flir

Don't get too hung up on the preciseness of the copy - the courts won't. I doubt that spitting out an existing article with a few adjectives changed would be considered transformative.

It's possible. Would be interesting to see their evidence, and to know whether they can reproduce it for arbitrary articles, not just ones that have been endlessly republished on the net.

There was a paper a while back where (from memory) they managed to coax 75% of the original text of some internet-popular books out of an LLM. Harry Potter, 1984, etc. That's why I said it was possible for some texts.

My assumption is that multiple copies in the training data "wear a deeper groove". I believe those are infringing, and should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. But the vast majority of text doesn't wear that groove.

(Edit: Think it was this one https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02671)

but that derived image would surely be under copyright.

I wouldn't bet on that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Soup_Cans

Nah, I can't prove a negative. But Common Crawl is 12 petabytes and is not the largest part of what these models get trained on. DeepSeek v4 Pro is, what, 865GB?

That's one hell of a compression ratio, if it can do what you claim.

Whatever "training" is, if you can't persuade the machine to spit substantially the same text back out verbatim, it's clearly not something that falls under copyright law either, because there's no copy.

Yes, for some texts that's possible. But for the vast majority, it is not.

Commonplace book. Mine just happens to be (theoretically) public.

(This takes a lot of pressure off - I publish notes, half-finished thoughts, stuff I'll "get around to later" with no shame).

That last para is a novel idea. I wonder if there's any evidence to support/undermine it though?

It's just a gut feeling, but I think you're running a (very slow) distributed hill-climbing algorithm. LLM1 generates an SVG. You post it online, with commentary on what is good/bad about it. LLM2 consumes the SVG alongside your commentary, and produces a slightly different SVG. Rinse, repeat.

I'm saying an example of what not to do is still an example.

Funny how we assess risk. Not criticising you - I'm as irrational as the next guy - but "I found the oldest doctor I could" seems like it has a different set of risks baked in.

I think its feet stand more in written SF than filmed SF - I haven't seen anything quite like it in film, but I can point to books that seem to have influenced it. In that respect, I think it's novel. I agree with the emptiness comment. Maybe it's empty because it's so relentlessly shiny - there's not much "tonal variation".

But I do think it's a harbinger of things to come: bedroom auteurs with new tools (although they'll be surfing an absolute tidal wave of slop). The tools are going to get better; early synthesizers were pretty primitive.

Take a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/@Gossip.Goblin

He (they?) have a vision, and are trying to get it on the screen via AI tools. I don't think the tools are quite there yet, so I wouldn't call it "quality art", but I think it shows the direction of travel, and it shows somebody trying to use those tools to say something (ironically, the message is that the tools are kinda bad news).

I'm reminded of the tipping point when a generation of bedroom producers got tools "good enough" that they didn't need studio time any more. We got some creative music and a lot of slop out of that change. But hey, 80% of everything is crap, so it shouldn't be a surprise.

Huh. Would be a bit of a busman's holiday for me, but TIL.

!!!!!!

Made. My. Day.

Fishing tourism?

Like... commercial fishing with a net? Not sport fishing?

most fish eaten in the UK has always been imported, e.g. Icelandic cod.

Not always (Cod Wars). And our herring catch was once its own industry.

And the fact the UK fishermen were die-hard pro-Brexit is odd given they should have been aware that the majority of their regular catch was sold to EU buyers.

They thought they'd have a monopoly on those fishing grounds post-Brexit.

Fishing holds similar role in the UK and France (at least). Tiny components of the overall economy, giant patriotic feels.

I still think some manufacturing is simply strategic, and you should maintain a capability even at a (financial) loss though.

Can't find a good summary link. Maybe this one https://www.rpclegal.com/thinking/entertainment/court-of-app... is a good starting point.

radio.garden feels like spinning an AM radio dial late at night (which is how I discovered John Peel as a youngling). It's a lovely thing, verging on art, and should be treasured.

radio.garden (and many others) got neutered in the UK courts by Sony. Offensive, short-sighted, Balkanizing decision.

I haven't bought a Sony product since the rootkit debacle. My only regret is that there's not a "boycott++" mode for the damage they did with that decision.

If you rework a paragraph in a tight loop - you change a few words, the chatbot changes a few words, going round four or five times until you've got something you're happy with, I don't see how it's meaningful to assign a percentage.

I guess you could write an editor that does it? Tracks the origin of every word in the document? But what if you cut'n'paste a word? Or worse, see it and retype it manually?

I think the best you can hope for here is "this text was written with AI assistance".

It's a rock-paper-scissors deal. All warriors are beatable.

Well the analogy isn't perfect.

I realised I should have said "wishes". Not everyone votes based on self-interest.

(And in a FPTP system you are, IMO, better off voting against the person who least represents your wishes).

Nah, you elect the person who best represents your interests, not the person who best represents you.

Look on it as a hiring process. Don't you want to select someone competent?

"much of"?

Well that sucks. Thanks for the update.

I listened to a couple. The first (current?) run on Past Lives was about slavery, and was a bit too "misery porn" for me. The historical fiction component of the show was always my least favourite bit.

I've been starting with "write three paragraphs about X" when I want to talk about X, as a form of "priming the pump" - getting closer to the useful point in the phase space. After all, it doesn't matter who in the conversation generates the magic words, as long as they're present. I think your approach might be better. It's certainly enlightening. Thanks.

I'm really annoyed that Patrick gave up on that. I mean, I know he's been doing it a decade, and I can't chain him to a desk, and I'm being entitled, but...

Doesn't have to be specific training, just has to consume simonw's blog. It's got lots of SVG pelicans, with helpful commentary on how good they are. I think there might be some kind of hill climbing going on here.

ElectricSheep (https://electricsheep.org/) is still around. Based on fractal flames (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_flame). Freaks out corporate firewalls though, because it looks a lot like a file sharing network.

Chatbot expanded this into something that made sense, but I've no idea if it's what you meant. There's an irony there somewhere.