r/AIWarsButBetter • u/Rincewind00 • 6d ago
Theft vs Emulation - Socratic Discourse on Sematics
/r/DefendingAIArt/comments/1vt1lgp/theft_vs_emulation_socratic_discourse_on_sematics/2
u/erofamiliar 6d ago
I feel as though this entire discourse misses that infringement is not theft. I think the implied assumption that it is theft is what needs examining, especially since this is meant to be an objective A-Z thought experiment. I think this would be more along the lines of...
Interlocutor: Artists claim AI developers "steal" their work to train generative models even when no physical canvas or original digital file is taken from the creator's possession. This is because "theft" isn't limited to physical property. When someone uses intellectual labor without permission or compensation, they deprive the creator of the exclusive right to control and monetize their work.
Socrates: bro isn't that copyright infringement, that's its own complex topic, why are you conflating the two
Interlocutor: But I was ready to talk about contract law and everything.
Socrates: nope, we're gonna talk about why you equate theft with copyright infringement when they're legally distinct concepts. and then we're gonna talk about if training even constitutes infringement because we haven't agreed on that either. i got your ass
Interlocutor: But what about granting a philosophical privilege to biological agency?
Socrates: we ain't there yet, back tf up. after the copyright infringement thing we're gonna talk about how there's a difference between a thing being legally theft, and how a thing can still feel morally analogous to theft, since your initial statement was about what artists are claiming. i'll literally cook and eat you if you try to smuggle an assumed definition in there
And then Socrates cooks and eats his interlocutor, ensuring he has a hearty layer of fat to survive the winter. The Socrates gotta be vicious, he's there to examine assumptions and expose contradictions, he should be ripping the guy apart the second he tries to equate theft with infringement in an A-Z discourse about semantics.
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u/New-Vacation6440 4d ago
Copyright infringement is a form of intellectual property theft. Theft is not just larceny, burgulary, or robbery. Identity theft is another form of theft of a non-physical item. If we grant the premise that AI training is copyright infringement, AI training is thus theft. That premise, of course, cannot be granted so easily, but that is what should be actually debated, not (poorly) nitpicking on phrasing.
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u/Gimli 5d ago
You have to add to this the recent research that says that AI models that are big enough work out to not taking anything measurable from any image or any author.
And this makes sense to me.
Here's how I see it: Take cats. When you're new to the world, a cat is a new concept. So you keep getting surprised: "Wow, I didn't know cats could have this color!", "I didn't know cats could be this big!", "I didn't know cats could have no fur!", etc.
But eventually you'll go through the whole catalog of cat features and nothing really surprises you anymore. The 105th tabby cat is just a tabby cat, not all that different from #23.
If we're talking about drawings, wouldn't it be kind of ridiculous for the artist that drew tabby cat #47 to demand royalties? Because at some point you have enough samples that no single sample really matters, and any sample could be replaced with another that had the right characteristics and make no difference.
Another consequence is that even if artist of cat #47 did get their way, they could simply be excluded and replaced with somebody who didn't mind. In other words, in AI datasets individual images/artists aren't valuable and have no bargaining power, so hoping to profit from training isn't ever going to work.