> ... there is a reasonably strong argument that it was wrong to use copyrighted material for AI training without paying royalties nor even asking for permission. But equally, every country wants to have the most powerful models and enforcing such royalties would make it effectively impossible to train them as the amount of material required would cost an insane amount in royalty fees.

i think you're spot on this is one of the key arguments made beneath the surface. what i find so strikingly frustrating about it is, so many of the ai cultists [0] will imply and sometimes even outright say that writers, artists, musicians are silly useless and overvalued and the work artists do is entirely frivolous. then next breath explain why those artist's work is one of the most important things for a model to be trained on. suddenly art is very important. we absolutely must have access to their work. but also we shouldnt pay them because their work is silly and unimportant.

if an artists (musician, writer, journalist, painter, etc...) work is useless, then obviously you dont need it for training. if their work is imperative and you absolutely must use it, then pay for it.

ive noticed this with ai companies a lot. over and over again they contradict themselves to the core.

1) art is silly and not important enough to pay for but its absolutely foundational and we must be given unfettered access or our models will suck.

2) "our models are the smartest thing in the entire world. also, you're a dipshit if you trust them at all."

ill say it again, if removing art and culture from the training sets would render your model useless, then obviously pay for it.

[0] when i say cultists, im not talking about normal people who use ai. im talking about an entirely different group, we all know the types im talking about.