Why shouldn't we expect AI to be created using the same type of math?
If there is a surprise, it's only that we can use the same math at a much higher level of abstraction than the quantum level.
Gains in AI and compute can probably be be brought back to physics and chemistry to do various computations, though, and not limited to only protein folding, which is the most famous use case now.
Either everybody should get the benefits of this technology, or no one should.
Humanity only survives as much as it preserves human dignity, let's say. We've designed society to give rewards to people who produce things of value.
These companies take that value and giving nothing back to the creators.
Supporting this will lead to disaster for all but the few, and ultimately for the few themselves.
Paying for your (copyrighted) inputs is harmony.
I think it’s likely that the justice system will deem model training as fair use, provided that the models are not designed to exactly reproduce the training data as output.
I think you hit on an important point though: these models are a giant transfer of wealth from creators to consumers / users. Now anyone can acquire artist-grade art for any purpose, basically for free — that’s a huge boon for the consumer / user.
People all around the world are going to be enriched by these models. Anyone in the world will be able to have access to a tutor in their language who can teach them anything. Again, that is only possible because the models eat ALL the data.
Another important point: original artwork has been made almost completely obsolete by this technology. The deed is done, because even if you push it out 70 years, eventually all of the artwork that these models have been trained on will be public domain. So, 70 years from now (or whatever it is) the cat will be out of the bag AND free of copyright obligations, so 2-3 generations from now it will be impossible to make a living selling artwork. It’s done.
When something becomes obsolete, it’s a dead man walking. It will not survive, even if it may take a while for people to catch up. Like when the vacuum tube computer was invented, that was it for relay computers. Done. And when the transistor was invented, that was it for vacuum tube computers.
It’s just a matter of time before all of today’s data is public domain and the models just do what they do.
…but people still build relay computers for fun:
https://youtu.be/JZyFSrNyhy8?si=8MRNznoNqmAChAqr
So people will still produce artwork.
Is that really what copyright does though? I would be all for some arrangement to reward valuable contributions, but the way copyright goes about allocating that reward is by removing the right of everyone but the copyright holder to use information or share a cultural artifact. Making it illegal to, say, incorporate a bar you found inspiring into a song you make and share, or to tell and distribute stories about some characters that you connected with, is profoundly anti-human.
I now don't believe most "creative" types when they try to spout radical egalitarian ideologies. They don't mean it at all, and even my own family, who religiously watched radical techno-optimist shows like Star Trek, are now falling into the depths of ludditism and running into the arms of defending copyright trolls
