(upbeat music)
♪ After the mind on the Academy ♪
♪ Shocked my pictures ♪
♪ Where the bastards of philosophy ♪
♪ Drinking a clutch ♪
♪ Brings above our skills ♪
♪ Like a sucker punch ♪
♪ Boy, come to see ’em, I’ll be ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, oh, see ’em, I’ll be ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, oh, see ’em, I’ll be, yeah ♪
♪ I’ll see ’em, I’ll be, yeah,
yeah, oh ♪ So we’re back.
We’re talking about AI again.
I don’t think we’re ever really
gonna stop talking about AI
because AI in itself does
not have any morality.
The morality that AI will
end up with will be something
that’s programmed by
people, but people are abusive.
And so this is it.
I think AI in itself is
inherently not good or bad.
Just like the internet is
not inherently good or bad.
It’s done some amazingly good things.
It’s done some awful horrible things.
It’s where scams come from now.
I have the same thing about AI.
A lot of scams are gonna happen because AI
and it’s some really wonderful
things are gonna happen
because of AI and it’s
up to us to control it.
The problem is the people who are often
in control don’t care about other people.
So this stems from
the second part of this
story, but let’s get
into the first part first,
where we get a little bit of sort of
irony or karma or something like that.
Where in 2022, this was the first
big story about AI who’s surfing art.
Like, is this okay?
We should think about this a little more.
A guy using AI to create an image, one
first place in a state fair competition.
And so he used, he says he
did a hundred hours of work
using different AI generators
and then Photoshop
and manipulating
everything to make this image
that he submitted, he
says he told the judges.
But the judges claim they didn’t know.
So they looked at this piece of artwork and
said, “This piece of artwork is amazing.
“That’s the winning
piece for this state fair.
” This of course then becomes a controversy
is AI generated art or is it not?
He’s claiming, again, a
hundred hours of work
went into this picture
that he says he made
but the problem is
mid-journey also contribute
to a Google AI at the
time contributed to it.
Photoshop contributed to it.
I know a lot of artists who
actually think Photoshop
is already taking away
from the idea of art,
from the actual handmade
feeling or aspect of art as skill.
Whereas someone in computers would be like,
“Well, you know,
computers are a skill in itself.
” I could see myself
making a piece of art
and then using Photoshop or
something to maybe touch it up.
But if it was going to be a big art piece
installation, like a picture I put up,
I think I wouldn’t want
that all to be handmade.
I wouldn’t want anything
in that generated by AI.
That’s just my instincts.
It’s not to say that I’m right or wrong.
It’s just my feeling about art.
It’s one of those things where
art is something you make
as a human being to
sort of express yourself.
After he won this competition and the
controversy comes out and the news comes out,
he says to the news,
and I think this is already
his first mistake, he
goes, “Art is dead, dude.
” If you want to make a
serious sort of statement
about the future, about technology
and stuff, you got to cut the dude out.
I say dude a lot.
If I’m being really honest,
my day-to-day conversation
is talking to people, I
actually say dude quite often.
I actually use it as an
expression of frustration.
I use it for both male and female.
To me, dude is gender neutral.
But if I was going to
make a serious statement
to the news about something that
I wanted people to take seriously,
I don’t think I would
throw a dude in there.
He says, “Art is
dead, dude, it’s over.
” AI won, humans lost.
So this to me is the first
irony, is that he’s a human.
So if humans have lost, he has to
actually include himself in that category.
So if he’s in that category, he
too has and is going to lose out.
And that’s maybe the first
step is he doesn’t see the irony
of what he’s doing to himself here as he
loses because AI in this case kind of wins.
So because he won and
this piece of art became
relatively famous, it
was all over the internet.
News outlets were showing it.
They were talking about it.
He tries to copyright
his piece of art, this image
so that other people
can’t, you know, steal it.
So despite the fact that we
know that AI to generate an image
has to be taking images off the internet,
learning from them, learning what they are,
so essentially stealing
other artists’ work to learn
to then add those elements into
the new piece of art it creates.
AI is stealing art on his behalf.
He’s using a sort of two,
three degrees of separation
to justify the fact that
he hasn’t stolen anything.
The AI is just learned,
it’s changed it, it’s modified,
it’s a new thing, therefore it’s
not theft in the traditional sense.
So he has this new thing that he made,
but he hasn’t actually made it because
AI has kicked in some effort there.
So his copyright application gets rejected
because they’re saying
as much as you may have
contributed to this, AI
also contributed to this.
AI has been stealing from other artists,
they don’t use those
words, but they’re
saying like, AI’s not
doing anything original.
You can’t copyright a non-original work.
It’s lifted, it’s copied, it’s
taken from other artists.
You can’t copyright that
without paying royalties
or giving kickbacks or
figuring something else
to give back to those
artists in the first place.
So they’re essentially
saying, because AI contributed
to this art, you as a
human cannot copyright it.
So his copyright claim has now
been, he’s now lost because AI has won.
He tried again and again and again.
And was rejected again
and again and again and again.
Now, if you go on Etsy,
people are selling this image.
It’s on cups, it’s on
t-shirts and other stuff.
They’re making money off it.
He’s not getting a taste
of any of that money.
He’s not getting a taste of any of that
money because he can’t copyright that image.
Since that image is now free on
the internet, other people are using it,
they might be making
thousands, hundreds of thousands.
Perhaps even millions,
I doubt it’s that big.
But he’s losing revenue
because he cannot copyright
that image because people
are now stealing the image
that he made from him, that
as we know, because of the
way AI works, that the image
was stolen from someone else
in the first place, they’re
not getting paid for that work.
So now in Colorado,
this guy is trying to sue
Colorado to force them
to create the copyright
because he has apparently
lost potential millions of dollars.
Now, the interesting thing to
me now is he’s actually too late.
So he’s already like the boom on
this piece of artwork is already gone.
AI art, generated art, state fair
art, isn’t the kind of long lasting art
that people are going
to review and see again,
and it’s not going to become
part of the consciousness
like the statue of David or something else,
or like even if you haven’t really seen it
or you don’t really care about it,
you kind of know what I’m talking about.
This isn’t going to do that, it’s not
going to have that sort of cultural impact.
If he didn’t get it right away
in 2022, he’s not going to get
it in 2024 by 2026, people
have probably forgotten about it.
It’s going to become a footnote in history
as the first piece of AI generated art,
and you notice every time they talk about
it, they don’t talk about his contribution.
They only talk about
the AI art contribution
of this piece of work because
that’s the only bit people care about.
Dave is just collapsed out of his bed.
He sleeps, he sleeps hard.
I mean, let’s just give him some credit.
So when we start looking
at back the history of AI
and how AI, how it fermented, how it began,
all the things that AI has or can do,
don’t probably be a picture
of his piece of artwork
in even textbooks or
Wikipedia and stuff in the future,
but what’s actually going to end up is
he’s never going to get a penny from that
because his contribution
is now less meaningful
to that art than the
contribution from the AI
like mid-journey, which
takes us into a second
lawsuit that’s going
on right now as well.
And it’s deep AI, the big big company
that is basically the AI company right now.
They are suing pretty
much the world to try to
get an exemption from
copyright across the board.
So the statement from the CEO is, we
can’t train AI on only public domain stuff.
So he’s basically saying right now,
AI is allowed to go out on the internet,
find public domain stuff,
put that into their generation
or whatever they do to create the
AI, to give it something to learn on.
And he’s saying the problem is,
that’s not enough for us to make a
modern intelligent AI, which I agree with.
The problem is what he then has to do is go
to copy written material
and use that to train his AI
and then that will then generate
new iterations of that thing.
So we’re talking about artwork,
we’re talking about writing,
we’re talking about like actual
work that could be done by a person,
that will not be done by
a person if the AI does it.
So all those people who
created the source material
are saying, I’ve copy
written this work, you want to
take this work from me, then
you got to pay me royalties.
And they’re saying, well,
we can’t afford to do that.
And we’re like, well,
if you can’t afford to
do that, then you
can’t use that material.
He’s like, but we need an exception
because we need this AI stuff to work.
Otherwise, how are we
supposed to sell this AI
and how am I supposed
to make millions of dollars?
Ironically, the dude
already has millions of
dollars, but I don’t
think that’s the point.
I think the point for
him is to own everything
and have all knowledge at his
fingertips that he is then in control of.
This is actually my biggest fear is that a
single dominant AI actually takes control.
And that’s the one whoever
owns that is the one that Jeez,
at the end of the day, there’s
nothing we can do against it,
except create our own
internet that is not a part of.
Oh, I’ve actually said this a bunch of
times while talking about technology stuff.
We just need two internet.
We need the now more
commercialized internet,
which is going to be your
traditional key TV cable package thing.
It’s going to have Netflix.
It’s going to have all this stuff.
It’s going to have Facebook.
It’s going to have whatever
Twitter on and all this other bullshit.
That’s the one I probably
wouldn’t go on anymore.
That’s the one you can put
all the AI you want on there.
I would be on the second internet,
which doesn’t have any of this shit.
And it’s just people generating
stuff and making stuff.
And it’s to me, the good old internet.
And I’m a very old man.
So maybe I’m just my nostalgia’s kicked in
and I only remember the
good bits of the old internet.
But I do remember that it was all
people and it was all stuff made by people.
And I was always really, really impressed
by the creativity of people and all
the stuff that happened on there.
And that is the stuff I would
like to see a lot more of.
So really, what the guy
from this company is saying
is we want to take all the material that
people have made and put on the internet
and not pay any copyright,
not pay them at all.
And then take that material
so that our AI can generate
new versions of that and
put those people out of work.
And that way, they don’t
only not get copyright,
they no longer get to
do the work they love.
So let’s talk about
this podcast that I make
and I enjoy making
podcasts and AI comes in
and it can make a perfect Cmic
B or perfect Ninja News Japan
or a perfect Montana L Diablo or
a perfect daily affirmations weekly.
And it can generate one every single day.
That is the same if not higher
quality than the one I make, my quality.
Again, if I’m drinking lunch,
as the theme song says,
is pretty hit and miss
and let’s be honest today.
I had a little gin in my coat
while I was having my lunch.
It’s a very nice afternoon.
I’m probably gonna be sleepy
by the end of this podcast.
But that’s irrelevant.
That’s another thing.
AI can’t get drunk with you.
Can’t hang out and talk to you.
So you come to a stream with an AI thing.
It’s not had a couple cocktails
and has a sort of different attitude.
And it’s all a different kind of smooth
atmosphere to everything that’s going on.
No, it’s just AI.
And then eventually that gets boring.
But if it can generate the exact same
show I make, then it’s going to do that.
And I can’t keep up speedwise.
I can’t release an episode every
day because I have a full time job.
Now there’s no one
listening to this podcast.
And it just keeps generating
and generating and generating.
And I see it’s going to kill the name
because again, it’s going to hit this limit
of I haven’t made any new stuff
because I’m no longer making podcasts.
So it has nothing it can learn off of.
So now it has to go into repetition.
It has to go into iterations of
the same thing over and over again.
This essentially hit
the writer’s block of AI
when other people are not
introducing new ideas into the AI.
Now it could do some creative things.
Let’s combine two other things
I’ve stolen into one new thing.
So that one new thing is slightly
more interesting for an extended period.
But I think there is
a limit to the level of
creativity because it
can never go into left field.
It just can’t go out of nowhere
and do something unusual.
It can’t add in new elements without having
someone tell it to add in new elements.
Basically the future of AI is very boring.
It’s actually my biggest concern.
Like if you want to put everything into AI
and everything relies on AI
and AI is making everything,
it’s going to hit a point where
it just everything is boring.
And we’ve already hit that with like
formulaic movies and formulaic TV shows
and formulaic things and we have these
expectations and they’re never broken.
So we’re actually getting bored with a
lot of stuff because we’ve hit peak TV.
Like I have a dozen TV
shows like I know it’s good
and I want to watch it,
but it’s already too much.
Now if AI starts generating even more and
then I get to this point where it’s like,
well it’s just the same
show with a slightly
different name where it’s
a slightly different change.
They’ve just been ripping each
other off for like the last six years.
And I’m like, why am I even watching TV?
And I can totally see that
actually happening where that’s
one of the things that actually
kills television and movies.
So the next question in the court case is
how much money is your company made?
So of course it’s
millions, billions of dollars.
And then the second
question is how much have
you paid out in royalties
and the answer is zero.
So they’ve taken, they
knowingly have taken music.
They knowingly have taken like art.
They’ve knowingly have
taken just scripts and stuff.
A lot of comedians were suing AI
because the big thing for a little while,
it’s kind of gone away, but it’s gonna
come back, is can AI make jokes?
Can AI do something that’s
actually funny to people?
We had the initial stages of AI.
We were making stuff that was weird and we
thought it was funny because it was weird.
But again, that’s sort
of the confusing out
of left field stuff that
we never expected.
They want to make fully proper structured
jokes that delight and surprise people.
And the way they do that is to
take jokes from actual comedians.
I think Sarah Silverman was
one of the leaders of this lawsuit
saying, okay, you’re taking
my jokes, you’re feeding into AI.
It’s kind of removing and
swapping out elements,
but it’s really just telling
the exact same joke.
But now we’re in a situation where she’s
not getting any money from this company.
She’s not getting anything
to sustain her career.
And if they actually are
successful, her career ends
because why would I listen to Sarah Silverman
do like a one hour special once a year
when I can go to this AI
channel that does Sarah
Silverman jokes 24 hours
a day, every day, all day,
until I get bored of it and then
don’t want to hear about it anymore.
My full expectation as there will be
more lawsuits going forward on all sides.
So we have the artist suing
the Colorado government
to try to get copyright so that
he can make money off his image.
The image that was
fundamentally stolen from
other artists who are
not getting paid copyright.
So I think if he gets his copyright
and then these artists can
prove that it took elements
from their artwork, they
would be suing him next.
We have this company who’s
trying to sue for the ability
to not have to have any regard
for copyright suing the government
saying we need this to train
our AI to stay competitive,
to stay, you know, to keep in an
advantageous positioning in the industry.
They’re going to be stealing from artists
and writers and musicians and other things.
And then if they’re
successful, those artists’ writers
and other things are
going to sue them for
taking their stuff
without paying copyright.
They’re never going to
get that exemption, though.
And then we have this
guy trying to get copyright
and getting refused because,
well, you contributed to it, yes,
but also the person
you worked with, the AI,
also contributed as much
as you did, if not more,
and you’re not paying them,
therefore, you can’t get copyright.
The AI cannot be given
copyright on a fundamental
grounds that they
do not own anything.
And that’s actually an interesting problem
is that if AI doesn’t own anything itself,
it’s going to be very hard
for AI to claim copyright.
It’s going to be companies on their behalf
and then they’re going
to immediately go to that
company and go like,
where did this come from?
How did this generate this information?
Can you trace it back to its source?
What was the source?
Have you paid that guy?
And that’s actually what it comes down
to, is they just don’t want to pay anybody.
The Hollywood strikes, I
did a whole episode on that.
And it’s because they had
some insane things in there.
What they wanted to do, one of the stories
was they wanted to take this script.
And it was this woman’s
essentially life story.
They said, we’re going to pay you
like a million dollars for this script.
But in the contract, it says,
we can feed your script into AI
and then from that, we’ll
be able to develop movies
and series based off what
the AI spits out afterwards.
And you’re not going to get any of that.
And she’s like, well, why
would I take a million dollars
when they’re going to try
to make 20, 30, 40 million
dollars per episode,
let’s say, of this TV show
that extrapolates from my information,
my life, and my script and my writing.
Like, it doesn’t make sense
to give that up to you anymore.
And there you can see sort of
the fundamental failure in Hollywood.
What’s going to happen is
you’re going to have people
who write, and they’re not
going to bring it to Hollywood
because like if I bring it to Hollywood,
I’m selling my soul, I’m giving it away.
They give me what is
a lot of money initially.
But a million dollars now
is only worth so much.
Like when I was a kid, a million
dollars, you could live forever.
Now a million dollars, you could
live for a long time if you’re a frugal.
But if we’re being really
honest, a million dollars
isn’t going to sustain
you until your old age.
I mean, it depends when you
start if you give me a million dollars.
Now, I probably could live the rest of
my life on it, but you’re a young writer.
You’re 20 years old, you’ve
written this amazing script.
They offer you a million dollars,
but then they’re going to put
you out of business right
after that because anything
you write is actually already
been written by the AI.
Now, of course, I have a certain
amount of faith in humans’ creativity.
That’s the whole point of this.
I think humans could come up
with a new and different story.
But then after you get
burned to that first time,
would you take it back
to Hollywood for them to
give you, let’s say, a
second million dollars
that then they would then
generate a billion dollars
worth of content out
of that you get nothing.
You don’t get a part of that.
If they were offering a
percentage, I think it might
be more amenable, because
then at least I get paid.
So if I could write
something really, really good
and they put it in an eye
and they make a billion dollars
and I still get 10 million
dollars, 15, 20 million dollars,
maybe a hundred million dollars,
I would be a more okay with that.
But it’s because these
companies want all the money
and not to pay the people
who actually do the work.
So what they’re trying
to do is scam people now
into like create work,
give us full copyright
forever in perpetuity,
you don’t get anything.
And then we don’t need
to hire writers anymore
because we have
everything in our little system.
And that again is when these TV shows,
these movies, they get
so boring and repetitive,
’cause this is the exact
same thing I’ve seen before.
They also had four actors.
If you’re a background
actor, you had to sign a waiver
that they could own
your face in perpetuity.
And my example was I am
a very, very young Brad Pitt.
I’m 17 years old and I’m
trying to get into movies.
I want to be an actor.
I’m trying to get my first shots.
And then I am in a crowd seen in a movie.
And then in a different
company, I become popular.
And then I become, you
know, 30, 40 year old Brad Pitt
and I’m making 20 million
dollars in movie easy.
Well, this other company still
owns my face from when I was 17.
So they slap that face onto another actor
and make an action movie with my name.
It might not even have my name
on it, but it has my face on it.
Now they’re making movies with
my face and I don’t get a piece of that.
I don’t get any say over that.
They start doing horrible things.
This is where deep fakes and revenge
porn and all these other things come in.
Because now maybe there’s a
porn company that’s associated with
that other company that I was
a background actor in the crowd.
And they’re now making porn with
my face in it from when I was 17.
And, okay, maybe I find that immoral.
Maybe I don’t, but then if I
don’t, I should still get paid.
Like I should get a piece of
that money and they won’t
give it to me ’cause they
own my face in perpetuity.
So you can see that
would be a huge block point
for any sort of negotiation going
forward because you don’t want a company
to own anything of
yours in perpetuity forever
and they can do whatever they want
with it and you never get a piece of it.
The final part of this is terrifying
because it’s AI in warfare,
which is another sort of total left,
like we’ve just taken a huge left term
for what I was talking about before but
it was AI and it’s in the news recently.
60 countries have ratified this idea
and it’s re-aim and it’s basically how AI
will be used in warfare because in Ukraine
they’re using a lot of
drones and some of them are
autonomous and they’re
worried about terminator.
Like we’re gonna make drones that go around
and just do strikes on
any living thing in the area.
It doesn’t have any morals,
it doesn’t make any decisions.
It just sees something in this area.
I’m gonna kill that thing.
Or they tell the thing, we
don’t want you to kill that child.
And then the AI goes, nah, but I
kind of wanna, and then it does.
One of the first experiments
I read about never saw
it actually happen was,
luckily it was never physical.
It was only within a computer
model but they had an AI drone
and they basically
were like, well, how do
we get the AI to
understand what its goal is?
And so they’re like, well, we’ll give it
points for destroying enemy targets.
And then the AI’s like,
well, I get enemy targets.
Well, I wanna get as many
enemy targets as I can
’cause I wanna get as many points as I can
because that’s what you programmed into me.
Then they’re like, well,
don’t hit this target.
Hit this target.
He’s like, but if I hit both
targets, I get more points, right?
And that’s what I wanna do.
And they’re like, well, no, no, but this
one is not the target we want you to hit.
So then the AI shut off communications.
And then it was free to do what it
want because it wasn’t getting told
that it’s not allowed
to hit things anymore.
And again, this was all
within a computer simulation
but the very first thing the
AI did is when people were
saying don’t do that, don’t
ignore your initial programming.
The AI was like, now, I’ll
figure out a way around it
so I can then continue
with my initial programming.
Which is very 2001 space odyssey
where the computer had its mission
which was superior to the
mission of the men on board
and that’s how you
got the guy locked out in
space and the robot
wouldn’t let him back in.
If you haven’t seen that movie
and don’t what I’m talking about,
it’s a pacing has changed a
lot since that movie came out
but conceptually, it’s
a very, very interesting
problem because the
robot AI in the spaceship
has its own set of criteria
and things that are important.
It’s own priorities that don’t necessarily
include the humans on board the ship.
So we have this 60 countries
ratifying this agreement
and they’re saying like, we
don’t wanna put AI into things,
we don’t want AI making arbitrary decisions,
we need people, we need oversight,
all this kind of stuff that would make again,
trying to keep the reins on a conflict.
And then you have China and China
has said, we are not going to ratify this,
we’re not gonna join in on this agreement
which immediately takes the whole thing
and shoves it out the window
because if you have one country
who’s like, we are refusing
to follow the rules of war,
well then you actually
end up in a situation
where no one should be
following the rules of war
’cause it’s the only way
to actually get things done.
If we’re gonna end up in a conflict
and you’re gonna cheat,
then I kinda have to cheat.
These are some of the interesting
questions that the AI is presenting us
because you end up with,
again, on the very small scale,
you have a guy who made
art with AI and he’s saying
like, I’m losing money
because I can’t copyright this.
I can’t copyright this
because AI contributed
to it and the AI stole
it from other people.
You have company saying, we
should be able to ignore copyright
because if we have to follow
copyright, then we’re stuck
in this situation where we
can’t get enough information.
We can’t get enough information to
use because we don’t have enough money
to pay everyone we steal from and
then you have the companies going,
we wanna buy your face, we wanna buy
your content and then never pay you again,
but we get to keep all that stuff
and generate more and more content
where we make money
off it, no one else does.
So there’s that sort of greed
where I get all the money
from my company and no
one else gets to share in it.
I get all the control and the power,
which extends to this country level
where it’s like we wanna make sure
that war doesn’t become this terminator
to kind of dystopic future and
then there’s a couple of countries
that’s like, no man, we’re kind of
on board with the dystopic future.
If we think we can win and
that’s clearly the fault of humanity
and you can see this is, again,
where I’m talking about morality.
The AI itself has no morality in this.
It is not good or bad, it is
the people and the countries
that are using it that make
these moral and immoral decisions
that lead us to where we’re
going to be in the future,
which very much looks like
it’s going to be a dystopia.
(upbeat music)
♪ After the mind of the academy ♪
♪ Shop my pictures ♪
♪ Where the bastards of philosophy ♪
♪ Drinking the clutch ♪
♪ Brings rubber skills
like a soccer punch ♪
♪ Won’t come to see ’em my beat ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, oh see ’em my beat ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, oh see ’em my beat ♪
♪ Yeah, oh see ’em my beat ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, oh ♪