I’ve thought about this regarding code as well: An AI is nothing without a training data set, if someone uses licensed code to train an AI, they should definitely be bound by the license. For example: If an AI is trained using copyleft licensed code, the resulting model should also be regarded as copyleft bound. As of now, I suspect this is to a very large degree being ignored.
Sure, but that particular horse has left the barn. There will be cases where identification is easy(-ier) but as shown in Oracle v Google, there are only so many ways to express ideas in code.
For example, I just asked Claude 2 “Write a program in C to count from 1 to some arbitrary number specified on the command line.” Can you tell me the origin of this line from the result?
for(int i=1; i<=n; i++) {
I mean, if it’s from a copyrighted work, I certainly don’t want to use it in an open-source project!
EDIT: Guessing there’s a bug in HTML entity handling.
Of course, once the AI is trained, you can’t look at some arbitrary output and determine whether that specific output came due to some specific training data set. In principle, if some of your training data is found to violate copyrights you either have to compensate the copyright holder or re-train the model without that data set.
Finding out whether a copyrighted work is part of the training data is a matter of going through it, and should be the responsibility of the people training the model. I would like to see a case where it has been shown that a copyrighted dataset has been used to train a model, and those violating the copyright by doing so are held responsible.
I agree that under the current system of “idea ownership” someone needs to be held responsible, but in my opinion it’s ultimately a futile action. The moment that arbitrary individuals are allowed to download these models and use them independently (HuggingFace, et al), all control of whatever is in the model is lost. Shutting down Open AI or Anthropic doesn’t remove the models from people’s computers, and doesn’t eliminate the knowledge of how to train them.
I have a gut feeling this is going to change the face of copyright, and it’s going to be painful. We collectively weren’t ready.
It's not over and done with. Pass regulation saying every AI accessible w/in the country has to have a publicly available dataset. That way people can see if their works have been stolen or not. When we inevitably see works recreated wholesale without proper copyright, the AI creators can be sued or fined.
Couple of things here - what do you do with the open source models already published? There’s terabytes of data encapsulated in those. Some have published corpora, some don’t. How do you plan to determine that a work comes from an unregistered AI?
Also, with respect to “within the country” - VPNs exist. TOR exists. SD cards exist. What’s your plan to control the flow of trained models without violating civil rights?
If they don't publish what their training data is, they should be considered violating copyright. The world governments can block sites if they want. It's hard to swat down all of the random wikis and such but major AI competitors wouldn't be a big problem.
That way people can see if their works have been stolen or not.
Firstly, nothing at all is being "stolen." The words you're looking for are "copyright violation."
Secondly, it does not currently appear that training an AI model on published material is a copyright violation. You're going to have to point to some actual law indicating that. Currently that sort of thing is generally covered by fair use.
Is there an editorial about it? They do have a bias, as all news networks do, but I didn’t see any statements about Israel and Palestine other than facts.
I am talking about their bias and misinformation they spread regarding other countries. I mean, they recently have done a whole thing about personality cult in some countries while at the same fucking time England arrest people that won’t bow to their new king.
For example, I think the atrocities committed by russia against Ukraine is pretty well covered so they do not deny russian fascist behaviour at all. Heck, they report on china being buddy-buddy with russia and thus china supporting the war on Ukraine is also covered nicely. I think the BBC is doing fine. Unless you live under the fascist rule of these countries, then you suddenly cannot see clearly anymore. Is that perhaps your problem, that you live in one these shitholes?
This is pretty crazy if true. I wonder if it has any connections to the alleged “ghost” CCP police stations that were reported around in Canada. I believe it was being claimed the stations were being used to bully Chinese people that were in Canada.
I don’t know man. The RCMP has recently charged one of their officers for allegedly putting pressure on people of Chinese origin. Now, I’ll admit this a pretty different situation than the “secret Chinese police stations” and, as far as I know, no charges been brought up in their cases or anything found during their investigations. However, China does appear to be putting pressure on its citizens from abroad using clandestine methods. Is the West likely doing much the same? shrug I haven’t heard about that myself but regardless this kind of practice shouldn’t be done by any country.
Anyway I found this National Post article which has more details:
Anyway, I appreciate the source but I gotta say I don’t find it very credible. It starts going down a rabbit hole that this all part of some CIA backed psyop, but I don’t really believe that. These types of stories have been popping up around the world and I doubt the CIA has that kind of reach in some attempt to… what… make China look bad?
These types of stories have been popping up around the world
Can you specify? How many cases do you know? And in which countries? Otherwise its hard to guess if the CIA can fake it. But I’d say if it is up, say to a hundred then: Yes totally something the CIA could and would do.
and I doubt the CIA has that kind of reach in some attempt to… what… make China look bad?
To influence public opinion and manufacture consent for a wide range of political actions against the only threat to US hegemony in existence
“Last December, a report from NGO Safeguard Defenders said it had identified 102 Chinese police stations operating in 53 countries, including five in Canada.”
To be fair, the article you posted claims that NGO is some kind of CIA backed organization. I don’t know if I really buy that, but I suppose it is possible. Antcedotally, I’ve heard other stories of China doing stuff like this (particularly when there were a lot of Hong Kong protests) but I’ll admit I don’t have much first hand evidence myself. It’s just, on a balance of probabilities, I’m much more likely to believe that an authoritarian regime like China is capable of doing it.
Also that example about the “Devil Eyes” dolls is bit disengenious to bring up. Your own source states that they only ever built a few prototypes. Granted, it does say an anonymous Chinese source says hundreds were shipped to Pakistan, but again I don’t think we can really trust China’s take on this.
The CIA has lots of looney plans (likely a product of Military-Industrial complex), but not many come to fruition becasue they are not practical.
As I obviously have not read yours. I will catch up on both. Thanks for quoting that anyways
NGO is some kind of CIA backed organization
I wouldn’t be surprised. The CIA has a history of backing NGOs like this dating back to the Congress for Cultural Freedomwhose goal it was to purge leftism in europe of communism. Nowadays they usually use the NED for that though
… “Devil Eyes” … is bit disengenious to bring up. … they only ever built a few prototypes. … I don’t think we can really trust China’s take on this.
Whether or not it is true they only ever produced prototypes I don’t think its disingenious as my point was not the impact it made but how the CIA operates and this is a good example as it simultaneously needs to be: somewhat recent, yet not too recent so its publicly known (declassified or uncovered) and ridiculous.
I wanted to push back on your notion that something sounds too ridiculous for the CIA to pursue, which generally is just not a framework in which to understand the CIA.
The Chinese source was not “China’s take on this” it was a source of the washington post in China where the CIA allegedly commissioned the dolls (which they did not dispute according to wapo).
But since you brought up the trustworthyness of a take: I wouldn’t trust the CIAs take on this, which is the source claiming “too their knowledge” only 3 dolls were produced.
But personally I think its clear these dolls never got into the hands of many customers, its just such a dumb plan.
Antcedotally, I’ve heard other stories of China doing stuff like this
Historically many narratives about China have been proven false or misrepresented too (social credit system, authenticity of tiananmen papers,…) thats why I am sceptical.
Thanks to the illusory truth effect this anecdotal gut feeling is terribly vulnerable to manipulation. It happens in media all the time, i.e. some rightists believe the LGBTQ community is full of groomers bc its what they are told all the time (not sure if this is a good example, I just wanted to pick a partisan one)
If the targets voice is not represented its even worse bc the claims stay largely uncontested and false claims can stack up (one misrepresentation giving you the feeling “this is totally something they would do”, strenghtening your misconception), creating a gut feeling in the population that is wrong. A fairly uncontested example for such a deconstruction of a foreign target through the media would be Iraq pre invasion. You can look up polls from around the time and correlate it with the reporting of the time. This is also the effect of filterbubbles of course filtering out the opinions you lose the corrective
Whether or not the CIA was/is involved in influencing public opinion like this (personally I have no doubt), this is absolutely what is happening WRT reporting on China ATM, there is no corrective and false claims just stack up.
Look at the histeria that an off-course weather balloon caused: people would line up at an event to scream at Biden about the balloon, even though the initial press release of the pentagon clearly states that this was not an uncommon phenomenon and that there is no threat associated with it (granted its longer than that and one can have a discussion about some of the wording, but this comment is long enough already)
Fair enough. I appreciate the detailed response. I agree there’s lots of reasons to be skeptical of claims made against China. At the same time, I think we can still be critical of China’s actions and not merely dismiss everything against China as some CIA backed plot.
I agree, the best thing is to not jump to conclusions neither the conclusion “Everything is 100% CIA lies” nor the conclusion “China bad” and be patient with individual topics before stepping onto the emotional roller coaster
I’ve listened to a podcast (“Silk and Steel”) by a Chinese living in the US and he describes the media coverage of China in the West as skewed, but he describes it as narrowed onto a certain slice of Chinese reality that is there just blown out of proportion.
I don’t remember his exact words and I am not an English native so I might not transfer the nuance precisely. But along those lines is what I remember. And even IIRC its just the opinion of one person, but it stuck with me. Tbf that was years ago though and narrative has certainly picked up since then
Thank you for the appreciation, I have to say I have yet to get used to the discussions on lemmy being seemingly way more good-faithed than on reddit!
Didn’t know these kinds of people existed until I showed up here. They must have been hiding on reddit or something it’s insane how braindead these people are.
Mostly they got banned wherever they congregated on Reddit. Not knowing they existed seems like a significant oversight, but to be expected with the way that China is depicted to you.
I didn’t realize people like legitimately fell for such obvious lies from an authoritarian government. I can understand closed of citizens inside the country but people with access to so much I formation that prooces otherwise and yet they cling to a totalitarian regimes commiting genocide. It’s sad honestly.
And yet surely these people must have a reason to believe it, don’t they? Even if one assumes they are wrong, this doesn’t just come from nowhere, it must have some cause to seem reasonable to them, right? They are like you, thinking human beings, and no progress can be made in understanding the disagreement if you start from them being, in so many words, intellectually inferior to you.
The beliefs of Marxism / Leninism are fairly noble, but never once in the history of them or any of their offshoots (i.e communism / socialism) have they ever worked. In the end the revolutions all colapse into themselves and turn into authoritarian capitalist regimes. China has been an authoritarian government since the beginning and is run by an evil dictator.
The beliefs of Marxism / Leninism . . . or any of their offshoots (i.e communism / socialism)
I suppose it’s just a matter of syntax, but I first read this as a very silly statement wherein “communism” is an offshoot of “Marxism / Leninism”.
Anyway, don’t worry, I’m familiar with the “real Marxism has never been tried!” line that some people have for various reasons, but I a) can’t see how this is particularly useful as a distinction compared to other states and b) don’t think this remotely answers my question.
I think you and I both know why the so-called marxists who say “real Marxism has never been tried” exist, or at least our beliefs on the matter are a close enough parallel that it’s not a very enticing discussion, but what you have failed to do is explain the basic prompt of why a westerner would support a state like China.
I can give an internally-consistent answer for these groups and yourself coming to their beliefs: You all live to varying degrees in a bubble of western Discourse and pseudo-historical mythmaking.
The “never been tried” Marxist believes everything the State Department says about its enemies but still believes in some sort of ever-failing communism like a good little Trot because they are, for the time being and in part motivated by their social position, appalled by what capitalism has wrought even in the imperial core and want something better even if they struggle to conceive what that could be in practical terms, since every success of socialism has been transmuted into an ultimate failure. Nonetheless, “there must be an alternative,” and that possibility, however hazy, is worth fighting for over the corrupt establishment.
The liberal believes everything the State Department says about its enemies and comes to the reasonable conclusion (if we assume the State Department is honest) that socialism has failed its many chances and therefore “there is no alternative”. They are more likely to have a higher social position than the previous group because it is much easier to say capitalism works when it works for you.
The “tankie” is typically the worst off of the three groups in social position, with long term prospects that look pretty grim, and this has pushed them into a desperation to find a way to improve their prospects since they can’t afford a hazy future and communalist circle-jerking but the invisible hand of the free market would crush them even faster, so they do something that these other groups are not driven to, which is some level of serious research, and by this means they were able to accept that the State Department lies as often as it speaks and that they have been born into the slightly unnerving position of being nestled in the imperial core as the empire runs roughshod over as much of the world as it can. Whether they simply concluded that states like Russia or Iran were plainly the lesser of two evils for their opposition to NATO, or they found a more extreme position like genuinely believing in the project of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, they were able to develop a framework that gives them a path forward where previously they felt they had none.
Of course, various biographical details can also be vitally important, like being the descendant of defectors vs generic diaspora, or knowing people who are. I’m white as the driven snow, but I know Chinese people from both groups. The “tankie” one didn’t persuade me on very much (though I learned a lot about the Korean War and various elements of the 20th century PRC) but the diaspora descendant taught me things that I still am trying to process, because they made genuinely ridiculous claims (e.g. Mao burning down libraries during the Civil War) that I have not been able to find repeated by even the most ridiculous anti-PRC rag when I search online. There’s a bizarre sort of cult to intergenerational trauma that seems to emerge where stories are embellished and exaggerated over time (deliberately or not) and the truth of these stories cannot be questioned because, in so many words, “it’s their truth.”
I meant it when I said I’m still processing it, because to me it’s in many respects a bizarre behavior even though it’s actually not that hard to explain sociologically (view it like religious trauma and it’s trivially simple). I think there is more to learn from it, but I couldn’t tell you what.
We express our firm opposition to relevant countries’ practice of politicizing human rights issues, by naming and shaming, and publicly exerting pressures on other countries. We commend China’s remarkable achievements in the field of human rights by adhering to the people-centered development philosophy and protecting and promoting human rights through development. We also appreciate China’s contributions to the international human rights cause.
When allegations are made, the World Bank takes them seriously and reviews them thoroughly. In line with standard practice, immediately after receiving a series of serious allegations in August 2019 in connection with the Xinjiang Technical and Vocational Education and Training Project, the Bank launched a fact-finding review, and World Bank senior managers traveled to Xinjiang to gather information directly…The team conducted a thorough review of project documents, engaged in discussions with project staff, and visited schools directly financed by the project, as well as their partner schools that were the subject of allegations. The review did not substantiate the allegations.
Welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat’s delegation upon invitation from the People’s Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People’s Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People’s Republic of China.
The recently published report also brings forth some interesting facts related to the religious freedom as opposed to the western propaganda. The report provides a strong testimonial by the visiting delegates who clearly state, “the in houses of worship such as the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, modern facilities abound, providing water, electricity and air conditioning. Local clerics told the visitors that their religious activities had been very well protected”. “The conditions here are very good,” said Abdelhalim Elwerdany, of Egypt’s Al-Gomhuria newspaper. “I could feel that local Muslims fully enjoy religious freedom.”
The authors wish to extend their gratitude to the individuals and organisations who supported this research by providing concrete feedback for revisions on the report, offering suggestions and advice at the planning stages, and offering ongoing collaborative and moral support while conducting this research: Elise Anderson, Campaign for Uyghurs, Freedom House, Tim Grose, Ondřej Klimeš, Julie Millsap, David O’Brien, the Rights Practice, Radio Free Asia, Isabella Rodriguez, David Stroup, Hannah Theaker, Emily Upson, the Uyghur Human Rights Project, the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database, the World Uyghur Congress, the Xinjiang Documentation Project, the Xinjiang Victims’ Database, and Adrian Zenz.
This is so key to propaganda. When researchers do a study on 58 people, you can barely claim you have a good representation of the population. And even in that case, if they are good, high quality researchers, they aren’t pushing any opinion, just stating facts. It’s just that 58 people can’t represent the population well, It’s just a starting point.
Now if we’re talking about an opinion and not just stated facts, 58 people is hardly representative, easy to manipulate, especially when you don’t have to cite specifics, just conclusion.
Okay, let’s assume these are facts. 58 people were threatened, etc. This is still propaganda. Opinion, and interpretation can push the conversation in one direction or the other very heavily.
For example, let’s draw a comparison to a system that people find more familiar (For westerners, at least), such as the united states police system or the FBI. How many US citizens are threatened to stop talking when pushing the limits of conversation publicly (Say, about calling out the inhumane treatment of others by the US military)? How many people have talked publicly about being approached by the FBI, or said they can’t comment on their interactions with the FBI, or of some private corporation that paid them off to keep their mouths shut about some insider deal, money laundering, or underage sex scandal? Governments and even private citizens coming after people who are talking shit publicly happens in capitalist states all the time.
And that’s just taking into account regular people who live in western countries. How about an even more direct comparison? The Uyghurs are Muslims that participated in terrorism in China, but the United States had Muslim terrorists of their own, what did they do? en.wikipedia.org/…/Human_rights_in_post-invasion_… You can find all kinds of resources about the human rights violations that the united states participated in against the muslin people, even in western sources such as wikipidia, and others amnesty.org/…/iraq-20-years-since-the-us-led-coal… have lots and lots of facts surrounding this.
“rules for thee, but not for me” comes to mind.
Sorry didn’t mean to unload on you. I’m vehemently agreeing!
Well I, as a former citizen of China, do “speak out” against CCP as in family discussions, in online forums, and sometimes with classmates in school, but I don’t “speak out” as in actually participate in protests. Demonstrations just isn’t my thing. Protesting against CCP gets you labeled a “race traitor”. I mean honestly, with all the racial problems in the US, and having to deal with my abusive family, I really don’t have to energy care about CCP anymore. It’s dead to me. I view China just like how an anti-fascist German view Nazi Germany. There’s no point of protests. It’s beyond anything a protest can fix. Like… why do I even care, it isn’t even my country anymore.
Edit: Also, it isn’t a conspiracy that ethnic Chinese (I’m gonna use the term “ethnic Chinese” because this applies regardless of citizenship status) people don’t “speak out”. People just value “Social Harmony” more than being correct. Like if you live abroad, why care about what happens back in China? Most ethnic Chinese people who lives abroad don’t really feel welcome in their new country, so why be against your former country if you aren’t even sure if you are actually safe in your new one? You don’t end up in a situation where you have no safe harbor in the world. Ethnic Chinese people living abroad believe China will accept them again in-case their living situation abroad goes south, so they don’t want to get on the bad side of the Chinese government. Like what happened with the Chinese Exclusion act in the US more than 100 years ago, and also the Japanese Internment Camps. Maybe you disagree with the thought process, but that is what most ethnic Chinese people think.
If your comment (the top-level one) was supposed to be sarcasm, you need a /s tag because there are people actually being serious saying that “it’s a conspiracy, couldn’t be any other possible explanation” stuff.
But also, the “hostage” thing is not entirely false, just very exaggerated. They only take your family “hostage” if you are like a leader of a protest or something. But I doubt they care if you are just some forum user that has no followers and “protesting” online. They got too many dissidents within their jurisdiction to care about those abroad.
As someone who legitimately has family in China and who visits them and speaks to them in Mandarin, there is 100% a chilling effect caused by CCP autocracy.
But I am eager to hear how a bunch of people who have never been and don’t speak the language know more about this because they read a pamphlet.
I actually had a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe he wouldn't behave like this and he wouldn't fuck with the people he didn't like by abusing twitter once he owned it, but that hope was dashed pretty quickly.
Dude, you gotta learn how to cross post lol. There’s a little button on the web interface just for doing it. Afaik, none of the apps have integrated that function yet, but if you’re going to want five or six communities to have the post, it’s worth the extra step of using a browser.
Seems like the right approach to start their own server, instead of making accounts on some of the flagship instances, which only perpetuates the centralisation dogma.
It also does away with some of the really awkward practices news organizations engage in wrt social media. The number of @JournalistNameCBC handles out there is kind of super cringy, and seems to point to journos having company-specific/company-mandated social media accounts, but without any actual company support for them.
Something like this makes having a company-mandated social media account something they're assigned, just like an email address, rather than something they're personally responsible for.
What I’d love to see is news companies spinning up their own instances, for example, a CBC-owned Mastodon instance, with accounts such as journalistname@cbcnews. It’d work exactly like a company-assigned e-mail address, and would function as such. That each and every post on such an account would be seen as the journalist working under the company, and not their own personal views.
And if a journalist wants his own personal account, well, they can either spin up their own instance, or perhaps a union of journalists would spin up an instance, with journalists setting up their accounts that are not tied to any news agency or company.
Am I being too naive and optimistic here? Maybe. But do I want this to happen regardless, yes!
Upon reading the article more closely, this is what the BBC is doing. My bad!
When I joined Mastodon in the November migration, I wondered why media organisations weren’t spinning up their own servers. Give all the journos an account on that server and there’s your verification right away.
Because a company/org specific site for journalists doesn’t get the interactions with people outside that org but within the sector of coverage unless people do a lot of following of others.
But note also that the first one isn’t associated with a media organization but rather an industry sector.
You can use social.bbc to broadcasts articles that people want to read, but the “what is going on with the energy grid in the UK” will never show up in local there but rather over at mastodon.energy/ … and so that’s where the journalists are… though there’s still a lot going on over at twitter.com/search?q=%23energytwitter
Local isn't a good measure here, though. The BBC local stream is literally just going to be posts by BBC employees.
The global stream isn't a great measure, either, frankly, as journalists primarily want to yet their posts seen, not see a huge field of noise. Those who are doing digging for social media stories maybe want a wider cut of things, but they can still do that through their replies, and through global. Search just isn't going to be as effective as on generalist servers.
But then, search isn't super effective on Mastodon, anyway, and all the big generalist servers are running Mastodon.
There's nothing preventing them from using secondary accounts on .social for research, though.
Does it make sense for NPR to spin up their own instance with the additional administration and server costs? Or is it a better use of their money just to have an account on a larger instance… which also makes discovery of them easier (everyone on mstdn.social sees them in the local feed and relevant hashtags without having to specifically follow them on other servers).
The local mastodon instance helps with authenticity, but hinders the discovery of the “buzz” in local of an appropriately topical instance ( mastodon.energy/explore ).
No of course not everyone or every organisation has the means for that. But those that have should, and others should fan out over different instances: local or regional ones, or thematic ones, instead of congregating on the same three instances because it’s ‘the main one’.
The hashtag #fossilfuels works… but it doesn’t work as well as being in mastodon.energy/public/local were things without hashtags exist and all the content is topical.
bbc.co.uk
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