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I really fear for the internet and what it will become in even just another year, with the rise of AI writing and AI art being used in place of real people. And now OpenAI openly state they need to use copyrighted works for training material.

As reported by The Guardian, the New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright infringement and just recently OpenAI sent a submission to the UK House of Lords Communications and Digital Select Committee where OpenAI said pretty clearly:

Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression– including blog posts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents–it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials. Limiting training data to public domain books and drawings created more than a century ago might yield an interesting experiment, but would not provide AI systems that meet the needs of today’s citizens.

Worth noting OpenAI put up their own news post "OpenAI and journalism" on January 8th.


Why am I writing about this here? Well, the reasoning is pretty simple. AI writing is (on top of other things) increasing the race to the bottom of content for clicks. Search engines have quickly become a mess to find what you actually want, and it's only going to continue getting far worse thanks to all these SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) bait content farms, with more popping up all the time, and we've already seen some bigger websites trial AI writing. The internet is a mess.

As time goes on, and as more people use AI to pinch content and write entire articles, we're going to hand off profitable writing to a select few big names only who can weather the storm and handle it. A lot of smaller scale websites are just going to die off. Any time you search for something, it will be those big names sprinkled in between the vast AI website farms all with very similar robotic plain writing styles.

Many (most?) websites make content for search engines, not for people. The Verge recently did a rather fascinating piece on this showing how websites are designed around Google, and it really is something worth scrolling through and reading.

One thing you can count on: my perfectly imperfect writing full of terrible grammar continuing without the use of AI. At least it's natural right? I write as I speak, for better or worse. By humans, for humans — a tagline I plan to stick with until AI truly takes over and I have to go find a job flipping burgers or something. But then again, there will be robots for that too. I think I need to learn how to fish…

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial, Misc
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly.
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64 comments
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elmapul Jan 9
i can understand using it for research purposes, but as an commercial product?
if they dont care about copyright from thirdy parties they shouldnt care if an employee leak their training data and/or code.
doragasu Jan 9
I like AI technology, I think that well used it can generate great value. But we have to stop the rampaging copyright and license infringement AI companies are perpetrating. A product that needs to systematically break the law to work is not acceptable by any means.

No AI was used for the generation of this post
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Quoteand I have to go find a job flipping burgers or something.
Come on now, you're a techie! That means you probably have some qualifications or at least some background in some technical field such as development or systems management or other things like that.

So no worries! Besides, we don't need you meatbags flipping our burgers in the future, we have AI robots for that which can do a much better and more efficient job of it.
grigi Jan 9
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Agree with the sentiment here. If you can't do business without stealing, then you should be described as organised crime and get eradicated for the sake of progress.
Please don't say that you need a free pass to steal so that progress can happen, that's been proven multiple times in the past to actually mean "progress for the few, suppression for the many". Let's not have another dark ages again? OK?

On a lighter note, Liam, all those humanisms of yours only prove your authenticity
Pengling Jan 9
QuoteLimiting training data to public domain books and drawings created more than a century ago might yield an interesting experiment, but would not provide AI systems that meet the needs of today’s citizens.
Maybe they should've thought about that before they messed up the copyright system to cover things for a hundred-odd years at a time? Just a thought.

QuoteI think I need to learn how to fish…
Alas, it's not as easy as it is in Stardew Valley.
neffo Jan 9
The personal touch is why I read here, and follow you on the socials.

genAI waffle is milquetoast boring to read, it's usually wrong in some meaningful way and doesn't add any insights (how could it?). I don't want to read paraphrased press releases or transcriptions of marketing videos. I don't have time for that shit.
F.Ultra Jan 9
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I think that in general the main issue is the use of AI in creative markets (aka content creation) because that is the field where it have to steal from others in every thing it creates (since it isn't a real AI, it is just a mathematical model that predicts outcome based on the input). And while this might be where all the brouhaha in the public is at the moment it should really be outlawed as the copyright infringement as it truly is.

No this type of AI should be much better suited to parse through boring data (like say every single medical study every done) and work as expert systems (like a glorified google for doctors to try their patients symptoms against all known knowledge) and things like this.
Although I share your concerns about what the web might when AIs are (even more) all over the place, I see something interesting there as well : AI has the potential to render the whole idea of intellectual property obsolete. And if it's OK for AIs to disregard it, why would it be any different for humans ?

After all, AIs are just doing on a way much larger scale what humans have already been doing for millennia : any creative work is inspired (consciously or not) by many other works that preceded it. If the border between inspiration and plagiarism is so difficult to define, it may be because it does not make much sense to create one. If AIs can help the world understand that and promote other ways to generate money from creative work, it could be for the better.
damarrin Jan 9
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Quotenot provide AI systems that meet the needs of today’s citizens.

Thankfully not, if the "needs of today's citizens" is having no skills at all and telling AI to write anything, including a crime novel or a PhD thesis, or draw anything including a photorealistic compromising image of the girl next door who isn't interested in you and whose life you want to ruin and have it spat out in seconds.


Last edited by damarrin on 9 January 2024 at 3:32 pm UTC
damarrin Jan 9
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Well, AI may be bad right now, but I'll eat my hat if it doesn't become much less bad very quickly.
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