OpenAI just admitted it can’t identify AI-generated text. That’s bad for the internet and it could be really bad for AI models.::In January, OpenAI launched a system for identifying AI-generated text. This month, the company scrapped it.
OpenAI just admitted it can’t identify AI-generated text. That’s bad for the internet and it could be really bad for AI models.::In January, OpenAI launched a system for identifying AI-generated text. This month, the company scrapped it.
You’re making a lot of jumps here. Copyright need not be eliminated entirely — that won’t happen anytime soon. But fair use exists for a reason, and generative art is if anything a fair use machine more than a plagiarism one. Everything is a remix, and artists making art using AI tools deserve to be able to monetize that work. I, too, believe artists deserve to get paid. I’ve worked personally helping small artists and creators navigate those waters, writing license agreements and helping them argue fair use to create and monetize their work. Expanding copyright terms further than they are wont help those artists get paid. It will further centralize the major corporations and big tech. It’s a siren song, a distraction from the real issue: that AI represents a far bigger threat than JUST to artists and writers. There is major economic upheaval right around the corner. There will be massive job displacement. Rather than further enriching corporations for misplaced short term gain, we must move to consider how we can allow artists and creators and everyone else with a creative spark to continue to exist and create art without further building up these legacy structures — that are already fraying at the seams and not fulfilling their original purpose, having long since been co-opted by the disneys of the world. We need more fair use, not less. UBI of some form is that answer, as far as I can tell. We need to start providing people the freedom to work on what they want without the crushing pressures of imminent destitution if we hope to have artists making art. I say again: copyright will fundamentally not be the solution to the externalities of AI. We need more creative, more radical solutions. https://abovethelaw.com/legal-innovation-center/2023/07/21/stop-rushing-to-copyright-as-a-tool-to-solve-the-problems-of-ai/
I still have yet to argue in favor of more copyright, I don’t know why you’re still arguing against something we both agreed was bad, but this is the first time in a while I’ve heard UBI called radical in the face of capitalism, I don’t think it gets at the root of the problem of capitalism or of the smaller AI vs artist problem as I’ve explained previously. The relations of production and profit don’t budge an inch. I’ve also never said I oppose UBI though, in fact I said if it helps keep people fed and sheltered that’s great. I just see it as a stopgap ‘solution’ that will buy time and comfort until the market adapts on how to recuperate that money since it can expect every citizen to get that every month, I don’t trust a free market not to ruin that. Furthermore specifically in the face of AI versus artists, the consequences are already happening and the push at a political level for UBI is lower than when Andrew Yang was running, and since the political level is where UBI would have to come from, I don’t like the idea of not trying anything else until then.
Andrew Yang is a neoliberal hack, and I promise you UBI is about as radical as we could hope for that’s still attainable in the currently policy landscape. Anything more radical and we’re talking actual get-out-your-guillotine-revolution. Fair enough, though, I would suggest that the way you talk about addressing AI as it relates to artists dances around copyrightland more than directly and broadly focusing on labor — which imo is the best way to tackle AI externalities. What we should be doing is building bridges between artists and the rest of labor, finding ways out of the cyberpunk dystopia not by relying on intellectual property but by building stronger social programs that lift us all up.
Simple: Make UBI is inflation adjusted. Problem solved.