I remember reading that a little while back. I definitely agree that the solution isn’t extending copyright, but extending labour laws on a sector-wide basis. Because this is the ultimate problem with AI: the economic benefits are only going to a small handful, while everybody else loses out because of increased financial and employment insecurity.
So the question that comes to mind is exactly how, on a practical level, it would work to make sure that when a company scrapes data, trains and AI, and then makes billions of dollars, the thousands or millions of people who created the data all get a cut after the fact. Because particularly in the creative sector, a lot of people are freelancers who don’t have a specific employer they can go after. From a purely practical perspective, paying artists before the data is used makes sure all those freelancers get paid. Waiting until the company makes a profit, taxing it out of them, and then distributing it to artists doesn’t seem practical to me.
Creating same-y pieces with AI will not improve the material conditions of artists’ lives, either. All that does is drag everyone down in a race to the bottom on who can churn out the most dreck the most quickly. “If we advance the technology enough, everybody can have it on their device and make as much AI-generated crap as they like” does not secure stable futures for artists.
I did actually specify that I think the solution is extending labour laws to cover the entire sector, although it seems that you accidentally missed that in your enthusiasm to insist that the solution is having AI on more devices. However, so far I haven’t seen any practical solutions as to how to extend labour laws to protect freelancers who will lose business to AI but don’t have a specific employer that the labour laws will apply to. Retroactively assigning profits from AI to freelancers who have lost out during the process doesn’t seem practical.
Labour law alone, in terms of the terms under which people are employed and how they are paid, does not protect freelancers from the scenario that you, and so many others, advocate for: a multitude of individuals all training their own AIs. No AI advocate has ever proposed a viable and practical solution to the large number of artists who aren’t directly employed by a company but are still exposed to all the downsides of unregulated AI.
The reality is that artists need to be paid for their work. That needs to happen at some point in the process. If AI companies (or individuals setting up their own customised AIs) don’t want to pay in advance to obtain the training data, then they’re going to have to pay from the profits generated by the AI. Continuing the status quo, where AIs can use artists’ labour without paying them at all is not an acceptable or viable long-term plan.
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I remember reading that a little while back. I definitely agree that the solution isn’t extending copyright, but extending labour laws on a sector-wide basis. Because this is the ultimate problem with AI: the economic benefits are only going to a small handful, while everybody else loses out because of increased financial and employment insecurity.
So the question that comes to mind is exactly how, on a practical level, it would work to make sure that when a company scrapes data, trains and AI, and then makes billions of dollars, the thousands or millions of people who created the data all get a cut after the fact. Because particularly in the creative sector, a lot of people are freelancers who don’t have a specific employer they can go after. From a purely practical perspective, paying artists before the data is used makes sure all those freelancers get paid. Waiting until the company makes a profit, taxing it out of them, and then distributing it to artists doesn’t seem practical to me.
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Creating same-y pieces with AI will not improve the material conditions of artists’ lives, either. All that does is drag everyone down in a race to the bottom on who can churn out the most dreck the most quickly. “If we advance the technology enough, everybody can have it on their device and make as much AI-generated crap as they like” does not secure stable futures for artists.
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I did actually specify that I think the solution is extending labour laws to cover the entire sector, although it seems that you accidentally missed that in your enthusiasm to insist that the solution is having AI on more devices. However, so far I haven’t seen any practical solutions as to how to extend labour laws to protect freelancers who will lose business to AI but don’t have a specific employer that the labour laws will apply to. Retroactively assigning profits from AI to freelancers who have lost out during the process doesn’t seem practical.
Removed by mod
Labour law alone, in terms of the terms under which people are employed and how they are paid, does not protect freelancers from the scenario that you, and so many others, advocate for: a multitude of individuals all training their own AIs. No AI advocate has ever proposed a viable and practical solution to the large number of artists who aren’t directly employed by a company but are still exposed to all the downsides of unregulated AI.
The reality is that artists need to be paid for their work. That needs to happen at some point in the process. If AI companies (or individuals setting up their own customised AIs) don’t want to pay in advance to obtain the training data, then they’re going to have to pay from the profits generated by the AI. Continuing the status quo, where AIs can use artists’ labour without paying them at all is not an acceptable or viable long-term plan.
Removed by mod