A few words on terminology

A short Friday morning thought on language and terminology. We’ve got a bit of a problem in AI with the terms AI and generative AI getting merged. Nine times out ten now I’d say that when I see people talking about AI they are really talking about just Gen AI. It matters because it leads to confusion and misinformation.

I think we are seen the same thing happening with sustainability, certainly in the AI space. Too often sustainability seems to be used as short hand for environmental sustainability. On occasions it’s used to mean economic sustainability. 

In their draft AI resolution The UN define it across three dimensions: economic, social and environmental. These seems right to me. 

So for our part, I’m going to try and be much clearer which dimension(s) of sustainability we actually mean going forward.

I also hope that this will help us balance the conversation. Of course environmental sustainability is vitally important. But so is social sustainability – the impact on people, culture and society as a whole.

Creativity and Copyright

An now a bit on copyright. There have been two different stories in the news relating to copyright and AI this week.

The first, about a petition now signed by over 20,000 musicians and writers that argues that:

“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”

I happy to say I’ve signed this in a personal/musician capacity in solidarity with the other (far more successful!) musicians and writers who have signed. I’m sure we all wear many different hats at different times. The key for me is ‘unlicensed’. Clearly I’ve no problem with AI models being trained, but the creators of the training material should be paid if it was copyrighted, and paid appropriately, including for models that have already been trained.

The other story is titled “Microsoft boss urges rethink of copyright laws for AI“. It’s in The Times, and heads up, its behind a paywall. I agree with the core of the argument that we need copyright laws to updated to keep up with technology, but I can’t be the only one that thinks these statements is are absurd:

“Speaking after Microsoft’s launch of virtual employees at an event in London, he compared the situation to that of using information from textbooks to formulate new ideas. “If I read a set of textbooks and I create new knowledge, is that fair use?” he said.”

“What’s copyright?” Nadella asked. “If everything is just copyright then I shouldn’t be reading textbooks and learning because that would be copyright infringement.”

I think he’s trying to create a link in people’s minds between humans reading and AI models being trained, claiming they are both ‘just’ learning. Something that I think only works because we ended up with the word ‘learning’ being used in AI (as in Machine Learning) for a process where a model is iteratively optimised to predict an outcome. Learning in the context of ‘Machine Learning’ was clearly no more than a useful metaphor. Claiming it’s like actual human reading and learning is frankly bizarre, and I’d expect more from Nadella.

Maybe The Times has taken this out of context. I’d be interested if anyone knows any more on this. But honestly, if the article is correct, this really, really isn’t helping with the debate.