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bonoboTP parent
I understand your sense of justice in cheering on David against Goliath. But the equation is not so clear. The common person is sometimes on this side, sometimes on that side. Copyright can also be weaponized by megacorps against normal people (copying Disney movie DVDs) and LLMs can also be in the hands of the decentralized public (llama ecosystem).

The house thing is a bit offtopic because to be considered for copyright, only its artistic, architectural expression matters. If you want to protect the ingenuity in the technical ways of how it's constructed, that's a patent law thing. It also muddies the water by bringing in aspects of the privacy of one's home by making us imagine paparazzi style photoshoots and sneaky X rays.

The thing is, houses can't be copied like bits and bytes. I would copy a car if I could. If you could copy a loaf of bread for free, it would be a moral imperative to do so, whatever the baker might think about it.

> fair compensation is based on the amount of work put in

This is the labor theory of value, but it has many known problems. For example that the amount of work put in can be disconnected from the amount of value it provides to someone. Pricing via supply/demand market forces have produced much better outcomes across the globe than any other type of allocation. Of course moderated by taxes and so on.

But overall the question is whether LLMs create value for the public. Does it foster prosperity of society? If yes, laws should be such that LLMs can digest more books rather than less. If LLMs are good, they should not be restricted to be trained on copyright-expired writings.

ethbr1
The "fairness" argument is weaker than the "sustainable creation" one.

If LLMs could create quality literature, or social media create in-depth reporting, then I'd have no problem with the tide of technological progress flowing.

Unfortunately, recent history has shown that it's trivial for the market to cannibalize the financial model of creators without replacing it.

And as a result, society gets {no more that thing} + {watered down, shitty version}.

Which isn't great.

So I'd love to hear an argument from the 'fuck copyright, let's go AI' crowd (not the position you seem to be espousing) on what year +10 of rampant AI ingestion of copyrighted works looks like...

bonoboTP OP
I guess the optimistic take would be that we will get novel, insightful synthesis of disparate fields of knowledge that no human so far was ever able to hold in their mind to contemplate their interrelations. And this will elevate the human spirit etc. The equivalent to the take that the Internet will bring peoples together and foster better understanding and love between people who so far were not in dialogue and this will bring peace and an understanding or how similar we all are etc etc. Not exactly how it played out in the end though. Or how social media and web 2.0 will bring enhanced democracy and transparency and clarity and that the common person will have a voice and so on.

So I'm not exactly naive, but we should then discuss this instead of the red herring of copyright.

ethbr1
I suppose another strongman would be that LLMs substantially decrease the cost of human creation (i.e. the HITL assistant use case) while producing an output of equivalent quality.

As a result of this, everything gets cheaper and more plentiful.

The counterargument I'd make to that would be the requirement that the human have creative skills, which might atrophy in the absence of business models supporting a career creating.

bonoboTP OP
Generally, having cheap mass produced things can be great compared to only expensive artisanal stuff that only the rich can afford. Think about furniture, clothes etc. or all the other stuff you have in the house, compared to 100-150 years ago. Today we can buy pretty good mass produced furniture for example. A few generations ago people either did it themselves in a wonky way or paid a lot of money for a hand made carpentry option. Just like with LLMs. LLMs probably do a better job in general writing than a random person off the street. But it's not as good as the top performers. But it's much cheaper. It's a tradeoff.
ethbr1
The difficulty is the biggest gains there are for singular goods which can't be copied at low cost.

Exquisitely designed piece of furniture = expensive copy

Well-written book = cheap copy, post-printing press

So we're not necessarily going to get "more access to better" (because we already had that), but just "cheaper".

Whether that hollows out entire markets or only cannibalizes the bottom of the market (low quality/cheap) remains to be seen.

I wouldn't want to be writing pulp/romance novels these days...

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