Richard Urwin
@soronlin.richard-urwin.co.uk
308 followers 1.2K following 545 posts
Writer, technical proof-reader, software engineer Books: Artificial Intelligence: The Quest for the Ultimate Thinking Machine Artificial Intelligence in easy steps Rust Progrogramming in easy steps WIP: Return to Fairyland
![[...] If, for example, one were to tell a psychiatrist, "I went for a boat ride" and he responded "Tell me about boats", one would not assume that he knew nothing about boats, but that he had some purpose in so directing the subsequent conversation. It is important to note that this assumption is one made by the speaker.
[..]
In human conversation a speaker will make certain (perhaps generous) assumptions about his conversational partner. As long as it remains possible to interpret the latter's responses consistently with those assumptions, the speaker's image of his partner remains unchanged, in particular, undamaged. Responses which are difficult ro so interpret may well result in an enhancement of the image of the partner, in additional rationalizations which then make more complicated interpretations of his responses reasonable.
[...]
The whole issue of the credibility (to humans) of machine output demands investigation. Important decisions increasingly tend to be made in response to computer output. The ultimately responsible human interpreter of "What the machine says" is, not unlike the correspondent with ELIZA, constantly faced with the need to make credibility judgements. ELIZA shows, if nothing else, how easy ot is to create and maintain the illusion of understanding, hence perhaps of judgement deserving of credibility. A certain danger lurks there.
-- excerpts from Joseph Weisenbaum (1966) ELIZA -- A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man And Machine](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:sqglrhjnbtzwd7a6sosnw5ha/bafkreicoynl555ajp7gfwybcew5pxbubwhu7klxnjy6ce5gv4iftf5zuqq)
![A screenshot of an email. It reads "I am your constituent. My name is Richard Urwin and I live in the [REDACTED] postcode.
I have discovered that my book Artificial Intelligence, The Quest for the Ultimate Thinking Machine, published by Arcturus in 2016, has been illegally pirated by Meta and used to train its AI engine.
As I am sure you are aware, the government has just held a public consultation on ways the copyright laws should be modernised to take AI training into account.
Meta did not ask for permission to use my book, or any of the other thousands of books that they used. According to court documents, they considered licensing the works they needed and decided that it would take too long and cost too much. Instead, they downloaded pirated copies en mass.
It is illegal to download a book without a license to do so. This is established law in both the USA and the UK.
Meta did not want to use my book for research or for any other fair use. Their purpose was to create a machine that could compete with the authors who's work they copied and thereby make a profit for themselves.
Companies do not admit to the data they use to train their engines, precisely because they know it is illegal and unethical. Meta did not admit to using the pirated archive libgen until forced to do so by the court. This is one tiny glimpse behind the curtain; no company building a Large Language Model AI considers copyright, they believe they are above the law.
I hope you will take my concerns to those responsible for the copyright review and represent my interests in the strongest terms.
Regards,
Richard Urwin"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:sqglrhjnbtzwd7a6sosnw5ha/bafkreihw7owifrpoefyaybhuuuvnqe7jy6rb4j5rekqofdke73m5fuwhgq)
