Each artist I know is furious. The illustrators, the novelists, the poets, all furious. These are people who have papay pouring their deepest desires on the page, just to see the companies of pirate their work without compensation.
The last increase in anger is an response to Openi by integrating new image generation capabilities in Chatgpt and showing how they can be used for imitation Studio Ghibli’s animation style. That triggered an avalanche online of gibbed images, with innumerable users (including the OpenAi CEO Sam Altman) Get the AI to rebuild your selfies in the style of Energetic ORPÍN My neighbor Totoro.
Combines that with the recent revelation that Goal has been pirate millions of published books To train his AI, and you can see how we obtained a point of inflammation in the cultural war between artists and companies of AI.
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When artists try to express their indignation for companies, they say things like: “At least they should my permission or sacrifice to pay me!” Sometimes they have a deeper level: “This is eroding the essence of human creativity!”
These are legitimate points, but they are also easy objectives for supporters of the omnivorous. These defenders generally make two arguments.
First, the use of materials with online copyright to train AI is a fair use, which means that it is legal to copy them for that purpose without the permission of the artists. (Openai makes this statement About your AI training in general and grades That allows users to copy the style of the house of a study, Studio Gibli is an example, but not an individual living artist. Lawyers say the company is operating in a Legal gray area.
Secondly, defenders argue that even if it is not for fair use, Intellectual property rights should not be allowed to interpose in the path of innovation that Benefit humanity.
The strongest argument that artists can make, then, is that unrestricted advance of the technologies of AI that experts cannot understand or control He gained greatly benefiting humanity in balance – It will damage us. And for that reason, forcing artists to be convenient in the creation of these technologies is to inflict them something terrible: Moral injury.
Moral injury is what happens when you feel that you have forced the leg to violate your own values. The psychiatrists coined the term in the 1990s after observing the veterans of the Vietnam era that had to carry out bombs of drop in orders and kill the civilians, who completed the urgencies of their conscience. Moral injury can also be applied to doctor That have to ration care, Teachers Who have to implement punitive behavior management programs, and any other person who is obliged to act against their principles. In recent years, a wave or investigation He has shown that people who experience a moral injury to have a feeling of shame that can lead to severe anxiety and depression.
It may be thinking that this psychological condition sounds like a world far from the art generated by AI, than having its images or gymnastics turned into fodder for AI, could not trigger a moral injury. However, I would say that this is exactly what is happening for many artists who are seeing that their work is stinking to enable a project that fundamental, even if they do not know the term to describe it.
Framing your objection in terms of moral injuries would be more effective. Unlike other arguments, challenges the Central narrative of the reinforcements of AI That everyone should support the innovation of AI because it is essential to progress.
Why the art of AI is more than a fair use or remixes
At this point, you have listened to people who have heard that trying to control the development of AI means that you are anti-prore The ludites who fought Against power is coming at the dawn of the industrial revolution or The people who said Photographers should be prohibited from taking their similarity in public without their consent when the camera was first invented.
Some people point out that as recently as the 1990s, many people saw remix music or Share files in NAPster as progressive and real He considered it illiberal Insist on intellectual property rights. In his opinion, music should be a public good, so why not art and books?
To unpack this, let’s start with the ludites, so often invoked in discussions about the days of AI. Despite the popular narrative that we have been fed, the The ludites were not antiprogress or even anti-technology. What opposed was the way in which the owners of the factory used the new machines: not as tools that could facilitate that the qualified workers did their job, but as a means to shoot and replace them with a little payment low and low cheap price. The owners were using the technology for the merchant of the working class while their own profit margins grew.
That It is what the ludites opposed. And they were very right to oppose him because it matters if technology is used to improving all kinds of people or to already empower an already powerful minority at the expense of others.
AI as it adapts to the tools built for specific purposes, such as Enabling scientists to Discover new drugs – It can be a great net benefit for humanity in general, and we must encourage it. But we do not have a convincing reason to believe that the same is true for the career to develop artificial general intelligence, a hypothetical system that can match or exceed human problems solving skills in many domains. In fact, those who run to build it, like Altman, will be the first to tell you that Break the world’s economic system Works Council for a moment Lead to human extinction.
They cannot argue in good faith, then, that intellectual property must be derived because the career towards AGI will be a great net benefit for humanity. They could expect it to benefit us, but they say it could be easily moving.
But what happens to the argument that pushing the entire internet in the right use?
That ignores the fact that when you take something from another person, exactly what you do with him really matters. Low The principle of fair useThe purpose and character of use is key. Is it for commercial use? Or without profit? Will the original owner give?
Think about people who tried to limit the rights of photographers in the nineteenth century, arguing that they cannot take their photo without permission. Now, it is true that The courts ruled That I can take a photo with you even if you did not explicitly consent. But that does not mean that the courts allow each and every one of the uses of their similarity. I can’t, for example, take that photo of you and not turn it into pornography.
Pornography, not the remix of music or the exchange of files, is the right analogy here. Because the art of AI is not just about taking some of the artists; It is about transforming it into something that many of them hate, since they believe it contributes to “Envelope“Or the world, even if he literally won, the world ends.
That takes us back to the idea or moral injury.
Currently, as artists understand the language in which to house their complaint, they naturally use the language that is the family for them: creativity and originality, intellectual property and copyright law. But that language makes a deeper gesture. The reason we value creativity and originality in the first place is because We believe they are an essential part of the human agency. And there is a growing feeling that AI is ergencia, either by Homogensing our tastes” Addicted to the classmatesWorks Council Deceive ourselves to deliver our ethical decision -making capacity.
Forcing artists to be convenient in that project, a project that they find morally detestable because it hits the core of who we are as human beings, is to inflict moral injuries on the subject. That argument cannot be carefully discarded with claims of “fair use” or “benefit humanity.” And it is the argument that artists should clarify and clear.
