Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youā€™ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

Last weekā€™s thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

  • gerikson@awful.systems
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    1 month ago

    The Bookseller: Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff

    Penguin Random House (PRH) has amended its copyright wording across all imprints globally, confirming it will appear ā€œin imprint pages across our marketsā€. The new wording states: ā€œNo part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systemsā€, and will be included in all new titles and any backlist titles that are reprinted.

    Now that the content mafia has realized GenAI isnā€™t gonna let them get rid of all the expensive and troublesome human talent. itā€™s time to give Big AI a wedgie.

    • bitofhope@awful.systems
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      1 month ago

      Itā€™s weird how rarely I see people point this, but in theory this kind of boilerplate should be technically meaningless. If copyright protections include the privilege to use the work for training a machine learning algorithm, you need explicit permission anyway. OTOH if itā€™s fair use or otherwise not something copyright law is concerned with, the copyright holderā€™s objection doesnā€™t matter.

      For the record, I think AI models are derivative works and thus theyā€™re not only infringing on typical ā€œall rights reservedā€ works, but also things such as Free software whose license terms require attribution if used in derivative work, and especially share-alike copyleft licensed work.

      • gerikson@awful.systems
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        1 month ago

        I thinkt itā€™s pretty well-lknown that Spotify got all its initial music from Oink. They moved fast, got dominant, and were able to present the record labels with a big audience prepared to pay for streaming music. The labels quickly ensured theyā€™d get the lionā€™s share of that revenue.

        OpenAI and friends tried the same thing - scrape everything, build AGI, reap the rewards. Except it didnā€™t work, and theyā€™re in a much worse position morally. Even if they can get a judgement that what theyā€™re doing is legal, it will cost them a lot in litigation fees, coupled with the public perception that these culture vampires are ripping off the poor honest author. Not a good place to be in.

    • BlueMonday1984@awful.systems
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      1 month ago

      Now that the content mafia has realized GenAI isnā€™t gonna let them get rid of all the expensive and troublesome human talent. itā€™s time to give Big AI a wedgie.

      Considering the massive(ly inflated) valuations running around Big AI and the massive amounts of stolen work that powers the likes of CrAIyon, ChatGPT, DALL-E and others, I suspect the content mafia is likely gonna try and squeeze every last red cent they can out of the AI industry.

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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        1 month ago

        At some point, something is going to reveal that all the money in AI has gone into power costs for datacenters and NVidia chips and that the AI companies themselves arenā€™t doing so hot. I hope itā€™s the discovery process for some of the inevitable lawsuits.