redcobra762

It's not likely you've actually gotten the opinion of the "majority of tech folks", just the most outspoken ones, and only in specific bubbles you belong to.

We're operating under a model where the owner of the copyright has already sold their work. And while it's within their rights to stipulate conditions of the sale, they did not do that, and fair use of the work as governed under the laws the book was sold under encompasses its conversion into an LLM model.

If the author didn't want their work to be included in an LLM, they should not have sold it, just like if an author didn't want their work to inspire someone else's work, they should not have sold it.

Making a digital copy of a physical book is fair use under every legal structure I am aware of.

When you do it for a transformative purpose (turning it into an LLM model) it's certainly fair use.

But more importantly, it's ethical to do so, as the agreement you've made with the person you've purchased the book from included permission to do exactly that.

If you reproduce the material from a work you've purchased then of course you're in violation of copyright, but that's not what an LLM does (and when it does I already conceded it's in violation and should be stopped). An LLM that doesn't "sell goods with movie characters" is not in violation.

And the harm you describe is not a recognized harm. You don't own information, you own creative works in their entirety. If your work is simply a reference, then the fact being referenced isn't something you own, thus you are not harmed if that fact is shared elsewhere.

It is an abuse of the courts to attempt to prevent people who have purchased your works from using those works to train an LLM. It's morally wrong.

It's abusive and wrong to try and prevent AI companies from using your works at all.

The whole point of copyright is to ensure you're paid for your work. AI companies shouldn't pirate, but if they pay for your work, they should be able to use it however they please, including training an LLM on it.

If that LLM reproduces your work, then the AI company is violating copyright, but if the LLM doesn't reproduce your work, then you have not been harmed. Trying to claim harm when you haven't been due to some philosophical difference in opinion with the AI company is an abuse of the courts.

You're presupposing that this blogvertisement ought not be considered profoundly stupid.

What would my virtue garnish be if I wanted to think of this blatant attempt at shilling a book as a waste of digital space?

Sorry to be clear: I want to reinforce my belief that this ad you've posted is profoundly stupid.

What would my virtue garnish be for that?

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PayPal terrifies me; I would move off of their platform ASAP, or at least be ready to when they inevitably pull the "lock your account pending an investigation" move that kills so many new companies.

If you've been to one of these testing centers, you'd realize it's not easy to cheat, and the companies that run them take cheating seriously. The audacity of someone to cheat in that environment would be exceptionally high, and just from security theater alone I suspect almost no actual cheating takes place.

What is the human counterpart to an LLM? The article doesn't describe.

And "LLM apologists" is so polemical it's hard to take seriously. We get it, you don't like GenAI. That's fine, but can we talk about it without getting normative?

Or maybe he could care less, but doesn't even bother to care less because caring less would exert effort and he doesn't care enough to exert any effort.

The "criticism" of a p-value was strange to me, because it's never taught to be an "end all" answer to a question, rather it's taught as a way of determining statistical significance. Every stats or economic analytics course I took in college explained that hypothesis rejection involved critical thinking in addition to p-value analysis.