Meta literally torrented an insane amount of training materials illegally, from a company that was sued into the ground and forced to dissolve because of distributing stolen content

I respectfully disagree. Meta was caught downloading books from Libgen, a piracy site, to "train" it's models. What AI models do in effect is scan information (i.e., copy), and distill and retain what they view as its essence. They can copy your voice, they can copy your face, and they can copy your distinctive artistic style. The only way they can do that is if the "training" copies and retains a portion of the original works.

Consider Shepard Fairies' use of the AP's copyrighted Obama photograph in the production of the iconic "Hope" poster, and the resultant lawsuit. While the suit was ultimately settled, and the issue of "fair use" was a close call given the variation in art work from the original source photograph, the suit easily could have gone against Fairey, so it was smart for him to settle.

Also consider the litigation surrounding the use of music sampling in original hip hop works, which has clearly been held to be copyright infringement.

Accordingly, I think it is very fair to say that (1) AI steals copyrighted works; and (2) repackages the essential portions of those works into new works. Might a re-write of copyright law be in order to embrace this new technology? Sure, but if I'm a actor, or voice actor, author, or other artist and I can no longer earn a living because someone else has taken my work to strip it down to it's essence to resell cheaply without compensating me, I'm going to be pretty pissed off.

Hopefully, AI will force the world to move toward the Star Trek future.

Lol. The liberal utopia of Star Trek is a fantasy. Far more likely is that AI will be exploited by oligarchs to enrich themselves and further impoverish the masses, as they are fervently working towards right now. See, AI isn't creative, it gives the appearance of being creative by stealing work created by humans and repackaging it. When artists can no longer create art to survive, there will be less material for the AI models to steal, and we'll be left with soulless AI slop as our de facto creative culture.

"When machines can do just about everything a human can (and scale up really fast)—even without AGI—there's no future for capitalism."

This might be one of the dumbest things I've ever read.

I disagree that it is fair use. But, I was actually expecting the judiciary to say that it was. So, despite the ruling, I AM still mad that they used copyrighted works (including mine), in violation of the terms. (And, honestly, my terms [usually AGPLv3] are fairly generous.)

I'm also concerned about labor issues, and environmental impact, and general quality, but the unauthorized use of copyrighted works is still in the mix. And, if they are willing to all my private viewing of torrented TV "theft", I'm willing to call their selling of an interface to a LLM / NN that was trained on and may have incorporated (or emit!) my works (in whole or in part) "theft".

Labor issues are mostly solved by making to the workers control the means of production, not captial. Same old story.

Environment impact is better policed independent of what the electricity/water is used for. We aren't making a lot of headway there, but we need to reign in emissions (etc.) whether they are using it to train LLMs or research cancer.

Quality... is subjective and I don't think we are near the ceiling of that. And, since I don't use "AI" for the above reasons, it really isn't much of a concern to me.

It's humans ruining things for other humans. AI is just a tool that makes it easier and cheaper

That's the main point, though: the tire fire of humanity is bad enough without some sick fucks adding vast quantities of accelerant in order to maximize profits.

Since all the lawsuits and laws in the world cannot stop generative AI at this point

Clearly that's not true. They'll keep it up for as long as it's at all positive to extract profits from it, but not past that. Handled right, this class action could make the entire concept poisonous from a profiteering perspective for years, maybe even decades.

we might as well fix the underlying problems that enable this bullshit.

Of COURSE! Why didn't anyone think to turn flick off the switches marked "unscrupulous profiteering" and "regulatory capture"?!

We'll have this done by tomorrow, Monday at the latest! 🙄

Making big AI companies go away isn't going to help with these problems.

The cancer might be the underlying cause but the tumor still kills you if you don't do anything about it.

the development of AI certainly won't stop.

Again, it WILL if all profitability is removed.

It will just move to countries with fewer scruples and weaker ethics

Than silicon valley? Than the US government when ultra-rich white men want something?

No such country exists.

The biggest problem is (mostly unregulated) capitalism

Finally right about something.

Fix that, and suddenly AI "taking away jobs" ceases to be a problem.

"Discover the cure for cancer and suddenly the tumord in your brain, lungs, liver, and kidneys won't be a problem anymore!" 🤦

Hopefully, AI will force the world to move toward the Star Trek future

Wtf have you been drinking??

LOL @ old school Nigerian Prince scams)

They were bad on purpose. People responding to such bad writing are easy marks.

Because generating text and images is just the start.

But usually this only improves after an AI winter, meaning the whole sector crashes until someone finds a better architecture/technology. Except there are now billions involved.

Look these people are neck deep in a tribalistic worldview. You cannot reason with anyone who’s against AI simply because their claims are unfalsifiable and contradictory depending on the day and article they are reading. On the one hand it is the shitiest technology ever made which cannot do anything right and at the same time it is an existential threat to humanity.

And I can tell you, that the only reason this is the case is because the right is for AI more strongly than the left. If the right had condemned it, you can be damn right the tables would be turned and everyone who thinks they are left would be praising the tech.

Just move on and take solace in the fact that the technology simply cannot be rebottled, or uninvented. It exists, it is here to stay and literally no one can stop it at this point. And I agree with you, AI is the only tool that can provide true emancipation. It can also enslave. But the fact is that all tools can be used for right or wrong, so this is not inherent to AI.