There is one surefire indicator that, this is time around, AI is real: the Large Lawyer Model.
We've been here before, many times. I'd say the most recent version was the Google Books case (is showing "snippets" of books fair use?). Even before that, arguably Google itself, especially the Google cache. Remember, storing a copy of so many web pages was once denounced as repeated copyright violations. As your quote illustrates, The Internet itself was essentially fulminated against as a massive copyright violation. It's going to be quite a ride, and many lawyers will get very rich.
But I wouldn't lay any of this at the feet of Gebru et al. That's just culture war, of trying to connect one's opponents to all the ills of the world. They simply aren't significant at all at this level, of multibillion-dollar megacorporations. I'd gently suggest you've got a bit of pundit tunnel-vision about that faction. It reminds me a bit of religious conservative arguments I've come across which run roughly along the lines of: "Atheists have only themselves to blame for Trumpism. By arguing against God's universal morality and for moral relativism, the Atheists opened the door for fracturing society into separate realities of "fake news" and "alternative facts" and all of the evils of standpoint epistemology, rather the eternal verities of the One True God". Just like Trumpists don't care about Atheists, the copyright rent-seekers are worlds apart from "AI ethics". Sure, there might be a "gotcha" bit of attempted clever rhetoric from someone somewhere, but there's no deep intellectual connection.
I don’t know that you’re right about Gebru et al. I keep a Twitter list of these folks and I check it periodically, and I had actually come to the conclusion you have here — that they’re not important, nobody cares about them, they’re just repeating themselves and preaching to the choir, and the view counts on their YouTube videos are minuscule, etc.
BUT, that Stable Diffusion lawsuit complaint flipped it for me. I recognized a lot of their thinking in there (as well as some of my own). I think the anti-SD lawyers are probably intellectual indebted to them, because there’s plenty of overlap between how they talk about LLMs and how that class action complaint does.
You may be right and I may be overstating their influence — as I said, a few weeks ago I’d have agreed with you that they’re irrelevant, and I think I even tweeted something to that effect. But now I’m not so sure.
I'm not saying they'll disappear into obscurity and never be heard from again by anyone. But rather, these mega-corporate fights are orders of magnitude above their pay grade. This isn't a great analogy, but it's a bit like the difference between Antifa/MAGA street fights and the Ukraine-allies/Russia war. Yes, if someone hits someone else in the head with a bike-lock, that can injure or even kill them. But that's way different from when missiles and tanks are being fielded by professional militaries. And it would be absurd to argue like "The philosophical justification for violence against the established order found in Antifa's proclamations, has been echoed in Putin's justification for invasion against established borders" (i.e. even if Antifa and later Putin make some vaguely similar claim, the former didn't cause the latter).
That is:
"AI ethics" - LLM are not transformative, they parrot racism, sexism, etc.
Copyright - LLM are not transformative, they parrot artists' original work.
These are obvious arguments, the latter doesn't have a "debt" to the former.
I wouldn't be surprised if some "AI ethics" people turn up in various lobbying, or _amicus_ court briefs. But that's being pilot fish, not sharks.
> I'm not saying they'll disappear into obscurity and never be heard from again by anyone. But rather, these mega-corporate fights are orders of magnitude above their pay grade.
And yet the leftist culture warriors have already successfully bullied mega-corporations into adopting DIE and ESG policies and using their platforms to censor their enemies.
Your problem is that by thinking in terms of "pay grade" you're confusing money with power.
That's an expression - "above my pay grade" means not literally money, but "out of my league" or "beyond my remit". It's extensively discussed in the anti-corporate left that many culture-war issues are ways capitalists can have workers fighting each other, by focusing on identity rather than economics (one notable thing about this post is starts approaching the same analysis from a conservative perspective!). Here is just a recent example:
But copyright of this sort is a corporation vs corporation fight, which is entirely different structurally. Follow the money - the lawyers here have nothing to do with the left or wokeness or anything like that (again, not counting relative trivia of anyone hopping on the bandwagon).
> It's extensively discussed in the anti-corporate left that many culture-war issues are ways capitalists can have workers fighting each other, by focusing on identity rather than economics (one notable thing about this post is starts approaching the same analysis from a conservative perspective!).
Well, the anti-corporate left is ideologically obliged to blame all problems on corporations, especially problems caused by their own actions.
Well let's take a look at your article, it starts:
> Here’s what I ask of you. When you think politically, apply the inverse of Gandhi’s famous dictum: think of the most privileged person you have ever seen, and ask if your next act will be of any threat to him.
Let's look at the kind of worldview that would make someone express that kind of sentiment, I can think of 2:
1) deBoer is so driven by envy that he doesn't care if the world burns as long as long as his "privileged" enemies are brought down a peg. This is not a healthy or particularly sane attitude to take, and I recommend avoiding it.
2) deBoer believe the world to be essentially zero-sum, thus bringing down the "privileged" will automatically bring up everything else. A basic look at the technological progress over the past several centuries should suffice to disprove this notion.
There is one surefire indicator that, this is time around, AI is real: the Large Lawyer Model.
We've been here before, many times. I'd say the most recent version was the Google Books case (is showing "snippets" of books fair use?). Even before that, arguably Google itself, especially the Google cache. Remember, storing a copy of so many web pages was once denounced as repeated copyright violations. As your quote illustrates, The Internet itself was essentially fulminated against as a massive copyright violation. It's going to be quite a ride, and many lawyers will get very rich.
But I wouldn't lay any of this at the feet of Gebru et al. That's just culture war, of trying to connect one's opponents to all the ills of the world. They simply aren't significant at all at this level, of multibillion-dollar megacorporations. I'd gently suggest you've got a bit of pundit tunnel-vision about that faction. It reminds me a bit of religious conservative arguments I've come across which run roughly along the lines of: "Atheists have only themselves to blame for Trumpism. By arguing against God's universal morality and for moral relativism, the Atheists opened the door for fracturing society into separate realities of "fake news" and "alternative facts" and all of the evils of standpoint epistemology, rather the eternal verities of the One True God". Just like Trumpists don't care about Atheists, the copyright rent-seekers are worlds apart from "AI ethics". Sure, there might be a "gotcha" bit of attempted clever rhetoric from someone somewhere, but there's no deep intellectual connection.
I don’t know that you’re right about Gebru et al. I keep a Twitter list of these folks and I check it periodically, and I had actually come to the conclusion you have here — that they’re not important, nobody cares about them, they’re just repeating themselves and preaching to the choir, and the view counts on their YouTube videos are minuscule, etc.
BUT, that Stable Diffusion lawsuit complaint flipped it for me. I recognized a lot of their thinking in there (as well as some of my own). I think the anti-SD lawyers are probably intellectual indebted to them, because there’s plenty of overlap between how they talk about LLMs and how that class action complaint does.
You may be right and I may be overstating their influence — as I said, a few weeks ago I’d have agreed with you that they’re irrelevant, and I think I even tweeted something to that effect. But now I’m not so sure.
I'm not saying they'll disappear into obscurity and never be heard from again by anyone. But rather, these mega-corporate fights are orders of magnitude above their pay grade. This isn't a great analogy, but it's a bit like the difference between Antifa/MAGA street fights and the Ukraine-allies/Russia war. Yes, if someone hits someone else in the head with a bike-lock, that can injure or even kill them. But that's way different from when missiles and tanks are being fielded by professional militaries. And it would be absurd to argue like "The philosophical justification for violence against the established order found in Antifa's proclamations, has been echoed in Putin's justification for invasion against established borders" (i.e. even if Antifa and later Putin make some vaguely similar claim, the former didn't cause the latter).
That is:
"AI ethics" - LLM are not transformative, they parrot racism, sexism, etc.
Copyright - LLM are not transformative, they parrot artists' original work.
These are obvious arguments, the latter doesn't have a "debt" to the former.
I wouldn't be surprised if some "AI ethics" people turn up in various lobbying, or _amicus_ court briefs. But that's being pilot fish, not sharks.
> I'm not saying they'll disappear into obscurity and never be heard from again by anyone. But rather, these mega-corporate fights are orders of magnitude above their pay grade.
And yet the leftist culture warriors have already successfully bullied mega-corporations into adopting DIE and ESG policies and using their platforms to censor their enemies.
Your problem is that by thinking in terms of "pay grade" you're confusing money with power.
That's an expression - "above my pay grade" means not literally money, but "out of my league" or "beyond my remit". It's extensively discussed in the anti-corporate left that many culture-war issues are ways capitalists can have workers fighting each other, by focusing on identity rather than economics (one notable thing about this post is starts approaching the same analysis from a conservative perspective!). Here is just a recent example:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/remember-rich-uncle-pennybags
But copyright of this sort is a corporation vs corporation fight, which is entirely different structurally. Follow the money - the lawyers here have nothing to do with the left or wokeness or anything like that (again, not counting relative trivia of anyone hopping on the bandwagon).
> It's extensively discussed in the anti-corporate left that many culture-war issues are ways capitalists can have workers fighting each other, by focusing on identity rather than economics (one notable thing about this post is starts approaching the same analysis from a conservative perspective!).
Well, the anti-corporate left is ideologically obliged to blame all problems on corporations, especially problems caused by their own actions.
Well let's take a look at your article, it starts:
> Here’s what I ask of you. When you think politically, apply the inverse of Gandhi’s famous dictum: think of the most privileged person you have ever seen, and ask if your next act will be of any threat to him.
Let's look at the kind of worldview that would make someone express that kind of sentiment, I can think of 2:
1) deBoer is so driven by envy that he doesn't care if the world burns as long as long as his "privileged" enemies are brought down a peg. This is not a healthy or particularly sane attitude to take, and I recommend avoiding it.
2) deBoer believe the world to be essentially zero-sum, thus bringing down the "privileged" will automatically bring up everything else. A basic look at the technological progress over the past several centuries should suffice to disprove this notion.