As I detailed in that Friendica post, GenAI is a scam, because its entire dataset is fraudulently obtained by mass plagiarism, and it runs like a Ponzi scheme in that it steals new data to augment the old data, like how Ponzi schemes steal new money to pay off their old marks.
GenAI is robbing Peter to pay Paul, but with data instead of money, and somehow people think this is OK, while Bernie Madoff got locked up until he died for orchestrating what was the largest Ponzi scheme in history at the time in '08; in 18 years we went from actively prosecuting fraudsters, to basically giving them a free pass to defraud as many people across as many industries as they want, as Sam Altman, who I view to be basically the modern-day Bernie Madoff, will probably never even see fines for his atrocities, let alone the inside of a prison cell.
We locked up Bernie Madoff until he died for running an actual Ponzi scheme in '08, and bankrupting a ton of people and organizations across all tax brackets in the process, but we’re letting Sam Altman get away clean with running the same type of fraud, but with data instead of money, people…
it’s not copying.
IT’S STEALING THE SKILLS OF THE ARTISTS, which is very much theft. when you take a concept artists entire portfolio and feed it to the LLM, and then it can spit out images mostly indistinguishable from the OG artist, that’s not just depriving them of a sale here or there, it’s saying “don’t pay that artist, pay us instead!”
this is not a complex concept either. I don’t give a fuck about individual lost sales, they aren’t stealing the car, they’re stealing the car factory.
All human culture exists through copying. I think you make an interesting point about “stealing” the means of production. This does seem what capitalists do. While I don’t think stealing is the right word for this because it does not deprive the artist of their property, I think your point is still sound
Philosophically and legally it is a difficult concept honestly. This is why we are having a conflict. This is very new and also very disruptive technology.
Similar arguments have been made throughout history. For instance, painters were very upset with photographers “stealing” their livelihood with their fancy machines.
you’re referring to apprenticeships and schooling - none of which is engineered to put the master craftspeople or teachers out of work.
it’s not stealing their output, it’s stealing the audience that might pay for that output, but crucially, not with the equivalent - it’s always a poor imitation.
comparing it to photography is specious; painters benefited from photography - enabling them to paint portraits without having the subject sitting there, for one example. and crucially, the camera didn’t cause water and (historical equivalent of electric lighting) whale oil prices to spike.
also why the FUCK are all these AI fanboys here? this is FUCK AI, fuck off if you don’t understand
No, I am referring to all human knowledge and expression AKA our collective culture. You do realize that the arts existed long before the concept of copyright?
You seem to confuse art and expression with commerce. Art through drawing, painting, photography, singing, dancing, etc exists outside of money. In fact, the vast majority of art (99%) is never sold.
The fact that I hate AI but also despise copyright and other forms of Intectual Property is confusing to you.
There are a lot of good arguments against AI. Supporting rent seeking capitalists isn’t one of them.