“After all: the purpose of copyright law is, to a very large extent, to preserve the livelihood of intellectual property creators, who would otherwise have limited ability to profit from their own works due to the ease of reproducing it once made. Modern AI systems are threatening this, whether or not they technically violate copyright.”
While it’s probably true that copyright/patent/IP law generally in effect helps “preserve the livelihood of intellectual property creators,” it’s a mistake IMO to see this as more than merely instrumental in preserving incentives for more art/inventions/technology which, but for a temporary monopoly (IP protections), would be financially unprofitable to create. Additionally, this view ignores art consumers, who out-number artists by several orders of magnitude. It seems unfair to orient so much of the discussion of AI art’s effects on the smaller group of people who currently create art.
IMO the key questions (both morally & legally) should fall into two camps:
Value Creation
I.e, whether, in a regime where to training algos on copyrighted works is permissible, there are
higher volumes of art to consume/appreciate
“better”/more aesthetically pleasing art
than in a regime where people can only train AI art/inventions on public domain & proprietary art/inventions.
No. 2 seems pretty clearly true, but I’m struggling to articulate why. No 1. Seems somewhat conditional on No 2, since I suspect there would be less art created if the AI art tools create “worse” art.
Enforcement Costs
I.e whether—conditional on copyright “infringing algos yielding net societal equal or lower terminal art//innovation volume and/or equal/diminished quality—the detection and enforcement costs of techniques to stop the creation of art from algorithms trained on copyrighted works are sufficiently low.
I doubt there’s a lot of societal value in creating an expensive cottage industry of copyright inspectors whose end output degrades the aggregate quality of humanity’s art-stock. I don’t have priors for the costs of such an enforcement mechanism, but IP lawyers seem expensive & regulatory orgs can get bloated pretty easily.
While it’s probably true that copyright/patent/IP law generally in effect helps “preserve the livelihood of intellectual property creators,” it’s a mistake IMO to see this as more than merely instrumental in preserving incentives for more art/inventions/technology which, but for a temporary monopoly (IP protections), would be financially unprofitable to create. Additionally, this view ignores art consumers, who out-number artists by several orders of magnitude. It seems unfair to orient so much of the discussion of AI art’s effects on the smaller group of people who currently create art.
I think you’ve got this precisely backwards. The concept of laws as such only makes sense in a deontological framework where the fruits of intellectual labor belong to the individual who produced them. Otherwise instead of complicated rules about temporary monopolies and intellectual property, the government would just allow any use which could be proven in court to be net positive in utility, regardless of the wishes of the original creator.
Whether or not you think this is a bad idea, I think it clear that society at large doesn’t agree with the framework you’ve proposed for evaluating IP and copyright.
Actually you got it backwards. The so called intellectual property doesn’t have typical attributes of property:
– exclusivity: if I take it from you, you don’t have it anymore
– enforceability: it’s not trivial to even find out my “art was stolen”
– independence: I can violate your IP by accident even if I never seen any of your works (typical for patents), this can’t happen with proper property
– clear definition: you usually don’t need courts to decide whether I actually took your car or not.
Besides that, IP is in direct conflict with proper property rights (right to use your own property freely).
However, having IP is a practical way of overcoming the black passenger problem. But that’s the reason it was created in the first place. That’s the reason it actually expires after some time and works become a part of “public domain”. (Can you imagine a car becoming a part of public domain? See the difference?)
Now, even the US constitution is aware of this and explicitly states “progress of science and arts” as the only lawful reason to enact copyright.
[The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
“After all: the purpose of copyright law is, to a very large extent, to preserve the livelihood of intellectual property creators, who would otherwise have limited ability to profit from their own works due to the ease of reproducing it once made. Modern AI systems are threatening this, whether or not they technically violate copyright.”
Yes, this is 100% backwards. The purpose of copyright law is to incetivise the production of art so that consumers of art can benefit from it. It incidentally protects artists livelihoods, but that is absolutely not it’s main purpose.
We only want to protect the livelihood of artists because humans enjoy consuming art- the consumption is the ultimate point. We don’t have laws protecting the livelihood of people who throw porridge at brick walls because we don’t value that activity. We also don’t have laws protecting the livelihood of people who read novels, because while lots of people enjoy doing that, other people don’t value the activity.
If we can get art produced without humans invovled, that is 100% a win for society. In the short term it puts a few people out of work, which is unfortunate, but short-lived. The fact that AI art is vastly more efficiently-produced than human art is a good thing, that we should be embracing.
I think you’re mainly correct, but it’s a bit of both. We have laws and subsidies protecting the livelihoods of farmers. The way democracy works, the winning coalition will cater to its constituents by passing laws which benefit those folks. So plausibly, the winning coalitions which passed/protected intellectual property laws included some support by artists, too. (This is especially plausible if you think about how Disney influences copyright law.)
Given the current reaction to AI art, I think it’s plausible (but very uncertain) that enough people would side with artists here to democratically protect artists now/soon. People enjoy consuming art, but doing so also creates some degree of emotional connection to the artists themselves (a parasocial relationship).
While it’s probably true that copyright/patent/IP law generally in effect helps “preserve the livelihood of intellectual property creators,” it’s a mistake IMO to see this as more than merely instrumental in preserving incentives for more art/inventions/technology which, but for a temporary monopoly (IP protections), would be financially unprofitable to create.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here! My implication was that we should view the law as instrumental rather than terminally valuing the law as it currently stands. I don’t know much about the law, but I also have the impression that judges will think about it this way when considering how to respond to this new situation.
Additionally, this view ignores art consumers, who out-number artists by several orders of magnitude. It seems unfair to orient so much of the discussion of AI art’s effects on the smaller group of people who currently create art.
True! In the past, protecting the profitability of artists this way was also (for the most part) to the benefit of consumers, since profitability of art determined how much was created and mass-distributed. Especially before the internet.
No. 2 seems pretty clearly true, but I’m struggling to articulate why. No 1. Seems somewhat conditional on No 2, since I suspect there would be less art created if the AI art tools create “worse” art.
AI art generally seems like a lot of #1 and only a little #2, right now. Obviously the quality will keep getting better.
If training on copyrighted work was outlawed tomorrow, then I think we would see less AI art in the very short term (so negative impact to #1 temporarily), and in the medium term, less human artists out of a job (so, somewhat temporary positive impact to #2).
In the longer term, I think it’s not going to matter very much, since the technology will find ways to improve one way or another.
Enforcement Costs
I personally imagine enforcement costs will be low, because training these systems requires large amounts of money and is accomplished by a relatively small number of orgs which will mostly be self-policing once the legal situation is clear (because the risk of investing that much money, and then having a court tell you to throw the result away, is going to be mostly unacceptable).
Additionally, this view ignores art consumers, who out-number artists by several orders of magnitude. It seems unfair to orient so much of the discussion of AI art’s effects on the smaller group of people who currently create art.
What is the greater framework behind this argument? “Creating art” is one of the most general potentials a human being can realize. With your argument we could justify chopping off every human potential because “there’s a greater amount of people who don’t care about realizing it”.
I think deleting a key human potential (and a shared cultural context) affects the entire society.
While it’s probably true that copyright/patent/IP law generally in effect helps “preserve the livelihood of intellectual property creators,” it’s a mistake IMO to see this as more than merely instrumental in preserving incentives for more art/inventions/technology which, but for a temporary monopoly (IP protections), would be financially unprofitable to create. Additionally, this view ignores art consumers, who out-number artists by several orders of magnitude. It seems unfair to orient so much of the discussion of AI art’s effects on the smaller group of people who currently create art.
IMO the key questions (both morally & legally) should fall into two camps:
Value Creation
I.e, whether, in a regime where to training algos on copyrighted works is permissible, there are
higher volumes of art to consume/appreciate
“better”/more aesthetically pleasing art
than in a regime where people can only train AI art/inventions on public domain & proprietary art/inventions.
No. 2 seems pretty clearly true, but I’m struggling to articulate why. No 1. Seems somewhat conditional on No 2, since I suspect there would be less art created if the AI art tools create “worse” art.
Enforcement Costs
I.e whether—conditional on copyright “infringing algos yielding net societal equal or lower terminal art//innovation volume and/or equal/diminished quality—the detection and enforcement costs of techniques to stop the creation of art from algorithms trained on copyrighted works are sufficiently low.
I doubt there’s a lot of societal value in creating an expensive cottage industry of copyright inspectors whose end output degrades the aggregate quality of humanity’s art-stock. I don’t have priors for the costs of such an enforcement mechanism, but IP lawyers seem expensive & regulatory orgs can get bloated pretty easily.
I think you’ve got this precisely backwards. The concept of laws as such only makes sense in a deontological framework where the fruits of intellectual labor belong to the individual who produced them. Otherwise instead of complicated rules about temporary monopolies and intellectual property, the government would just allow any use which could be proven in court to be net positive in utility, regardless of the wishes of the original creator.
Whether or not you think this is a bad idea, I think it clear that society at large doesn’t agree with the framework you’ve proposed for evaluating IP and copyright.
Actually you got it backwards. The so called intellectual property doesn’t have typical attributes of property:
– exclusivity: if I take it from you, you don’t have it anymore
– enforceability: it’s not trivial to even find out my “art was stolen”
– independence: I can violate your IP by accident even if I never seen any of your works (typical for patents), this can’t happen with proper property
– clear definition: you usually don’t need courts to decide whether I actually took your car or not.
Besides that, IP is in direct conflict with proper property rights (right to use your own property freely).
However, having IP is a practical way of overcoming the black passenger problem. But that’s the reason it was created in the first place. That’s the reason it actually expires after some time and works become a part of “public domain”. (Can you imagine a car becoming a part of public domain? See the difference?)
Now, even the US constitution is aware of this and explicitly states “progress of science and arts” as the only lawful reason to enact copyright.
Yes, this is 100% backwards. The purpose of copyright law is to incetivise the production of art so that consumers of art can benefit from it. It incidentally protects artists livelihoods, but that is absolutely not it’s main purpose.
We only want to protect the livelihood of artists because humans enjoy consuming art- the consumption is the ultimate point. We don’t have laws protecting the livelihood of people who throw porridge at brick walls because we don’t value that activity. We also don’t have laws protecting the livelihood of people who read novels, because while lots of people enjoy doing that, other people don’t value the activity.
If we can get art produced without humans invovled, that is 100% a win for society. In the short term it puts a few people out of work, which is unfortunate, but short-lived. The fact that AI art is vastly more efficiently-produced than human art is a good thing, that we should be embracing.
I think you’re mainly correct, but it’s a bit of both. We have laws and subsidies protecting the livelihoods of farmers. The way democracy works, the winning coalition will cater to its constituents by passing laws which benefit those folks. So plausibly, the winning coalitions which passed/protected intellectual property laws included some support by artists, too. (This is especially plausible if you think about how Disney influences copyright law.)
Given the current reaction to AI art, I think it’s plausible (but very uncertain) that enough people would side with artists here to democratically protect artists now/soon. People enjoy consuming art, but doing so also creates some degree of emotional connection to the artists themselves (a parasocial relationship).
I’m not sure what you’re saying here! My implication was that we should view the law as instrumental rather than terminally valuing the law as it currently stands. I don’t know much about the law, but I also have the impression that judges will think about it this way when considering how to respond to this new situation.
True! In the past, protecting the profitability of artists this way was also (for the most part) to the benefit of consumers, since profitability of art determined how much was created and mass-distributed. Especially before the internet.
AI art generally seems like a lot of #1 and only a little #2, right now. Obviously the quality will keep getting better.
If training on copyrighted work was outlawed tomorrow, then I think we would see less AI art in the very short term (so negative impact to #1 temporarily), and in the medium term, less human artists out of a job (so, somewhat temporary positive impact to #2).
In the longer term, I think it’s not going to matter very much, since the technology will find ways to improve one way or another.
I personally imagine enforcement costs will be low, because training these systems requires large amounts of money and is accomplished by a relatively small number of orgs which will mostly be self-policing once the legal situation is clear (because the risk of investing that much money, and then having a court tell you to throw the result away, is going to be mostly unacceptable).
But I could easily be incorrect.
What is the greater framework behind this argument? “Creating art” is one of the most general potentials a human being can realize. With your argument we could justify chopping off every human potential because “there’s a greater amount of people who don’t care about realizing it”.
I think deleting a key human potential (and a shared cultural context) affects the entire society.