I know a great many creators who admire your honesty, steadfastness and moral support. Who took solace in you standing up to the hype when most others lost their marbles or lied through their teeth about how this all works.
When you describe an image you want, and send that description to OpenAI for them to produce an image for you, they provide you with a direct replacement service to the stock archives, image banks and commission options available out there, with a product based directly on those competitors’ works.
Scam Altman and the rest of the AI hypesters have successfully rolled out a vile battery of coordinated lies. The two most egregious are “it learns like people” (to get out of licensing their essential source material) and “you made this” to impart people who never created images professionally with a false sense of having made what they ordered.
They further reinforce this with the supporting lie of “just a tool” to try and redefine the word completely. Rather than something empty and inert that relies on whatever inputs and skills you add, they want it to now mean an end-to-end service that remixes stolen works for their users without any of their direct involvement.
Sadly, they seem to have successfully imparted these toxic mental models in you.
They have made you believe that you made this picture from your own skill and imagination, when in reality you only suggested an idea, which they then illustrated, based on assets they compiled from their competition.
And they sell this end-to-end commission substitute wildly below cost. The compute comes with tax breaks, the operation runs at a loss, and the proprietary third party assets it’s all based on came at a 100% piracy subsidy.
Nobody can compete against a business that is allowed to scrape everything they ever made for free to sell substitute remixes below cost.
It’s predatory price dumping that obliterates the market for original art in real time.
Paying them for it normalizes their practice and fills their coffers which currently salary 60+ lawyers in ten lawsuits fighting the ones whose market they are busy destroying.
This is why creators are aghast at this behavior: criticizing him while rewarding him monetarily for killing them in the marketplace rings very hollow.
I’m sure many would be happy to lend you their art, or even give it to you, were you just to ask.
There are many places that provide free quality images for just attribution, or not even that. I list 25 ranked options in 6 categories here:
i think you are missing my point but i don’t think this conversation will go anywhere. i have a licensed cartoonstock on the first slide of my upcoming talk though.
The best use of it. It’s great to do sport banters too by Instagram and Threads. As Adrian Dittmann who was Elon Musk that day said: sports is a form of simulated combat over actual combat with no application in real life except MMA and rally. Moreover, sports are gay. End of quote.
Let's not exaggerate what violence is, please. 60,000 people or more have been killed in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Ukraine. Over 100,000 people have been killed in Sudan. Countless more have been mutilated, bruised, cut, bashed. That's violence.
Someone using copyrighted images to train an image generation model is bad, yes, but you're still alive. Not a single bone in your body has been broken. Not a single hair has been ripped out. Copyright violation is illegal, but it is not violence.
Jonah: My guess is that everyone here understands your fundamental point that physical harm and death strike at one's physical existence which is foundational to other kinds of unwelcome intrusive and predatory actions. However, there are degrees of violence, and other unjust and careless harms that easily reek havoc on one's existence--and insofar as they interfere with an aspect of one's life, like one's economic, moral, social, politic, spiritual elements, these "violate" and so are also violence.
Perhaps you've not had such intrusions on your integrity visited on you by a predator who sees you as a slave --like stealing work that you put a part of your soul into, not to mention time; so that for you, the idea of "illegalities" can remain in the unfettered abstract, away from your sense of well-being and even existence. If so, I don't know whether to call you lucky or unlucky, considering the obvious consequences to the quality of intelligent empathy you seem to possess.
As someone who has published many things online, including some for pay, which have undoubtedly been caught up in the model training frenzy, I daresay I have experienced precisely that “unjust harm” that you mention. I have also had actual violence, physical harm, visited upon me by someone in a position of authority and trust. Among those two things, I know exactly which one I consider to be violence.
I resist this equation so strongly because of the unfortunate tendency that some have to use it in the context of claimed notions of self-defense, such as (to use a recent example) allegedly selling dangerous, addictive substances being considered an act of violence that justifies responding with actual weapons and killing the alleged perpetrator. You may see a hierarchy of violence, such that a copyright violation does not justify a bullet to the head. I certainly hope so. But I fear that for many people, using the same language to describe them only facilitates the attempt to recur to violent solutions at the first instance.
Johah: Yes, I was referring to degrees (of violence/and the experience of being violated as an article of justice). The problem, then, has switched from actual instances of violence (in degrees, and also according to your note), to the lack of nuance in the thinking of "many people" and the reduction of meaning to ONLY ONE, and to the extreme version of the term.
My view is that simple and shallow minds or just lack of development (as in those you and I both fear) is also a stage of potential, but not always fulfilled, human growth--these will always be with us; and much is to be said for choices of communications and methods in context. (One would not stop to talk about distinctions when running from a terrorist with a gun.)
However, to ignore distinctions (and degrees) in a reflective context as this one is, at the service of such fears or as a matter of course, only leaves the field to a lesser version of the status quo and with little hope for improvement.
And then there's reality--there are, in fact, differences in states of "being and feeling violated." And the leftover feelings of having one's work stolen doesn't go away with a good drink and a movie. Also, that you would choose one over the other only secures your own understanding of the fact which, of course, I am glad of.
We agree that violence is bad. And physical is in many ways worse than other forms such as sexual, psychological, verbal, financial etc.
I agree that killing is worse than stealing. Most of us do. Losing your livelihood is not as bad as losing your life, which means that robbing someone of their livelihood is not as bad as robbing someone of their life.
But let’s not pretend that taking the property of several million people to enrich yourself while destroying the market for skills you spent a lifetime building is not violence. It’s deliberate harm at immense scale. 700 million customers now get handed for free on a regular basis what would have been an income for the trained professionals upon whose property the service is built, without them having a say, or getting any share in the profits, meaning that they lose out economically at catastrophic scale.
I get that it’s an abstract concept unless you’re directly affected. But it’s real, and it’s harmful, and we should under no circumstances relativize it away.
——-
Economic violence: ”Any act or behaviour which causes economic harm to an individual. (…) for example, property damage, restricting access to financial resources, education or the labour market, or not complying with economic responsibilities, such as alimony.”
To be honest I’d rather have violence than copyright violation. I am 100% not trolling. Violence does not contribute to a dictatorship of tech oligarchs who do not respect our humanity and do not care if we are happy or depressed, employed or unemployed, or alive or dead at the end of the day.
Well, everyone has their own opinions. I imagine that if I asked someone living under bombardment whether they would prefer their current situation without any copyright violation, or having AI slop generated from their artwork without any bombs falling on their heads, they would probably prefer the latter.
I see it differently not denying your answers that are also valid extent to which I comprehend that too is a ball of yarn we understand only the exposed parts excellent article and people who are well versed in the field
There is a shared (degenerate) mentality with some publishers who give you, the writer, the privilege of paying (various amounts) to have one's work published, and then they keep all of the rights--unless your sales reach Stephen King numbers. I have this phrase going around in my head that says to me: "What's wrong with this picture?"
They treat writers, especially in academia (who often spend entire careers working on creative contributions), as oil and gas and chemical companies (et al) like Koch Industries, they treat the earth and its natural resources which are "just naively lying there" with rapacious glee. These people are the Jeffrey 'Epsteins of modern-day predatory capitalism.
Addendum: There is a "Dear Leader Disease" going around in so-called "free" countries where it seems to come with the accumulation of great wealth. I don't think it started in North Korea, but it certainly makes a keen showing there--I mean, if you need a clear example of it.
Lol it's cool that he's playing finders keepers and screaming from the rooftops that he's going to steal everything. That doesn't make it legal to act on. See watch : Anyone who sees Sam in the streets is free to light him on fire unless he opts out by filing a formal request with me and I approve it. TADA! Don't light him on fire, you'll go to prison. Just saying stupid things doesn't change reality. I'm certain he'll end up in prison, or he'll make enough starving artists angry and they won't be able to afford their meds, which would bring us full circle to trial by fire. 😎
I see signs on the back of dump trucks that say "not responsible for damage" meaning if the rocks they carry get out of the bin and hit your car, tough luck. The problem with that is tort law doesn't provide a carve out for negligence by simply saying you reserve the right to be negligent so watch out. I see the opt out thing as the same.
But what if I have a sign that says "this angry mob is not responsible for what we're about to do"? I mean surely, that should release everyone from liability and criminal charges, right? 🤣
I have no idea why Sam Altman, keep lying this way, is this pathological? If OpenAI was an honest company, we would all have the opportunity to have our say, not with hidden schemes, that requires us to know where to look at. It's amazing that they can harvest all without any consent, and now we need to opt-out, it should be the reverse, they should ask every content creator in this planet and ask for it.
This is extraction plain and simple. Nothing of what OpenAI is doing is for the benefit of the world, it's just another scam straight out of the imperialist times...
Here’s the problem with sociopaths. He wasn’t lying when he testified in Congress. He believed every word because it was politically expedient to give that answer and therefore he believed it to be true. Now, circumstances have changed. And he believes this to be true today. Whatever solves his problem is true.
1. Strong disregard for social norms, laws or rules at home, at work, in school and other public places
2. Violating the rights of others
3. Minimizing others’ feelings and how they affect other people
4. Chronic manipulation, gaslighting, denial and deceit
5. Difficulty forming healthy relationships
6. Callousness and lack of remorse
7. Acting impulsively without concern for consequences
8. Attempting to gain power and control through aggression
9. A tendency toward petty crime, physical violence or fighting
10. Substance misuse
I think that pretty much describes every owner and/or CEO of the "Big 7" tech companies, all made even worse by their insulated, isolated, filthy rich lifestyles.
Oakton: The ethos is that, if one's victims cannot get at you for whatever you do to them, then it's okay to do it, no defense or explanation needed. In other words, if I can, then I will. (If we need poster boys, look at the people who surround Trump--Heggy comes to mind.)
But thank you for the differentiated list of what it means to be a human degenerate. . . . a WARP. I would add a kind of gleefulness that comes from "getting over" on others--Russell Vought and Trump himself come to mind. I wonder what they thought of Kirk's widow forgiving his murderer.
To me the most important failing is a legal system that is too slow to meaningfully address illegal behaviors.
Microsoft benefited from this in the 1990s. By the time the DOJ went after their OS licensing practices as monopolistic, MSFT had overwhelming market share and it was a fait accompli. A slow legal system makes it a rational strategy to ignore the law if it allows you to grow quickly.
Absolutely. And so many silicon valley businesses rely on skirting regulations - just look at Uber (avoiding the rules on the taxi industry AND employment law).
Jack: Yes, justice delayed can be justice denied. On the other hand, one of the good things about most any legal system, among many, is that it allows everyone time to think about what's going down, and it enables the rule of law, which is based partly on similarly thoughtful precedent, to work its way towards true justice "for all." But the timing takes the situation out of the arena of thoughtless immediate (and lawless) response, especially of those who are commonly un-tempered anyway.
There is value in thoughtful deliberation. What is new lately is technology platforms that go from zero to complete lock-in in a handful of years, which our legal system wasn't designed for. De facto there is no way to keep tech companies from using illegal tactics to gain competitive advantage.
Jack: Yes, good point. Not that long ago (historically speaking) it took months and sometimes more for news to get around to different states and cultures. The speed, and immediate payoffs, puts a damper on the reflection that can and could make huge differences in directions and outcomes.
Also, the field where the same old but upgraded "tactics" are evident hasn't had time to even name what is legal and illegal on the applications side of the power order, and so an imbalance has quickly occurred.
The normative, might I say natural, movement is towards SELF-ORDER, in Aristotle's terms, self-mastery, according to some sort of educational /civilized and civilizing principes. The present real-politic inspires me to say to myself: Good luck with that.
Sure has been working well for the grifters running our government now. Justice delayed is justice denied. We need a modern day trust busting Teddy Roosevelt.
Next, we need an entirely new incentive system underpinning our economy and laws. The people rewarded with money and power now are pretty much just parasites on society.
" Better to have stolen and lost* than never to have stolen at all"
* a copyright infringement "battle " and settled for a tiny fraction of the $150k per infringed work that US copyright law specifies for willful infringement.
Start a sign up sheet for people to opt in to the posse. He'll have to spend all of his money on security and won't feel safe making blatant threats anymore... maybe, but at least you'll have exercised your duty to warn. 🤣
Graham Lovelace: We are in an age of democratic failure--where what is supposed to be a transfer of the power of responsibility and self-regulation that goes with freedom TO the individual, got "disappeared" down the self-serving corporate capitalist "behind the curtain" rabbit hole where "freedom" now means "license.
Creative people just cannot wait to spend all their "free" time litigating. If you do not care about endless numbers in your bank account, you don't count.
Depends on who's counting. I have zero respect for these thieves who have no creativity of their own to contribute. They don't innovate; they steal from the work of their betters—or buy it from innovative startups.
Oaktown: Me thinks they don't care if anyone respects them. They don't live in a small town anymore. They've "hit bottom." My guess is it's just a matter of time because the "bending" of reality won't support it forever.
Artists work for years, years, to perfect their crafts, only to have their creativity and effort be stolen, no compensation. Altman may even want to be thanked for his generous theft.
Engineers and tech people may feel the pain as their years of schooling and experience eventually is nullified by technology canceling them.
This is a bonanza for intellectual property lawyers. Discovery may be challenging at first but once images have been shown to have been scraped and ingested, it'll be all over but the crying. The very lack of transparency in LLMs will make juries assume that the content was co-opted. Already the gross economics of AI are starting to be worrisome. With train wreck litigation being a near certainty, plenty will look elsewhere for a place to invest.
The more they scrap content, the more videos look similar. Why? Because the creativity has died with social media. The cinematography, if people still remember what it is, hasn’t evolved since The Matrix, 1999. Every time I see an AI video which is not photorealistic, I see the movies which were scrapped. So educate yourself, watch movies, do actual irl activities and use social media including YouTube to learn, create an online community, promote your work or passion.
Nobody needs a trial when things are this blatant. He already confessed to grand larceny, publicly, while making threats against the public in general with his disgusting fever dreams of what his weapons can't do "...yet".
Did Osama Bin Laden need a trial to get put "on sight" and touched by Seal Team 6? Lol no. His crimes were notorious and he freely admitted them in public disclosures with a dumb look on his face that let us know he thought he was untouchable. Sam isn't even hiding in a bunker... yet.
In fact, bin Laden probably should have gotten a trial, and his summary execution was probably illegal. Many people published legal analyses arguing as much.
Sorry…that's a bad folk interpretation of “corpus delicti,” or even worse, of “habeas corpus,” one that one mostly hears about from particularly foolish criminals. And even then, more in fiction than in reality. You don't truly believe that is how law works, right?
You're working pretty hard to indict heroes and defend a mass murderer. Go ahead and camp out with Sammy and see how things turn out in the end, since your dead hero failed you already.
What's the difference between a bunker and a prison cell? At least in prison there are people who can go into the world for fresh supplies. That bunker is going to get stinky fast. Let them rot. Money can't save you from being dumb enough to seal yourself in with your own farts. 🤣
Yeah, even in the 80's they were having us do fallout drills with air raid sirens and kids going into the bunkers at school. That's how I know they get smelly quick. 🤣
See also DallE3: built on 1.5 billion images already opted-out at time of training, by way of Haveibeentrained.com.
Scammy announces proprietary opt-out scheme for scraping, only to ignore it.
Then announces blackbox opt-out page to which rights holders can upload their works manually, one at a time, infuriating everyone.
Then promises copyright management system that, six months later, no resources were ever committed to according to inside sources.
And then comes Ghibli Day.
And you know the sad part here, Gary? He’s made you complicit.
Every prompted image rewards his theft.
Every published chatGPT image devalues the underlying images, as he gives them away for free. You pay him, he pays nobody.
It’s an act of normalizing what ought to be condemned and rejected.
It’s an act of economic violence against rightsholders.
Please stop.
i only use them for satire and social commentary
I know a great many creators who admire your honesty, steadfastness and moral support. Who took solace in you standing up to the hype when most others lost their marbles or lied through their teeth about how this all works.
When you describe an image you want, and send that description to OpenAI for them to produce an image for you, they provide you with a direct replacement service to the stock archives, image banks and commission options available out there, with a product based directly on those competitors’ works.
Scam Altman and the rest of the AI hypesters have successfully rolled out a vile battery of coordinated lies. The two most egregious are “it learns like people” (to get out of licensing their essential source material) and “you made this” to impart people who never created images professionally with a false sense of having made what they ordered.
They further reinforce this with the supporting lie of “just a tool” to try and redefine the word completely. Rather than something empty and inert that relies on whatever inputs and skills you add, they want it to now mean an end-to-end service that remixes stolen works for their users without any of their direct involvement.
Sadly, they seem to have successfully imparted these toxic mental models in you.
They have made you believe that you made this picture from your own skill and imagination, when in reality you only suggested an idea, which they then illustrated, based on assets they compiled from their competition.
And they sell this end-to-end commission substitute wildly below cost. The compute comes with tax breaks, the operation runs at a loss, and the proprietary third party assets it’s all based on came at a 100% piracy subsidy.
Nobody can compete against a business that is allowed to scrape everything they ever made for free to sell substitute remixes below cost.
It’s predatory price dumping that obliterates the market for original art in real time.
Paying them for it normalizes their practice and fills their coffers which currently salary 60+ lawyers in ten lawsuits fighting the ones whose market they are busy destroying.
This is why creators are aghast at this behavior: criticizing him while rewarding him monetarily for killing them in the marketplace rings very hollow.
I’m sure many would be happy to lend you their art, or even give it to you, were you just to ask.
There are many places that provide free quality images for just attribution, or not even that. I list 25 ranked options in 6 categories here:
https://johancb.substack.com/p/slop-for-attention
I would also happily lend you my Altman cartoons:
https://johancb.substack.com/p/altman-and-swooper-comic-sample
And can recommend a search on cartoonstock.com ($9) or betterimagesofai.com (free).
i think you are missing my point but i don’t think this conversation will go anywhere. i have a licensed cartoonstock on the first slide of my upcoming talk though.
Dude why be so dismissive of his points? There seem to be some good ones there that seem to align with yours.
The best use of it. It’s great to do sport banters too by Instagram and Threads. As Adrian Dittmann who was Elon Musk that day said: sports is a form of simulated combat over actual combat with no application in real life except MMA and rally. Moreover, sports are gay. End of quote.
That’s why sports have moved to Instagram.
Let's not exaggerate what violence is, please. 60,000 people or more have been killed in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Ukraine. Over 100,000 people have been killed in Sudan. Countless more have been mutilated, bruised, cut, bashed. That's violence.
Someone using copyrighted images to train an image generation model is bad, yes, but you're still alive. Not a single bone in your body has been broken. Not a single hair has been ripped out. Copyright violation is illegal, but it is not violence.
Jonah: My guess is that everyone here understands your fundamental point that physical harm and death strike at one's physical existence which is foundational to other kinds of unwelcome intrusive and predatory actions. However, there are degrees of violence, and other unjust and careless harms that easily reek havoc on one's existence--and insofar as they interfere with an aspect of one's life, like one's economic, moral, social, politic, spiritual elements, these "violate" and so are also violence.
Perhaps you've not had such intrusions on your integrity visited on you by a predator who sees you as a slave --like stealing work that you put a part of your soul into, not to mention time; so that for you, the idea of "illegalities" can remain in the unfettered abstract, away from your sense of well-being and even existence. If so, I don't know whether to call you lucky or unlucky, considering the obvious consequences to the quality of intelligent empathy you seem to possess.
As someone who has published many things online, including some for pay, which have undoubtedly been caught up in the model training frenzy, I daresay I have experienced precisely that “unjust harm” that you mention. I have also had actual violence, physical harm, visited upon me by someone in a position of authority and trust. Among those two things, I know exactly which one I consider to be violence.
I resist this equation so strongly because of the unfortunate tendency that some have to use it in the context of claimed notions of self-defense, such as (to use a recent example) allegedly selling dangerous, addictive substances being considered an act of violence that justifies responding with actual weapons and killing the alleged perpetrator. You may see a hierarchy of violence, such that a copyright violation does not justify a bullet to the head. I certainly hope so. But I fear that for many people, using the same language to describe them only facilitates the attempt to recur to violent solutions at the first instance.
Johah: Yes, I was referring to degrees (of violence/and the experience of being violated as an article of justice). The problem, then, has switched from actual instances of violence (in degrees, and also according to your note), to the lack of nuance in the thinking of "many people" and the reduction of meaning to ONLY ONE, and to the extreme version of the term.
My view is that simple and shallow minds or just lack of development (as in those you and I both fear) is also a stage of potential, but not always fulfilled, human growth--these will always be with us; and much is to be said for choices of communications and methods in context. (One would not stop to talk about distinctions when running from a terrorist with a gun.)
However, to ignore distinctions (and degrees) in a reflective context as this one is, at the service of such fears or as a matter of course, only leaves the field to a lesser version of the status quo and with little hope for improvement.
And then there's reality--there are, in fact, differences in states of "being and feeling violated." And the leftover feelings of having one's work stolen doesn't go away with a good drink and a movie. Also, that you would choose one over the other only secures your own understanding of the fact which, of course, I am glad of.
We agree that violence is bad. And physical is in many ways worse than other forms such as sexual, psychological, verbal, financial etc.
I agree that killing is worse than stealing. Most of us do. Losing your livelihood is not as bad as losing your life, which means that robbing someone of their livelihood is not as bad as robbing someone of their life.
But let’s not pretend that taking the property of several million people to enrich yourself while destroying the market for skills you spent a lifetime building is not violence. It’s deliberate harm at immense scale. 700 million customers now get handed for free on a regular basis what would have been an income for the trained professionals upon whose property the service is built, without them having a say, or getting any share in the profits, meaning that they lose out economically at catastrophic scale.
I get that it’s an abstract concept unless you’re directly affected. But it’s real, and it’s harmful, and we should under no circumstances relativize it away.
——-
Economic violence: ”Any act or behaviour which causes economic harm to an individual. (…) for example, property damage, restricting access to financial resources, education or the labour market, or not complying with economic responsibilities, such as alimony.”
https://eige.europa.eu/publications-resources/thesaurus/terms/1229?language_content_entity=en
Oh, I am most certainly directly affected, as are many more people than you may believe.
Sorry to hear. I can imagine a fairly large number.
To be honest I’d rather have violence than copyright violation. I am 100% not trolling. Violence does not contribute to a dictatorship of tech oligarchs who do not respect our humanity and do not care if we are happy or depressed, employed or unemployed, or alive or dead at the end of the day.
Well, everyone has their own opinions. I imagine that if I asked someone living under bombardment whether they would prefer their current situation without any copyright violation, or having AI slop generated from their artwork without any bombs falling on their heads, they would probably prefer the latter.
It's a slip-AI-ry slope
I see it differently not denying your answers that are also valid extent to which I comprehend that too is a ball of yarn we understand only the exposed parts excellent article and people who are well versed in the field
There is a shared (degenerate) mentality with some publishers who give you, the writer, the privilege of paying (various amounts) to have one's work published, and then they keep all of the rights--unless your sales reach Stephen King numbers. I have this phrase going around in my head that says to me: "What's wrong with this picture?"
They treat writers, especially in academia (who often spend entire careers working on creative contributions), as oil and gas and chemical companies (et al) like Koch Industries, they treat the earth and its natural resources which are "just naively lying there" with rapacious glee. These people are the Jeffrey 'Epsteins of modern-day predatory capitalism.
Addendum: There is a "Dear Leader Disease" going around in so-called "free" countries where it seems to come with the accumulation of great wealth. I don't think it started in North Korea, but it certainly makes a keen showing there--I mean, if you need a clear example of it.
Altman translation: "I'm going to steal your stuff unless you explicitly tell me I can't."
Well, that's... brazen.
Also, given the history, why should we believe the "promise"?
Lol it's cool that he's playing finders keepers and screaming from the rooftops that he's going to steal everything. That doesn't make it legal to act on. See watch : Anyone who sees Sam in the streets is free to light him on fire unless he opts out by filing a formal request with me and I approve it. TADA! Don't light him on fire, you'll go to prison. Just saying stupid things doesn't change reality. I'm certain he'll end up in prison, or he'll make enough starving artists angry and they won't be able to afford their meds, which would bring us full circle to trial by fire. 😎
I see signs on the back of dump trucks that say "not responsible for damage" meaning if the rocks they carry get out of the bin and hit your car, tough luck. The problem with that is tort law doesn't provide a carve out for negligence by simply saying you reserve the right to be negligent so watch out. I see the opt out thing as the same.
But what if I have a sign that says "this angry mob is not responsible for what we're about to do"? I mean surely, that should release everyone from liability and criminal charges, right? 🤣
I have no idea why Sam Altman, keep lying this way, is this pathological? If OpenAI was an honest company, we would all have the opportunity to have our say, not with hidden schemes, that requires us to know where to look at. It's amazing that they can harvest all without any consent, and now we need to opt-out, it should be the reverse, they should ask every content creator in this planet and ask for it.
This is extraction plain and simple. Nothing of what OpenAI is doing is for the benefit of the world, it's just another scam straight out of the imperialist times...
Here’s the problem with sociopaths. He wasn’t lying when he testified in Congress. He believed every word because it was politically expedient to give that answer and therefore he believed it to be true. Now, circumstances have changed. And he believes this to be true today. Whatever solves his problem is true.
Sorry, I don't believe for a minute Altman believes his lies; he just doesn't care.
Top ten traits of a sociopath: [source: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/sociopath-personality-disorder]
1. Strong disregard for social norms, laws or rules at home, at work, in school and other public places
2. Violating the rights of others
3. Minimizing others’ feelings and how they affect other people
4. Chronic manipulation, gaslighting, denial and deceit
5. Difficulty forming healthy relationships
6. Callousness and lack of remorse
7. Acting impulsively without concern for consequences
8. Attempting to gain power and control through aggression
9. A tendency toward petty crime, physical violence or fighting
10. Substance misuse
I think that pretty much describes every owner and/or CEO of the "Big 7" tech companies, all made even worse by their insulated, isolated, filthy rich lifestyles.
Oakton: The ethos is that, if one's victims cannot get at you for whatever you do to them, then it's okay to do it, no defense or explanation needed. In other words, if I can, then I will. (If we need poster boys, look at the people who surround Trump--Heggy comes to mind.)
But thank you for the differentiated list of what it means to be a human degenerate. . . . a WARP. I would add a kind of gleefulness that comes from "getting over" on others--Russell Vought and Trump himself come to mind. I wonder what they thought of Kirk's widow forgiving his murderer.
I think Agent Orange summed it up for all of them: "I hate my opponent, and I don't want the best for them." Cruelty is the point.
Oakton: Yes, gleeful cruelty.
The incentives in our economy are all wrong. Winner take all, ask forgiveness instead of permission, move fast and break (democracy).
To me the most important failing is a legal system that is too slow to meaningfully address illegal behaviors.
Microsoft benefited from this in the 1990s. By the time the DOJ went after their OS licensing practices as monopolistic, MSFT had overwhelming market share and it was a fait accompli. A slow legal system makes it a rational strategy to ignore the law if it allows you to grow quickly.
Absolutely. And so many silicon valley businesses rely on skirting regulations - just look at Uber (avoiding the rules on the taxi industry AND employment law).
Jack: Yes, justice delayed can be justice denied. On the other hand, one of the good things about most any legal system, among many, is that it allows everyone time to think about what's going down, and it enables the rule of law, which is based partly on similarly thoughtful precedent, to work its way towards true justice "for all." But the timing takes the situation out of the arena of thoughtless immediate (and lawless) response, especially of those who are commonly un-tempered anyway.
There is value in thoughtful deliberation. What is new lately is technology platforms that go from zero to complete lock-in in a handful of years, which our legal system wasn't designed for. De facto there is no way to keep tech companies from using illegal tactics to gain competitive advantage.
Jack: Yes, good point. Not that long ago (historically speaking) it took months and sometimes more for news to get around to different states and cultures. The speed, and immediate payoffs, puts a damper on the reflection that can and could make huge differences in directions and outcomes.
Also, the field where the same old but upgraded "tactics" are evident hasn't had time to even name what is legal and illegal on the applications side of the power order, and so an imbalance has quickly occurred.
The normative, might I say natural, movement is towards SELF-ORDER, in Aristotle's terms, self-mastery, according to some sort of educational /civilized and civilizing principes. The present real-politic inspires me to say to myself: Good luck with that.
Sure has been working well for the grifters running our government now. Justice delayed is justice denied. We need a modern day trust busting Teddy Roosevelt.
Next, we need an entirely new incentive system underpinning our economy and laws. The people rewarded with money and power now are pretty much just parasites on society.
"Ask for dollars, not forgiveness"
As AI-kespeare said
" Better to have stolen and lost* than never to have stolen at all"
* a copyright infringement "battle " and settled for a tiny fraction of the $150k per infringed work that US copyright law specifies for willful infringement.
Great "Guest" article in today's New York Times regarding recent copyright litigation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/opinion/anthropic-chatbot-lawsuit-books.html?unlocked_article_code=1.p08.EbQE.bVUbTcthiXEm&smid=url-share
Thank you for this!!! Gives me hope. Spread the word.
Dude is in dire need of an ass whupping.
Start a sign up sheet for people to opt in to the posse. He'll have to spend all of his money on security and won't feel safe making blatant threats anymore... maybe, but at least you'll have exercised your duty to warn. 🤣
He has to opt out of the ass-whupping
Which begs the question: without 100% transparency how will creators know their content has been scraped, and that they need to opt out?
Graham Lovelace: We are in an age of democratic failure--where what is supposed to be a transfer of the power of responsibility and self-regulation that goes with freedom TO the individual, got "disappeared" down the self-serving corporate capitalist "behind the curtain" rabbit hole where "freedom" now means "license.
Creative people just cannot wait to spend all their "free" time litigating. If you do not care about endless numbers in your bank account, you don't count.
Depends on who's counting. I have zero respect for these thieves who have no creativity of their own to contribute. They don't innovate; they steal from the work of their betters—or buy it from innovative startups.
Oaktown: Me thinks they don't care if anyone respects them. They don't live in a small town anymore. They've "hit bottom." My guess is it's just a matter of time because the "bending" of reality won't support it forever.
Well, I hope you're right, but I'm not as optimistic as you are. You're right; they don't care—and they have too much money and power.
that's the fun part: You don't:)))
Thought so!
Artists work for years, years, to perfect their crafts, only to have their creativity and effort be stolen, no compensation. Altman may even want to be thanked for his generous theft.
Engineers and tech people may feel the pain as their years of schooling and experience eventually is nullified by technology canceling them.
This is a bonanza for intellectual property lawyers. Discovery may be challenging at first but once images have been shown to have been scraped and ingested, it'll be all over but the crying. The very lack of transparency in LLMs will make juries assume that the content was co-opted. Already the gross economics of AI are starting to be worrisome. With train wreck litigation being a near certainty, plenty will look elsewhere for a place to invest.
The more they scrap content, the more videos look similar. Why? Because the creativity has died with social media. The cinematography, if people still remember what it is, hasn’t evolved since The Matrix, 1999. Every time I see an AI video which is not photorealistic, I see the movies which were scrapped. So educate yourself, watch movies, do actual irl activities and use social media including YouTube to learn, create an online community, promote your work or passion.
Reminiscent of the WEF's " You will own nothing & be happy ".
What is the status of any current lawsuits around these issues? Does anyone know?
Nobody needs a trial when things are this blatant. He already confessed to grand larceny, publicly, while making threats against the public in general with his disgusting fever dreams of what his weapons can't do "...yet".
Did Osama Bin Laden need a trial to get put "on sight" and touched by Seal Team 6? Lol no. His crimes were notorious and he freely admitted them in public disclosures with a dumb look on his face that let us know he thought he was untouchable. Sam isn't even hiding in a bunker... yet.
In fact, bin Laden probably should have gotten a trial, and his summary execution was probably illegal. Many people published legal analyses arguing as much.
Acshullay, no body, no crime. Try again, terrorist.
Sorry…that's a bad folk interpretation of “corpus delicti,” or even worse, of “habeas corpus,” one that one mostly hears about from particularly foolish criminals. And even then, more in fiction than in reality. You don't truly believe that is how law works, right?
You're working pretty hard to indict heroes and defend a mass murderer. Go ahead and camp out with Sammy and see how things turn out in the end, since your dead hero failed you already.
I'm sure he has one well stocked and ready. They all do.
What's the difference between a bunker and a prison cell? At least in prison there are people who can go into the world for fresh supplies. That bunker is going to get stinky fast. Let them rot. Money can't save you from being dumb enough to seal yourself in with your own farts. 🤣
Totally agree, as did Bob Dylan back when people were building bomb shelters in the '50s:
Let Me Die In My Footsteps
[Verse 1]
I will not go down under the ground
’Cause somebody tells me that death’s coming 'round
An’ I will not carry myself down to die
When I go to my grave my head will be high
[Refrain]
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground
[Verse 2]
There’s been rumors of war and wars that have been
The meaning of life has been lost in the wind
And some people thinking that the end is close by
’Stead of learning to live they are learning to die
[Verse 3]
I don’t know if I’m smart but I think I can see
When someone is pulling the wool over me
And if this war comes and death’s all around
Let me die on this land ’fore I die underground
[Verse 4]
There’s always been people that have to cause fear
They’ve been talking about war now for many long years
I have read all their statements and I’ve not said a word
But now Lawd God, let my poor voice be heard
[Verse 5]
Let me drink from the waters where the mountain streams flood
Let the smell of wildflowers flow free through my blood
Let me sleep in your meadows with the green grassy leaves
Let me walk down the highway with my brother in peace
[Verse 6]
Go out in your country where the land meets the sun
See the craters and the canyons where the waterfalls run
Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho
Let every state in this union seep down deep in your souls
And you’ll die in your footsteps
Before you go down under the ground
Yeah, even in the 80's they were having us do fallout drills with air raid sirens and kids going into the bunkers at school. That's how I know they get smelly quick. 🤣
LOL.
What is the status of any current lawsuits around these issues? Does anyone know?
What a ... insert epithet of choice.
Nothing like enclosure movements for screwing the common good.
Jason Lanier pointed this out years ago.
Hopefully someone will work out how to reverse engineer all the protection and re-public them.