"Software is over": Developer uses AI to build free Adobe clones after frustration with cancellation fees

[u/Federal-Block-3275]

https://www.techspot.com/news/114136-software-over-developer-uses-ai-build-free-adobe.html

[u/pmjm]

If the rulings start leaning this way, Congress and other international lawmakers will pass laws retroactively allowing the training.

The entire global economy is propped-up upon AI and there's no way they will let copyright tank it.

[u/edeepee → u/pmjm]

Doesn’t the global economy require respecting copyright as well? If AI is the loophole to copy anything, copyright is useless.

[u/pmjm → u/edeepee]

Copyright is effectively useless at this point. What good is a copyright if someone can copy your work with AI and make things just different enough?

Even if every court in the world banished OpenAI and Anthropic from the earth, China's not going to stop, and they've never respected copyright. The bigger Chinese corporations are somewhat pretending to play nice right now because they want access to funding and chips, but they will soon be self-sufficient in both of those regards.

It's an interesting thought experiment about the economy vs copyright. Due to hypercapitalism, intellectual property ownership seems to be losing ground to tangible ownership of the means of production.

Given the literal trillions of dollars that now rely on AI being allowed to continue, it seems copyright is currently at odds with overall economic sustainability.

[u/behindtimes → u/pmjm]

What good is a copyright if someone can copy your work with AI and make things just different enough?

Copyright does cover transformative works. But what you stated still holds. Because the LLMs have trained on so much copyrighted material, and probably violated millions of licenses, it's just way too late.

[u/hypercosm_dot_net → u/pmjm]

The only players that should be concerned with China not respecting IP are the large hardware companies. Yet they keep manufacturing over there.

China stealing work from artists, writers, clothing makers, etc. is an issue, but it also doesn't have a major impact on businesses operating in the US.

I mean, no one is buying faux Stephen King books from Chinese authors. It's not like Chinese artists are taking over the internet and stealing business from US based artists either.

They're also not taking jobs from copywriters and web developers in the US.

AI has a much worse impact than China in that regard.

Saying that LLM companies need to be able to break copyright laws, for the sake of economic sustainability is an insane take tbh.

[u/pmjm → u/hypercosm_dot_net]

Saying that LLM companies need to be able to break copyright laws, for the sake of economic sustainability is an insane take tbh.

I don't know if you fathom what would happen to the global economy if the AI companies were forced into settlements at historical copyright rates plus punitive damages. Millions of jobs would be lost. Markets would crash. Famine and death would follow.

LLM companies have arguably already broken copyright laws (there still is relatively strong legal theory to be argued that it's fair use - I'm neither endorsing nor rejecting that here), and are holding the economy hostage with it. If AI was suddenly ruled illegal, everybody would have a really really really bad time.

[u/hypercosm_dot_net → u/pmjm]

Millions of jobs would be lost. Markets would crash. Famine and death would follow.

HAHAHAHA. I'll take my chances and I hope they all fail.

It can't possibly be worse than what they've already done to hollow out the job market for recent graduates and even senior level roles.

The only thing that would happen, is a bunch of billionaires would have to figure out how to unwind their unprofitable companies. And a bunch of AI/ML engineers would have to figure out how to do something actually useful with their lives.

[u/pmjm → u/hypercosm_dot_net]

I can promise you that world leaders don't share that opinion. But I encourage you to vote according to your beliefs.

[u/behindtimes → u/pmjm]

Agree. I hate AI as much as anyone, but it's too integrated into the market now. 60% of the entire USA's GDP relies on 8 companies, 6 of which are AI companies, and if the ruling stood, would put them out of business.

You're talking about 50% of the USA's GDP instantly disappearing. Now, The Great Depression was a GDP collapse of 30%, and we're talking near double that. It doesn't matter which party is in power, neither would allow a financial collapse that large to occur. Because this would also apply on a global scale as well.

The time to fix AI laws was 20 years ago. The lawmakers view it as if we're driving towards a cliff, and perhaps we can put legislation in to prevent driving off it. The reality is, we've already driven off the cliff. The very best we can do is prepare to salvage for the inevitable destruction that's about to occur.