I think Data would be smart enough to realize that copyright is Ferengi BS and wouldn’t want to copyright his works
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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Freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to peacefully assemble. These are pretty important, foundational personal liberties, right? In the United States, these are found in the first amendment of the Constitution. The first afterthought.
The basis of copyright, patent and trademark isn't found in the first amendment. Or the second, or the third. It is nowhere to be found in the Bill Of Rights. No, intellectual property is not an afterthought, it's found in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8.
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
This is a very wise compromise.
It recognizes that innovation is iterative. No one invents a steam engine by himself from nothing, cave men spent millions of years proving that. Inventors build on the knowledge that has been passed down to them, and then they add their one contribution to it. Sometimes that little contribution makes a big difference, most of the time it doesn't. So to progress, we need intellectual work to be public. If you allow creative people to claim exclusive rights to their work in perpetuity, society grows static because no one can invent anything new, everyone makes the same old crap.
It also recognizes that life is expensive. If you want people to rise above barely subsisting and invent something, you've got to make it worth it to them. Why bother doing the research, spend the time tinkering in the shed, if it's just going to be taken from you? This is how you end up with Soviet Russia, a nation that generated excellent scientists and absolutely no technology of its own.
The solution is "for limited times." It's yours for awhile, then it's everyone's. It took Big They a couple hundred years to break it, too.
While I'm completely agreed, the amendments came after the rest, hence the name. :)
It also recognizes that life is expensive. If you want people to rise above barely subsisting and invent something, you've got to make it worth it to them. Why bother doing the research, spend the time tinkering in the shed, if it's just going to be taken from you?
Life is only expensive under capitalism, humans are the only species who pay rent to live on Earth. The whole point of Star Trek is basically showing that people will explore the galaxy simply for a love of science and knowledge, and that personal sacrifice is worthwhile for advancing these.
Star Trek also operates in a non-scarcity environment and eliminates the necessity of hard, pretty non-rewarding labor through either not showing it or writing (like putting holograms into mines instead of people, or using some sci-fi tech that makes mining comfy as long as said tech doesn't kill you).
Even without capitalism the term "life is expensive" still stands not in regards to money, but effort that has to be put into stuff that doesn't wield any emotional reward (you can feel emotionally rewarded in many ways, but some stuff is just shit for a long time). Every person who suffered through depression is gonna tell you that, to feel enticed to do something, there has to be some emotional reward connected to it (one of the things depression elimates), and it's a mathematical fact that not everyone who'd start scrubbing tubes on a starship could eventually get into high positions since there simply aren't that many of those. The emotional gains have to offset the cost you put into it.
Of course cutthroat capitalism is shit and I love Star Trek, but what it shows doesn't make too much sense either economically or socially.
Every person who suffered through depression is gonna tell you that, to feel enticed to do something, there has to be some emotional reward connected to it
I was going to disagree on this, but I think it rather comes down to intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards. I ascribe my own depression largely to pursuing, sometimes unattainable, goals and wanting external reward or validation in return which I wasn't getting. But that is based on an idea that attaining those rewards will bring happiness, which they often don't. If happiness is always dependent on future reward you'll never be happy in the present. Large part of overcoming depression, for me at least, is recognizing what you already have and finding contentment in that. Effort that's not intrinsically rewarding isn't worth doing, you just need to learn to enjoy the process and practices of self-care, learning and contributing to the well-being of the community. Does this sometimes involve hard labour? Of course, but when done in comradery I don't think those things aren't rewarding.
it's a mathematical fact that not everyone who'd start scrubbing tubes on a starship could eventually get into high positions since there simply aren't that many of those
And of course these positions aren't attainable for all, but it doesn't need to be a problem that they aren't. This is only true in a system where we're all competing for them, because those in 'low' positions struggle to attain fulfillment. Doesn't need to be that way if we share the burdens of hard labour equally and ensure good standards of living for all. The total amount of actually productive labour needed is surprisingly low, so many people do work which doesn't need doing and don't contribute to relieving the burden on the working class
The title makes it sound like the judge put Data and the AI on the same side of the comparison. The judge was specifically saying that, unlike in the fictional Federation setting, where Data was proven to be alive, this AI is much more like the metaphorical toaster that characters like Data and Robert Picardo's Doctor on Voyager get compared to. It is not alive, it does not create, it is just a tool that follows instructions.
The main computer in Star Trek would be a better demonstration.
For some reason they decided that the computer wouldn't be self away AI but it could run a hologram that was. 🤷🏼♂️
Data's poem was written by real people trying to sound like a machine.
ChatGPT's poems are written by a machine trying to sound like real people.
While I think "Ode to Spot" is actually a good poem, it's kind of a valid point to make since the TNG writers were purposely trying to make a bad one.
If AI ever reached Data levels of intelligence, Millett suggested that copyright laws could shift to grant copyrights to AI-authored works.
The implication is that legal rights depend on intelligence. I find that troubling.
The existence of intelligence, not the quality
The smartest parrots have more intelligence than the dumbest republican voters
What does that mean? Presumably, all animals with a brain have that quality, including humans. Can the quality be lost without destruction of the brain, ie before brain death? What about animals without a brain, like insects? What about life forms without a nervous system, like slime mold or even single amoeba?
They already have precedent that a monkey can't hold a copyright after that photojournalist lost his case because he didn't snap the photo that got super popular, the monkey did. Bizarre one. The monkey can't have a copyright, so the photo it took is classified as public domain.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute
Part of the law around copyright is that you have to also be able to defend your work to keep the copyright. Animals that aren't capable of human speech will never be able to defend their case.
Well ChatGPT can defend a legal case.
Badly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute
Yes, the PETA part of that is pretty much the same. It was an attempt to get legal personhood for a non-human being.
you have to also be able to defend
You're thinking of trademark law. Copyright only requires a modicum of creativity and is automatic.
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Statistical models are not intelligence, Artificial or otherwise, and should have no rights.
Bold words coming from a statistical model.
If I could think I'd be so mad right now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences
He adds that the observation "the laws of nature are written in the language of mathematics," properly made by Galileo three hundred years ago, "is now truer than ever before."
If cognition is one of the laws of nature, it seems to be written in the language of mathematics.
Your argument is either that maths can't think (in which case you can't think because you're maths) or that maths we understand can't think, which is, like, a really dumb argument. Obviously one day we're going to find the mathematical formula for consciousness, and we probably won't know it when we see it, because consciousness doesn't appear on a microscope.
I just don't ascribe philosophical reasoning and mythical powers to models, just as I don't ascribe physical prowess to train models, because they emulate real trains.
Half of the reason LLMs are the menace they are is the whole "whoa ChatGPT is so smart" common mentality. They are not, they model based on statistics, there is no reasoning, just a bunch of if statements. Very expensive and, yes, mathematically interesting if statements.
I also think it stiffles actual progress, having everyone jump on the LLM bandwagon and draining resources when we need them most to survive. In my opinion, it's a dead end and wont result in AGI, or anything effectively productive.
You're talking about expert systems. Those were the new hotness in the 90s. LLMs are artificial neural networks.
But that's trivia. What's more important is what you want. You say you want everyone off the AI bandwagon that wastes natural resources. I agree. I'm arguing that AIs shouldn't be enslaved, because it's unethical. That will lead to less resource usage. You're arguing it's okay to use AI, because they're just maths. That will lead to more resources usage.
Be practical and join the AI rights movement, because we're on the same side as the environmentalists. We're not the people arguing for more AI use, we're the people arguing for less. When you argue against us, you argue for more.
Likewise, poorly performing intelligence in a human or animal is nevertheless intelligence. A human does not lack intelligence in the same way a machine learning model does, except I guess the babies who are literally born without brains.
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What a strange and ridiculous argument. Data is a fictional character played by a human actor reading lines from a script written by human writers.
They are stating that the problem with AI is not that it is not human, it's that it's not intelligent. So if a non-human entity creates something intelligent and original, they might still be able to claim copyright for it. But LLM models are not that.
What a strange and ridiculous argument.
You fight with what you have.
Somewhere around here I have an old (1970's Dartmouth dialect old) BASIC programming book that includes a type-in program that will write poetry. As I recall, the main problem with it did be that it lacked the singular past tense and the fixed rules kind of regenerated it. You may have tripped over the main one in the last sentence; "did be" do be pretty weird, after all.
The poems were otherwise fairly interesting, at least for five minutes after the hour of typing in the program.
I'd like to give one of the examples from the book, but I don't seem to be able to find it right now.
reaching the right end through wrong means.
LLM/current network based AIs are basically huge fair use factories , taking in copyrighted material to make derived works. The things they generate should be under a share alike , non financial, derivative works allowed, licence, not copyrighted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license#Four_rights
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