D&D General DMs Guild and DriveThruRPG ban AI written works, requires labels for AI generated art

[Lanefan]

Do you have a legal right to read my words right now? After all, you must have made a copy of them on your computer to do so, and I never gave you explicit permission.

Well, by the act of posting your words to a publicly-viewable forum I'd posit you gave implicit (or even, if it's in the site's terms of use, explicit) permission for them to be read.

Otherwise what would be the point?

 

[Charlaquin]

I wholeheartedly agree it is theft. I also think most human artists do the same thing, albeit at a much slower pace. What interests me is, as AI technology improves to near sapient levels, will it be given the same rights as normal people?

That’s not going to happen, at least not with these generative machine learning tools. Despite the name and the hype from the tech industry, they are not actually intelligent in any meaningful sense of the word, much less approaching anything resembling sapience. We still don’t know if true artificial intelligence is even possible, but even if it is, these generative tools ain’t it, and aren’t going to magically become it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yet.

And when - not if - it can and does, then what?

You’ve fallen for the tech industry’s hype machine. No, these generative tools are not intelligent and never will be. We may one day have to contend with questions of if a machine is actually intelligent, but it’s not going to be one of these ones.

 

[TheSword]

Do you believe that high paying jobs will be increasing as a result of advancing robotics and AI?

When the cost of living in developed countries is increasing, and housing issues are in the news across NA and Europe?

If AI/Robotics is able to drive down costs, by decreasing wages and benefits due to having less humans needing to be employed, what jobs exactly are people going to be getting paid living wages to perform?

Flip burgers? Pick fruit?

Trades perhaps. Governments like to push down Education salaries so I dont know about that, and the way the curriculums are going now, I'd put my kid in Private school anyway.

This isnt a Horse to Car type scenario in my view, and we are not in a place as a society, where those people that supported a Horse based travel system, could just go and work a farm and still go out and buy a house.

Average cost of a home in Vancouver BC (via quick Google, oh the irony): $1,203,000

'So just go live somewhere cheaper.' Certainly an option for now, but even less desirable places a home is going to be over $300K in Canada. I've looked, and I have a home, because I'm trying to find a way for my son to get ahead without me keeling over and leaving him everything.

So how is AI going to rebuild the middle class or is it just going to accelerate its further erasure?

AI has the potential to revolutionize health care. Both in diagnosing diseases individually and risk factors on a macro scale. As well as speeding up research for cures and ways of living healthier.

Health costs are the UK single biggest expenditure. Over 4 times what we spend on defense. It’s only going to get more expensive and if AI can reduce that cost or make it more efficient it could have a dramatic effect on quality of life.

 

[FrogReaver]

You’ve fallen for the tech industry’s hype machine. No, these generative tools are not intelligent and never will be. We may one day have to contend with questions of if a machine is actually intelligent, but it’s not going to be one of these ones.

I think maybe our concept of intelligence is also overhyped.

Pattern recognition. Making predictions. Traditionally these are some of the most desirable 'skills' of intelligent people.
Creativity. If a human was writing the short stories or creating the pictures that we see AI's generate then we'd certainly call that creativity.

Maybe our creativity is overhyped as well.

Anyways, for fun I asked Perplexity AI to 'give me an original logical argument with 4 premises'. The results:

Here is an original logical argument with 4 premises:

1. All humans need food to survive. (Premise)
2. Mary is a human. (Premise)
3. Therefore, Mary needs food to survive. (Conclusion)
4. All birds have wings. (Premise)
5. Penguins are birds. (Premise)
6. Therefore, penguins have wings. (Conclusion)
7. All cats are carnivores. (Premise)
8. This animal is a cat. (Premise)
9. Therefore, this animal is a carnivore. (Conclusion)
10. All students who study hard get good grades. (Premise)
11. John is a student who studies hard. (Premise)
12. Therefore, John will get good grades. (Conclusion)

Each argument consists of two premises and one conclusion.

That's pretty bad IMO. Like it's very good at throwing together 2 premise and 1 conclusion logical arguments and they even appear reliably accurate. It's not readily apparent how original these actually are. Many I can conceive of as having came from educational resources around logic, but maybe they didn't. However, the complete lack of understanding when I asked it for logical arguments with more premises also reveals some major limitations.

 

[FrogReaver]

AI has the potential to revolutionize health care. Both in diagnosing diseases individually and risk factors on a macro scale. As well as speeding up research for cures and ways of living healthier.

Health costs are the UK single biggest expenditure. Over 4 times what we spend on defense. It’s only going to get more expensive and if AI can reduce that cost or make it more efficient it could have a dramatic effect on quality of life.

Quality of life maybe. But IMO probably not the costs. What will happen is 2 fold.
1. Better healthcare -> increased life expectancy -> population growth -> more people requiring medical care
2. Longer life expectancy still means people get sick and die, the bad stuff just on average comes later in life -> elderly care costs need not decrease, they just come a few years later in life.

I'm just saying, don't count on healthcare cost savings just because you on average end up with healthier people.

 

[TheSword]

Would that it were that simple. Nobody fully understands how generative AI works. And your claims about legal rights are irrelevant; hordes of actual legal professionals are working on this many different aspects of this problem right now, and it will be up to a whole lot of court cases to determine what legal rights exist, along with whatever statutes are passed. And those legal rights will vary in different jurisdictions. Probably in significant ways (for example, consider the different standards for intellectual property rights in, say, China vs. the USA).

Do you have a legal right to read my words right now? After all, you must have made a copy of them on your computer to do so, and I never gave you explicit permission. You didn't pay me or offer me any other compensation. Is it theft? I have posted images of my art on the internet; every time someone viewed those images, they must have made a copy. Theft?

When you memorize lines from a play, did you steal them? What about when you learn to play a song that someone else wrote? What about when you perform it for your friends? What about when you take basic ideas from that and other songs that you have learned over the years but rearrange them in new ways?

No one knows how this will all come out. But I am very, very confident that it will not come out with all generative AI being labeled "theft." Not least because what you are talking about is better described as potential "copyright infringement" and no one is going to be going to jail.

As you and others have said, it isn’t theft. Not in any accurate definition of the term theft anyway. Although I remember reading in the Kite Runner that all crimes are thefts of one kind of another - murder is theft of life - maybe they’re talking about that.

This to me seems closer to plagiarism. Something that is against the rules of many institutions and can get you kicked out but isn’t theft.

For me if AI was able to be sourced. If the created image could reference back to the data set used to train the AI. That data set was licensed and royalties paid to the artists that contributed to that data set (or multiples therefore) then everyone wins. It would actually generate revenue for artists not steal it.

 

[TheSword]

Quality of life maybe. But IMO probably not the costs. What will happen is 2 fold.
1. Better healthcare -> increased life expectancy -> population growth -> more people requiring medical care
2. Longer life expectancy still means people get sick and die, the bad stuff just on average comes later in life -> elderly care costs need not decrease, they just come a few years later in life.

I'm just saying, don't count on healthcare cost savings just because you on average end up with healthier people.

People are going to die no matter how good your health system, a lot of advances in health care are about quality of life. As people are healthier they can contribute to society longer. Sickness itself costs billions every year from people who are still part of the working population getting afflicted with illnesses.

The potential to dramatically improve treatment and diagnosis of mental health issues is huge. Perfectly physically healthy people who are affected by their impairments.

Efficiency is more important than lower costs when it comes to health care and AI could revolutionise it. We’re already living longer than ever. The question is what state are we in when we do.

 

[Yora]

The idea of AI written RPG systems is still making me laugh every time I see it.

 

[FrogReaver]

People are going to die no matter how good your health system, a lot of advances in health care are about quality of life. As people are healthier they can contribute to society longer. Sickness itself costs billions every year from people who are still part of the working population getting afflicted with illnesses.

The potential to dramatically improve treatment and diagnosis of mental health issues is huge. Perfectly physically healthy people who are affected by their impairments.

Efficiency is more important than lower costs when it comes to health care and AI could revolutionise it. We’re already living longer than ever. The question is what state are we in when we do.

Sure. I was just commenting on the notion that it would decrease costs.