they don't like, and otherwise absolutely abuse the hammers copyright law has given them (often - with no reciprocal hammer to stop this type of abuse).
And that's not even getting into the discussion of whether or not 70+ year old characters and stories should be available for modern authors to reuse and reinterpret. (even more egregious when you consider the vast majority of those tales are direct reinterpretations of older stories themselves...).
Or we can discuss whether it should really be legal to sell electronics hardware that has digital locks inside it that not only am I (the legal owner) not given the key to, but for which it is literally illegal for me to even attempt to open.
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So basically - If I had to pick between "You'll own nothing and rent everything, and all public discourse is subject to DMCA strikes or other removal" vs "no copyright"... My vote is for "no copyright".
But the reality is I think we can strike a much better balance than those extremes, we just can't do it without upsetting large profit streams for existing, very wealthy and entrenched, entities... and usually that doesn't happen without tearing things down first.
Copyright is the friend to the 1% and the enemy of the everyone else.
(Of course, I'm using "the 1%" rhetorically, it's really more like 0.01%)
As a society, we all clearly benefit from fair use far more than we benefit from members of the copyright cartel buying another mansion or private jet.
