Elton John unhappy about government letting AI use copyrighted music to create new works

[Retro]

At first glance, it sounds like Elton John has a point, until you think about it and realise that all music is built off the back of existing music, ie it's never created in a vacuum, so what's the difference here? Seems hypocritical of him to get upset over AI being able to use existing music to construct new, original work. I'd like to see him create a new, original song that's unlike anything that's gone before. It can't be done.

Sir Elton John has called the UK government “absolute losers” over proposals to let tech firms use copyright-protected work without permission.

The singer and songwriter said it was a “criminal offence” to change copyright law in favour of artificial intelligence companies.

In an interview on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, John said the government was on course to “rob young people of their legacy and their income”, adding: “It’s a criminal offence, I think. The government are just being absolute losers, and I’m very angry about it.”

John described the technology secretary, Peter Kyle, as a “bit of a moron” and said he would take ministers to court if the government did not change its plans on copyright. Last week, Kyle was accused of being too close to big tech after analysis showed a sharp increase in his department’s meetings with companies such as Google, Amazon, Apple and Meta since Labour won the election last July.

Elton John calls UK government ‘absolute losers’ over AI copyright plans

Songwriter says he thinks it is a ‘criminal offence’ to let tech firms use protected work without permission

www.theguardian.com

 

[Tiffany]

This is an issue in the states too. I'm on the side of respecting intellectual property. Maybe some good will come from this since Elton John is raising the issue.

 

[Retro]

@Hitcore @petermarkley you're both content creators, so what do you make of this?

 

[petermarkley]

what's the difference here?

The difference is human thought and creativity. In art, “original” doesn’t mean “unlike anything that’s gone before;” it just means that some thought and work was put into it that inspires people and moves our cultural dialogue forward.

Human beings have intelligence that AI fundamentally does not and can never have, which means they have the capacity for creative thought and work which AI fundamentally does not and can never have. You need comprehension and higher reasoning faculties to do that. The only ongoing human “creative” work that AI replaces is lazy work that is cliche and in a way kind of deserves to be replaced.

So I’m not worried about the future. It’s like if you had a room of lazy people saying stupid, mindless things (which people often do), then someone made a robot that learned to parrot those stupid mindless things and stole attention away from the lazy people. Okay, big deal. Who cares?

However, past work is another matter because the originality of a work is relative to its historical context and the moment in time when it was produced. Yesterday’s artistic innovation becomes today’s artistic tropes, by definition. That means as it ages, the value of an artistic work becomes vulnerable to misperception and exploitation.

This is more like if you had a room full of intelligent, attentive people having a stimulating and thoughtful conversation, then someone makes a robot that learns to repeat each person’s thoughts as they’re saying them, blasting them to a new audience but acting as though the thoughts were its own and trying to take credit for them. This is much more obnoxious and undermining than the first example. The robot is basically stealing the people’s words right out of their mouths.

Beyond just being annoying, this could have a real negative impact on the public’s acknowledgment of the actual authors; but only among lazy, inattentive masses. Anyone close to the situation who can see what’s happening would clearly know who was the real author of each thought, and furthermore would likely share the author’s outrage at being stolen from.

I think this is the threat that AI poses. It is very far from an existential threat: it’s more of a practical and economic threat due to the free replicating power of AI and the ignorance of consumers.

• Yes, AI is stealing from artists, and it’s annoying and frustrating—but not because AI is “replacing” us. In fact quite the opposite: because AI artwork is inherently a cheap fraud that doesn’t deserve any acknowledgement whatsoever. The only work it can actually steal is work that is already published, so basically it has shortened the (already sometimes too short) amount of time a true artist can profit from their work, which probably will make life a tad more difficult for us. Bad, but not cataclysmic.

• On the other hand, optimistically speaking it might serve to expose and erode the artificial value that society previously ascribed to the lazy work of less skilled artists, thereby motivating deeper innovation and maybe increasing demand for true skill or creativity. I don’t think AI really deserves credit for this benefit; it’s more of a happy accident resulting from something unethical. But it’s definitely a silver living to look at.

Overall, I just think AI “artwork” is like … massively, MASSIVELY overhyped into either a godsend or a doomsday, depending on which camp you’re in … Both are wrong and it’s ultimately a nothingburger.

But yes in principle I do sympathize with Elton John; he’s right, AI artwork is a subtle form of theft / plagiarism on an unprecedented scale.

 

[Retro]

The difference is human thought and creativity. In art, “original” doesn’t mean “unlike anything that’s gone before;” it just means that some thought and work was put into it that inspires people and moves our cultural dialogue forward.

I actually got that from an argument I read somewhere which made sense to me, but I can't remember where that was now. I don't think we quite agree on this one because if you analyse any song (a pro musician can do that much better than I can), you'll find influences of many other songs and musical structures within it, with very little truly unique. For example, what gives a song that "era" sound, eg 60s/70s/80s/90s/2000s etc? It's the influence of the music around at the time from current for the time to right at the start decades before and also the advancement of technology which has a massive impact on it.

Human beings have intelligence that AI fundamentally does not and can never have, which means they have the capacity for creative thought and work which AI fundamentally does not and can never have. You need comprehension and higher reasoning faculties to do that.

Again, I only partially agree with that. What exactly is true intelligence like we have? That's something that's never been adequately defined and I don't claim to either. Given that, I think it's basically just a very complex set of comparisons we make very quickly and that modern AI mimics to some degree, enough to be true comprehension at some level, I believe. That true comprehension will only increase over time as the AI advances.

For example, WhatsApp now has an AI function built into it that you can talk to just like a person and that thing can actually hold a meaningful conversation, not just basic answer question format. I believe it could actually fool me in some scenarios if I was given a blind test, it's that good, ie it passes the Turing test. It's deep into the uncanny valley and also scary, depending on one's point of view. It doesn't scare me, rather, I find it fascinating, but I can see how it can threaten certain livelihoods. I think one of the main giveaways that this is AI is the shear amount of specific detail that it can give on any subject. Humans just don't give encyclopedic answers like that - in double quick time and without a single typo or grammatical error, either.

Given how close current AI is, I do believe that AI will achieve true sentience and sooner than we think, too. I stress that I'm not stating this as a fact, but something that seems likely to me given what I'm seeing.

Hence, what people today consider to be "AI slop", with some justification - it definitely has a certain feel to it whether it's text, images or video - will be true creativeness in the future in my opinion. Just look at how rapidly it's advancing.

Also, it's absolutely not stealing, but potentially infringement and that's why there's a separate word for it. Keeping this simple by limiting it to the copying of music, movies or computer software for now, it's easy to see why the distinction. Stealing means depriving someone of a physical item that they have such as a car by taking it without permission and with no intention of returning it. With copying, it's an infringement, because the creator still has their copy, but another person has made a copy without permission and has either kept it and / or shared it, again, without permission. It's really that simple and it's right there in the dictionary. So, as much as it feels like stealing, it really isn't. The same can be said of any other kind of content.

So, as we've established that AI definitely doesn't deprive any creator of what they created, the only thing it can possibly be is an infringement. Again, think about the zillions of facts and general knowledge that we have in our heads from life experience mixed in with what's been formally tought and self learned. Why is it that we can be exposed to these things, absorb them and it's not considered infringement, but when an AI does it, it is? Seems like a double standard to me.

Let's take an example: Fred wants to write sci-fi like Isaac Azimov (what an exceptional author I think you'll agree) and other great sci-fi writers. A really good place to start is by reading their books which are readily available everywhere, sometimes for free. Also, having a solid understanding of all science areas, especially physics, is important for this genre. Give it a few years and Fred might well be able to write such books well and make good money from them, if he has the aptitude.

Now, let's apply this to AI and let's assume this is 20 years in the future where it's understanding of what it's absorbe is much greater than now. Being a supercomputer that can assimilate vast quantities of data at lightning speeds, something no human could ever get close to doing, and then being able to understand it all, it can become a prolific author in no time flat. What's the difference other than that the AI is vastly better at it? One could argue that it didn't pay to read any of those books, or learn all that science and hence infringed, but again, even that's a weak argument, because the sci-fi books can be loaned or given away by friends and family, or be in the public domain, all of which is legal and science info is readily available for free from the likes of Wikipedia and YouTube, among many other sites, again all public domain and legal. That argument can only work where the AI gets its info from a paywalled site that it's broken into without paying the entrance fee and that's highly unlikely to happen. For example, The Telegraph is one of those paywalled newspapers, but guess what: a fair amount of its content is given away for free on yahoo.com as they've got a contract with them, so if the AI reads that, then what has it infringed? Nothing. It simply knows it like any person reading it would. Note that BBC content is never on there.

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Finally, I've moved this thread to the AI section, where I should have put it originally, my apologies. It doesn't change the link, just where it's shown in the forum structure.

 

[petermarkley]

I don't think we quite agree on this one …

I’ll have to echo that. We have launched immediately into worldview topics, which is no real surprise.

Basically, I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see. Just because the intelligence that humans have is somewhat ineffable, does not mean it’s reducible to anything resembling what AI possesses or will possess; and I believe we are going to see the consequences of that played out in the next few decades.

AI will continue to improve but eventually asymptote far short of true comprehension or intelligence. What we see with AI conversations right now is definitely not that; in my opinion, the Turing Test is a completely inadequate metric for these discussions. And my basis for saying all that is merely my religious beliefs about the world and what makes us human, so it’s only natural that you would disagree.

Allow me to quote a Twitter thread I once wrote:

While I respect #BlakeLemoine’s technical expertise, he is right that his ideas of #SentientAI are based on worldview—and in his (and many others’) case, a flawed one.

Humans do not have moral rights because they can think, feel, & reason; they have rights because they share a Creator. It’s about ownership and authority.

Humans by definition cannot create something that shares their Creator, nor therefore their moral rights.

Any human created by God has moral rights, whether or not they can “pass the Turing test.”

Conversely, any creation by a human is owned by that human & is under their authority to do with as they please.

Anthropomorphizing AI is a fundamental category error.

The concept of “moral rights” here runs parallel to the concept of creativity that we are discussing.

You'll find influences of many other songs and musical structures within it, with very little truly unique. … What's the difference other than that the AI is vastly better at it?

The difference is that you have already retrospectively defined the genre that both Fred and the AI are competing inside. Basically you have made Fred compete with a computer at a computer task, rather than a human task. The thing that makes Fred a human is his ability to think beyond what’s been done before and maybe even pioneer the next genre.

To me, that’s not a fake phenomenon as you seem to imply. Yes, maybe 90% of artwork out there is a lot less original than we might think, and true creativity is a rare thing. But what did Buddy Holly do when he basically invented Rock and Roll? Was that something that even the most advanced AI of the future, if trained only on music & culture up to the time of Buddy Holly, could have ever done in a million years? I say no. Not everyone is a true artist, but true art is exclusive to the human soul.

Also, it's absolutely not stealing, but potentially infringement and that's why there's a separate word for it.

Okay, fair correction—but I don’t want us to talk past each other. Substitute the word “infringement” instead of “stealing” in my comment above and I think the entire point still stands.

 

[Retro]

Peter, I'm gonna reply to your posts tomorrow as they're long and it's late over here. It's only quickie posts at this time!