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Pika Labs new generative AI video tool unveiled — and it looks like a big deal
(www.tomsguide.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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There's a lot of "AI is theft" comments in this thread, and I'd just like to take a moment to bring up the Luddite movement at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution: the point isn't that 'machines are theft', or 'machines are just a fad', or even 'machines are bad' - the point was that machines were the new and highly efficient way capital owners were undermining the security and material conditions of the working class.
Let's not confuse problems that are created by capitalistic systems for problems created by new technologies - and maybe we can learn something about radical political action from the Luddites.
I recommend reading this article by Kit Walsh, a senior staff attorney at the EFF if you haven't already. The EFF is a digital rights group who most recently won a historic case: border guards now need a warrant to search your phone.
AI training isn’t only for mega-corporations. We can already train open source models, and Mozilla and LAION have already commited to training AI anyone can use. We shouldn't put up barriers that only benefit the ultra-wealthy and hand corporations a monopoly of a public technology by making it prohibitively expensive to for regular people to keep up. Mega corporations already own datasets, and have the money to buy more. And that's before they make users sign predatory ToS allowing them exclusive access to user data, effectively selling our own data back to us. Regular people, who could have had access to a competitive, corporate-independent tool for creativity, education, entertainment, and social mobility, would instead be left worse off and with less than where they started.
Relevant podcast: https://timharford.com/2023/08/cautionary-tales-the-assassin-and-the-machine/
Did you get it right this time, or can expect another revision?
Hardly, but I'm not against people refining their craft so have at it.
I don't get your meaning actually - are you saying: 'you are in favor of theft in the name of AI', or 'you are agreeing that AI is theft'?
You described machines as efficient, and I am agreeing with you: The machines in question are efficient at stealing. Do you agree with this, or is there some detail in this that offends you?
Oh, well then no, I'm not sure I agree. Doesn't offend me though!
But that's not because I don't think that creators should be paid, I just happen to think they should be paid regardless of how well the work can be monetized. AI is just another tool, like the cotton gin. Useful, maybe not for art, but also not innately good or bad by itself.
I count your virtue of wanting artists to be paid sufficiently signaled. However, by using the common AI defender thought terminating cliche "it's just a tool" you've cut short any rational conversation about how this tool has been used, and will continue to be used, to steal in scale.
Your fantasies sound nice, but why not engage in reality?
Theft of work value from the working class has existed since kings and queens have married their cousins.
Anger at AI for theft is just plainly misdirected. I count your condemnation of theft sufficiently signaled, though.
Okay, so you acknowledge it's theft, you're just offended by the fact that people dislike that kind of theft.
It's mighty convenient for large corporations that are engaging in the theft that you lick their boots.
I completely get the confusion, I don't hold it against you. I never denied that AI models involved theft, i asserted that the problem with AI isn't about theft.
A luddite in today's terminology is someone who opposes new technologies, but The Luddites weren't opposed to the mechanization of their labor per say, they took issue with the commodification of their labor and the private ownership of the machines that aided and sometimes supplanted it. They didn't go destroying the textile mills because of some principled stance against progress, they were going to war against the capital owners who suppressed them and forced them to compete against the machines that were made by their own hands.
The Luddites (rightly) identified the issue with the ownership of the machines, not the machines themselves. You only have half the picture; yes, they've stolen from you (not just your data, but your labor) - but they've also withheld from you the value of that product. It's not the existence of AI that created that relationship, it's capital.
I'm glad you don't hold your confusion against me. Can you escape it for a moment to say whether you actually condemn theft or not?
You're also using a false dichotomy, whether you mean to or not. Textile machines can create more textiles, generative AI can't create more art, because they can't create any art to begin with. And, of course, in the real world that you live in, art is something most people do when they finish the labor that pays the bills.
You also fail to mention the Luddites engaged with reality too, and didn't just talk about ideology all day, like the average Twitter communist is wont to do.
Again, no worries for any misgivings or misunderstandings.
True, AI can't produce art (at least, we can agree that there will always be some absent quality from the product of a generative model that makes human art art), but it can produce many other things of value that does supplant a real person's product. Likewise, there are qualities of art that make it a commodity that can be sold - to pay the bills - that lessen and sometimes corrupts art. Some may even argue that Art can only be something that is done for the sake of itself and for no other purpose; it is good-in-itself. And funnily enough, craftsmen have been saying for literal centuries that machines can't reproduce that particular quality innate in hand-made crafts.
I do remember mentioning, and possibly even advocating, for the Luddite course of action though. You're right, we shouldn't only sit around and talk shit about theft, we should also be doing the thieving ourselves and raiding the textile mills.
On theft; would I condemn theft if I didn't recognize private ownership to begin with? You're twisting yourself in knots; I can't help but think it's because you're trying so hard to 'getch' me.
I thought leftist types were supposed to draw a distinction between private and personal property. The giant thieving corporations you defend are stealing people's personal property and using it for profit.
I realize you're not engaging leftist theory seriously here, but if you were I would recommend this paper on the topic of digital new media as viewed through a Marxist and political economy framework.
Regardless, I don't see the exploitation of user activity as a theft of 'personal property'(nor would marx), it is closer to the private ownership of common resources (i.e. private ownership of land and the resources on it, land being the platform where free human activity occurs, and the raw resource as the data being collected). A leftist might assert user activity and communication as a communally shared resource, not one privately exploited, and the resulting tools that utilize that common resource as one that is collectively shared, not privately owned.
Once again, it's not about theft
"The exploitation of user activity"... telemetry? The People's Telemetry?
I'm sure there's a very nice Utopia where all these things can go together, but when you address one of them at a time, you need to actually take care to not make things worse for the victims of exploitation.
Oh, and of course, great care must be taken to prevent the exploitation for moving from the corporation to the a state apparatus, especially when communication is on the line.
Ah, now this WOULD constitute theft (or at least a severe invasion of privacy), since by all accounts a personal device is expected to be personal property, no?
I was of course referring to public communication shared on public social media (the kind used for model training, in case you've forgotten), not to the private activities one conducts in ones own house (as an example).
For one accusing me of reductionism, you seem quite good at it yourself.
Do let me know when you've had a chance to read that paper.
If somebody's phone is personal data, and they use that phone to draw some pixel art, does that make it private and no longer personal?
Does the transition occur simply when somebody shows it to somebody else, at which point the biggest and most powerful person can swoop in and use it for themselves?
Is that a serious question?
You told me it wasn't earlier. Are you changing your opinion?
You implicitly support theft against the working class -- ie harm -- if it is done by AI, so your own belief system is gross and unethical.
Pretty disgusting that you virtue signal support of the working class while fighting on behalf of the giant corporations stealing from them.
Third time's the charm.
Christ, you're so worked up on rhetoric. Maybe, try using your own opinions, rather than those funneled into your meaty language model for you to grind up and spit out the buzzwords in some semblance of coherent thought, hmm? 🤪