Comment by strogonoff

Comment by strogonoff 16 hours ago

> The point is that "human rights" are not part of the natural order, they only exist as laws.

I have seen this argument used before; when something suits an argument, it’s “nature”, when something doesn’t then it isn’t. I think it’s a fallacy.

Humans are part of natural order. Our laws and how they evolve are part of our nature, and by extension part of nature. I don’t believe in silencing such discussions as irrelevant because of an imaginary cutoff point where it stops being part of nature and suddenly becomes “artificial”.

> This means that "human rights" is basically irrelevant to this topic: they may have rights and need to be liberated, or they may be tools that don't, but the law is just words on paper, and officials who make you follow those words.

I’m not sure how it is irrelevant. If we can claim “LLMs are like human, and so their creators and commercial operators are not guilty of IP laundering that LLMs do”, then we have a moral imperative to stop using them because, well, they are like human, and no human should be put through what would be, to any human mind, abuse. If we do not believe they are human and free in this sense, then the excuse quoted above in this paragraph also stops applying.

ben_w 16 hours ago

By that tautology, so are rocks. Rocks don't get natural rights.

Also, you may note that "human rights" is a recent invention and not actually enforced worldwide even today.

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strogonoff 16 hours ago

> you may note that "human rights" is a recent invention and not actually enforced worldwide even today.
Consider that countries known for stronger interpretation of human rights and freedoms, including intellectual property rights, are also the countries at the forefront of innovation, including technical innovation that laid the foundation for LLMs in the first place. I think that is not a coincidence, and we should keep it in mind when there is a push to be dismissive of these concepts (which predominantly serves the interests of commercial LLM operators and their supply chain).
I’m sure you would not argue from a point where this recent interpretation of human rights is bad or incorrect, but if you would then perhaps there’s not much of a constructive discussion to be had. I would still oppose the use of the natural vs. unnatural distinction as the basis of that argument, though.

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- ben_w 15 hours ago
  
  > Consider that countries known for stronger interpretation of human rights and freedoms, including intellectual property rights, are also the countries at the forefront of innovation, including technical innovation that laid the foundation for LLMs in the first place. I think that is not a coincidence, and we should keep it in mind when there is a push to be dismissive of these concepts (which predominantly serves the interests of commercial LLM operators and their supply chain).
  Several fallacies there.
  First because China and the USA are opposite ends of the spectrum on many of the ways "freedom" is measured, and yet China is doing pretty well on the innovation front, including with AI. And that China is beating Europe, even though various Scandinavian nations rank higher on such freedoms than does the USA.
  Second, cum hoc ergo propter hoc: Correlation does not imply causation. For example in this case, a reason why one of the big IP groups in the USA (Hollywood) got big, was because being in California enabled them to avoid the IP rights of the Motion Picture Patents Company that dominated cinema in the East Coast. I would even suggest that it is the disregarding of IP rights that enables much of the web, not only how and why China is doing well, but also Google (which has had legal fights over the interaction between copyright and search results), social media, and cultural elements such as memes and reaction gifs.
  Third: the point of copyright is to encourage new works, because this makes money which can be taxed. All this becomes somewhat irrelevant when AI can also create new works.
  If you want to set a bar for creativity high enough that current AI can't reach it, I suspect quite a lot of human works also fail, e.g. that Pratchett's Strata is obviously Ringworld, and that you would exclude from copyright all parts of The Lion King that are based on Hamlet.
  > I would still oppose the use of the natural vs. unnatural distinction as the basis of that argument, though.
  I'm not sure what you're saying when you "oppose" this. Does that mean you accept that, in principle, there could be some AI which would deserve rights in the category currently (but in principle inaccurately) called "human rights"?
  
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  strogonoff 15 hours ago
  
  > China is doing pretty well on the innovation front, including with AI.
  From transistors to transformers, most of it builds on foundation that comes guess from where. The innovative layer you speak of is fairly thin.
  > Correlation does not imply causation.
  I give you that. However, without being able to re-run history, correlation is all we have.
  > I would even suggest that it is the disregarding of IP rights that enables much of the web
  I would suggest that much of the tech that powers the Web, including probably the most popular operating system on which most servers run, is enabled by copyleft, and copyleft cannot exist without the ability to defend it granted by IP rights, the very concept under fire.
  > the point of copyright is to encourage new works
  I agree on this.
  > All this becomes somewhat irrelevant when AI can also create new works
  I don’t agree with a phrase “AI can create new works” for reasons such as 1) “AI” is a meaningless term (let it be my revenge for consciousness) or 2) a tool without agency or will should not be X in a sentence “X can Y” (sure, we can maybe on occasion say “hammers can break things”, but if hammers having agency and will was a popular misconception then I would definitely prefer to stick to “hammers can be used to break things”). The “create new works” part is also questionable on a few levels, but it might exceed the scope of this argument.
  That aside, I believe lack of copyright enforcement discourages the creation of new works even in presence of these tools, through the mechanism known as “why would I put effort into new work if I don’t effectively own the result”.
  > Does that mean you accept that, in principle, there could be some AI which would deserve rights in the category currently (but in principle inaccurately) called "human rights"?
  I think if we believe an LLM or some other software is sufficiently close to a human that it deserves human-like rights or just strong abuse protections (cf. octopus in some countries)—without saying whether I believe it possible or not, it really is orthogonal—then we could excuse it reciting some part of Harry Potter in the right context (probably not as work for hire), but it would be moot because we would also be ethically compelled to not subject it to the training and use that enables such recitation in the first place.
  
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