Charles Graeber, The New York Times; The Original Sin of Anthropic’s Claude
"One day, hopefully copyright protections will be extended to prevent the unlicensed training of A.I.s.
Until then, we live in a legal gray area, in which giant cash-rich corporations gorge freely on the rights of individual creators. The big ones will continue to eat the little ones unless the little ones can band together.
It’s up to us to demand legislation extending copyright protections in the 21st century. Many members of Congress appear willing; property protections have appeal for both sides of the aisle.
Affirming those copyright protections to include A.I. might even force A.I. companies to hire human writers to create original works for their L.L.M.s to train on. Or perhaps they’ll start spending their treasure like modern Medicis, funding the quality work A.I.s need to stay sharp. At the very least, they might invest in publishing houses and writing programs, fending off model collapse while ushering in a Silicon Era of artistic enlightenment.
I worry for this generation of artists coming of age in yet another technological adolescence, on the brink of so many cultural and economic disruptions.
But I do not worry for the future of art itself. We will always need human mediators to translate the human experience and make the flesh word."
