WotC Would you buy WotC products produced or enhanced with AI?

[Reynard]

The Atlantic had a lookup. My books were there.

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI

Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

www.theatlantic.com

Thanks. I am not listed. I don't know whether to feel relieved or offended.

 

[Scribe]

Remember when TSR published Encyclopedia Magicka and used a 1994 era AI to find and replace all instances of "mage" with "wizard", resulting in a book going to print that had spells that do "ten points of dawizard"?


There's nothing more or less ethical about gen AI than a spellcheck. It's a tool, nothing more, nothing less.

Man, why didnt anyone tell me I've been creating AI since the 90s? Why am I not getting paid half a million a year by now?!

/sssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Remember when TSR published Encyclopedia Magicka and used a 1994 era AI to find and replace all instances of "mage" with "wizard", resulting in a book going to print that had spells that do "ten points of dawizard"?


There's nothing more or less ethical about gen AI than a spellcheck. It's a tool, nothing more, nothing less.

lol, lmao even

 

[Art Waring]

That said, I do not think stealing is an appropriate term. They didn't steal anything. Nor do I think it is unethical.

You have said this numerous times now, while still ignoring my question. I honestly don't think you have anything meaningful to add to the discussion at this point.

At this point I am just going to assume that you are going to go on and on like a broken record.

I have specifically asked you what you have to say to fellow forum members who have had their work stolen without their permission and without any credit or compensation (which is clearly 100% unethical), and you have made every effort to avoid answering my simple question.

 

[Sulicius]

You have said this numerous times now, while still ignoring my question. I honestly don't think you have anything meaningful to add to the discussion at this point.

At this point I am just going to assume that you are going to go on and on like a broken record.

I have specifically asked you what you have to say to fellow forum members who have had their work stolen without their permission and without any credit or compensation (which is clearly 100% unethical), and you have made every effort to avoid answering my simple question.

Friend, take it easy. These forums are sadly not often the place for retrospection among people. Just be happy “no” is a lot more common than “yes”.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Thanks. I am not listed. I don't know whether to feel relieved or offended.

This is just one source -- that bigass pile of published books -- there's a lot of stuff beyond this.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I don't think the work was stolen.

If open AI obtained your work by scraping--I'm sorry. I think it's rude of them to do so. Like showing up at a potluck and not bringing anything. I think they should provide open source models as a way of contributing. Mike's idea of micropayments would also be a nice gesture, but hard to implement.

That said, I do not think stealing is an appropriate term. They didn't steal anything. Nor do I think it is unethical.

I understand this is a somewhat new scenario and new ethical territory, so if you reason about it differently I can understand that.

I wonder what they'd call it if I went and took OpenAI's fancy new model and hosted it on Github.

Personally, I'm less concerned about models released in the open than the big commercial models. "OpenAI" has three lies in six characters. It's not open. It's not artificial (its based on human data and human tagging) and its not intelligent.

 

[The Firebird]

You have said this numerous times now, while still ignoring my question. I honestly don't think you have anything meaningful to add to the discussion at this point.

At this point I am just going to assume that you are going to go on and on like a broken record.

I have specifically asked you what you have to say to fellow forum members who have had their work stolen without their permission and without any credit or compensation (which is clearly 100% unethical), and you have made every effort to avoid answering my simple question.

I'm not ignoring your question. My last post is what I would say in response to that claim.

If I felt the work was stolen, then I think they should be able to sue the offending companies and receive appropriate restitution. A class action suit is probably the right means in this case.

 

[mamba]

That said, I do not think stealing is an appropriate term. They didn't steal anything. Nor do I think it is unethical.

piracy then? People copying music also is not stealing in the traditional sense

 

[Reynard]

piracy then? People copying music also is not stealing in the traditional sense

I feel like it would be hard to argue that it wasn't at least a copyright violation, since almost definitionally these models are creating derivative works. The companies, of course, argue that they are sufficiently transformed.

In the end I think that @SlyFlourish has the right of this: if material was used to train the model, it must have value, and therefore the copyright holder of that material is entitled to some sort of compensation. What would that look like? Probably an offer of a pittance one time fee.