Raw LLM Responses

The problem is: AI learning *is* learning the same way a toddler learns. It just automates the process. You’re confusing a quantitative difference with a qualitative one. If I copy a book by hand like an ancient monk, or if I print it in millions of copies, it’s still the same task, copying a book, and the same product: a written text. The process has merely been automated, but it hasn’t changed in substance. Automation has always raised social and economic questions that didn’t exist before. It reshapes the ethical framework because it changes the value of things. Take, for example, a medieval pharmacist who discovers a special formula: he can protect his “copyright” simply by not revealing it to anyone. The value of his work lies in his craft, which belongs to him alone. Today, however, a pharmaceutical company must protect its intellectual property because once the formula or idea becomes public, it can be instantly reproduced in millions or billions of doses, undermining the entire investment in research. The same applies to photography. Once, people paid large sums for a painter’s craft to have a portrait of themselves on the wall. With the advent of photography, the painter’s ability to produce realistic portraits lost its market value. The value shifted: that craft became nearly worthless compared to a more efficient, automated process. Still, this doesn’t change the fact that automation simply automates tasks; it doesn’t alter the nature of the task itself. The trite argument that AI constitutes plagiarism rests on the utterly insane notion that reimagining and re-elaborating publicly available images amounts to stealing. By that logic, no artist in history would be safe from the accusation. And by the way, I’ve noticed that most of the loudest AI critics tend to be left-leaning individuals who also often call for the abolition of patents on drugs and vaccines, despite the fact that protecting intellectual property after millions in research investment is far more justifiable than trying to “protect” an artist’s style, or whatever else they think is being copied. It’s a kind of Robin Hood logic: copyright infringement is evil when big corporations do it to individuals, but perfectly fine when it happens the other way around. Whatever.