Recent content by ASchmidt

Likely. Several authors I follow are really angry over this. I can't begin to imagine what the publishers and their lawyers are planning but I can't imagine them just sitting back and doing nothing.

100% agreed. If we're going to be using LLMs, they have to be good citizens themselves. They can't start by stealing every scrap of Intellectual Property just as a kick off. Oh, and then keep doing it for the rest of time so it can stay current. I get that they're more useful to many people if...

For my part, it's shocking that a corporation of that size decided to torrent files like that and their legal department didn't immediately and collectively croak on the spot from sheer horror. Then there's the sheer scale of what they did. Like they didn't do just a little piracy, they went to...

My main issue is that I see "AI" being used in use cases where it's not really a good solution simply because business can generate interest simply by including "AI". That it's being used as marketing either to the end-user or towards other executives who don't know better. We'll just slap some...

The problem is the unreliability. You can't let anything with a failure rate this high anywhere near anything where it could do damage. That there's a bill to allow AI's to prescribe medications absolutely blows my mind.

There are uses for current types of "AI" in working with very large data sets for analysis that are useful in both business and scientific applications. LLMs and what we have now generating art and video are significantly limited by lacking understanding of context. Which means the...

And we have to be clear, there are two separate violations here. The first was that they literally downloaded the archive via a torrent. They stole the works, plain and simple. That was them getting the data in the first place. The second is that by using those books against their licenses...

I think the core problem is that whatever "AI" programs create, it's tainted by being based on material they don't have rights to. That you have to go back to the operator of the application doesn't own or have rights to use the data the application is using. Every single generation from that...

We've all seen the phrase "free for personal use", generally on software but I've also seen it on licenses for things like clipart. That's because otherwise, to use someone's work (specifically anything that's covered under registered IP) requires a license. A lot of licenses describe the ways...

Very true and more, creators can put conditions on how they want their creations to be used. They can say it's free for personal use but requires a license for corporate use. There's a handful of "ethical" LLMs out there that specifically only train with open source or public domain material...

I worked for Shawn Fanning (the guy who created Napster) at EA. To be honest, I don't really have anything positive I can say about the man while I've got a whole lot of negative. (I'm trying really hard here to stick by the rules on personal attacks)

I've worked in software development for almost 40 years and deal with IP laws on a fairly regular basis as a result. Hey, software developers are authors too and the code they write is covered under the same IP laws as books and films. And you haven't had fun until you've had to really dive into...

I think not starting the discussion with 3rd edition misses critical parts of the picture. 3rd edition was remarkably successful and spurred a renaissance in the tabletop gaming community. A key part of this was the license that allowed other publishers to add to the 3rd edition ecosystem...

In the end, I think it depends on what you want out of your game. If you want a bit more hack, slash, and uncomplicated "I killed the monster, saved the princess, and got the treasure", then old school evil orcs are great for you. If you want a game with more complexity (which doesn't mean...

Yes... but both of the "good" groups are small isolated groups while the Lolth worshiping group is still the main one. It's almost a "look, they're not all bad, there's a token group over here, see!"