Copyright is bad, actually, and maybe not all the LLMs are
MCLD 3002 | Sun 09 Aug 11:45 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Presented by
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Matthew Garrett
@mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
Matthew has spent too much time with computers. He enjoys being at conferences with similarly afflicted individuals in order to bond over the shared pain. He is passionate about free software and individual liberty, and is also fascinated about ways we can broaden the autonomy that free software brings to users.
Matthew Garrett
@mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
Matthew has spent too much time with computers. He enjoys being at conferences with similarly afflicted individuals in order to bond over the shared pain. He is passionate about free software and individual liberty, and is also fascinated about ways we can broaden the autonomy that free software brings to users.
Abstract
The rise of LLMs has resulted in a range of awful real world outcomes - volunteer run services brought to their knees by scrapers, creative workers being pushed out of jobs by machines doing their work less well, data center construction draining local resources. And yet the reality is that, in the right hands, they can be useful, but the reaction of the free software community has largely been focused on the impact of copyright on their output.
Let's look back at the beginning of the free software scene, a time where it wasn't even clear that software could be copyrighted. Let's think about our ideals. Let's consider what the optimal end goals are. And let's think about whether there's an ethical path to enable this technology to be usable by end users in a way that enhance their freedom without diminishing free software and without destroying the planet in the process.
(The answer might be no! That's ok! I am trying to make a conversation happen)
The rise of LLMs has resulted in a range of awful real world outcomes - volunteer run services brought to their knees by scrapers, creative workers being pushed out of jobs by machines doing their work less well, data center construction draining local resources. And yet the reality is that, in the right hands, they can be useful, but the reaction of the free software community has largely been focused on the impact of copyright on their output.
Let's look back at the beginning of the free software scene, a time where it wasn't even clear that software could be copyrighted. Let's think about our ideals. Let's consider what the optimal end goals are. And let's think about whether there's an ethical path to enable this technology to be usable by end users in a way that enhance their freedom without diminishing free software and without destroying the planet in the process.
(The answer might be no! That's ok! I am trying to make a conversation happen)