LLMs and the dwindling number of people who appreciate and value language
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I’ve asked it for one paragraph answers before. I don’t use it for writing, I use it for learning. It’s fantastic as a subject matter expert for learning new things.
But it would certainly understand and follow such instructions like ‘keep it under 350 words’ or ‘no more than 2 pages’.
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I'm reading this thread carefully when I have time to concentrate.
I will say that oral communication among humans, later recorded by symbols, is at the root of all of human society and culture.
The fact that the educational system is being destroyed- by design- should make any rational person pause, IMO.
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@Bernard I agree with everything you wrote, Bernard.
They have indeed swiped a good chunk of human effort. I think the Anthropic settlement which, although it was a billion-and-a-half dollars, feels like they're throwing us a bone. When it came through, I thought that perhaps all the AI companies were going to at least have to throw us a bone, but I see no sign of it.
The way the settlement was written, books were thrown out because of restrictions on the pub date and because our publishers sometimes neglected to register our copyrights. We've always been told that registration is just a formality and it's not necessary to defend our work in court, but the settlement was written in such a way that it matters. Our contracts are written in such a way that the publisher is responsible for registering the copyright, but has no liability if they didn't. Because of details like this, the database of stolen work includes 24 of my titles, but only eight of them qualified for the settlement.
It isn't known yet how much the lawyers will take, but the judge sent their request back and told them they couldn't have the huge percentage they wanted. Whatever makes it through that gauntlet will be split (50/50, in most cases) betwen the writer and the publisher. (Yes, the same publisher who cost me many thousands by neglecting to register some of my copyrights.)
I think my settlement check will be in the low five figures, but it really should be approaching six.
@Bernard I agree with everything you wrote, Bernard.
They have indeed swiped a good chunk of human effort. I think the Anthropic settlement which, although it was a billion-and-a-half dollars, feels like they're throwing us a bone. When it came through, I thought that perhaps all the AI companies were going to at least have to throw us a bone, but I see no sign of it.
Did the other big AI models train on pirated copies too?
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I believe they all trained on pirated work, because there's no other way to get enough material (other than obeying the law and paying for it), but I can't say I'm absolutely certain about that. It's hard to be sure of your sources these days.
I do know there are other lawsuits, but they seem to turn on different fine points of copyright law, so winning the Anthropic one doesn't mean that they will all go the same way. There was a big news story a few months ago saying that Meta didn't just train on pirated databases, but it was revealed in discovery that they had discussed it by email (or text, but anyway, it was in writing), and went so far as to talk about destroying the databases, thus confirming that they did it and knew it was illegal. But then the news cycle moved on and I've heard nothing else. And, of course, I have to trust the reporting that this was true, which is a problem these days.
We've been told that the Anthropic payout is coming in installments and the first checks will go out in November. I don't even know yet how much mine is supposed to be, but I guess I'll know a little more then.
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I believe they all trained on pirated work, because there's no other way to get enough material (other than obeying the law and paying for it), but I can't say I'm absolutely certain about that. It's hard to be sure of your sources these days.
I do know there are other lawsuits, but they seem to turn on different fine points of copyright law, so winning the Anthropic one doesn't mean that they will all go the same way. There was a big news story a few months ago saying that Meta didn't just train on pirated databases, but it was revealed in discovery that they had discussed it by email (or text, but anyway, it was in writing), and went so far as to talk about destroying the databases, thus confirming that they did it and knew it was illegal. But then the news cycle moved on and I've heard nothing else. And, of course, I have to trust the reporting that this was true, which is a problem these days.
We've been told that the Anthropic payout is coming in installments and the first checks will go out in November. I don't even know yet how much mine is supposed to be, but I guess I'll know a little more then.
We've been told that the Anthropic payout is coming in installments and the first checks will go out in November. I don't even know yet how much mine is supposed to be, but I guess I'll know a little more then.
From what I’ve read it’s 3k per in-scope book but split with the publisher. So 1500? I don’t remember if the 3k number is net of attorney fees or if that has to get taken out of the 3k before splitting it.
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The presumption in the writing community is that attorney's fees will be taken out of the $3000, but I haven't seen that confirmed. I also have not seen anything confirming how much the attorney's fees will be.
Splitting the payout with the publisher 50/50 seems to be the default. I looked over my contracts to see whether this was true for me. My subsidiary rights clauses specify a 50/50 split for most rights sales, but I didn't see anything on the list of specified rights that I thought definitely applied in this case. My agent, however, said that the 50/50 split applied in my case, so that's what I put on my claim, since she negotiated the contracts and presumably knows. (Interestingly, I know of no route for agents to be paid. My agent has gotten her 15% for things like audiobook sales, but I don't think this is the case with the Anthropic settlement.)
Some publishers, including big ones like Wiley, are trying to take 100%, which is unconscionable. Those writers' claims, and those of writers who didn't go with the 50/50 default, are finding that their claims are being disputed by their publishers. Will this result in lawyers' fees eating the claims up? Nobody knows, but it will certainly delay their checks. My 50/50 claims were not disputed, so I am supposed to receive my first payment in December, but I will believe it when the checks are in my hand.
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@Bernard I agree with everything you wrote, Bernard.
They have indeed swiped a good chunk of human effort. I think the Anthropic settlement which, although it was a billion-and-a-half dollars, feels like they're throwing us a bone. When it came through, I thought that perhaps all the AI companies were going to at least have to throw us a bone, but I see no sign of it.
Did the other big AI models train on pirated copies too?
I've started taking Jane Friedman's newsletter, because I trust her reporting. Today's newsletter spoke to your question about whether other big AI companies trained on pirated work:
OpenAI’s piracy looks to be worse than Anthropic’s piracy
One of the key AI lawsuits I’ve been following is this one in the Southern District of New York—a different district from the one where the Anthropic case was settled, and the home of New York publishers and landmark copyright cases. It involves both the Authors Guild and the New York Times, since the court consolidated the cases. Over the last couple of weeks, a lot of information has come to light from unsealed documents. The New York Times is probably taking great pleasure in publishing articles about what’s in these documents, revealing things like:A Microsoft director calling AI scraping the “largest theft of labor in human history”
OpenAI’s head of ChatGPT writing that AI posed an “existential threat” to publishers
OpenAI developing a hack to get around the New York Times paywall
The disclosures related to books are equally bad. OpenAI, like Anthropic, created an internal library of books from the pirate website LibGen and even shared those works with outsiders. One of OpenAI’s employees testified, “The better we do on GPT-X, the more worried genre fiction authors will become about us substituting for them on Amazon.” And an OpenAI researcher described his mission as creating a machine to supplant human authors."
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