Computers aren't people. Software isn't humans.

Since the way GPT "learns" is not materially similar to how a human learns, I don't see why this talking point is particularly relevant. Nothing stops the courts from distinguishing between an AI and a human with regard to what may be permissible.

I agree, it seems like all the arguments that the use of data by AI should have no more restrictions than the use of data by humans hinge on the implicit (or sometimes explicit) assumption that human learning and machine learning are identical. While there are parallels, there also seem to be significant differences not only in how the learning is done, but also in outcomes for the person whose data is being used. And since a major purpose of IP, copyright, etc. is at least ostensibly to protect the creators of information from negative outcomes, I don't think the outcomes can be ignored when comparing human learning to ML.

Anthropomorphizing that it "learned" is disingenuous and I expect better from the HN crowd.

If ChatGPT regurgitates verbatim or nearly verbatim, something it slurped up from OP's blog, is that not plagiarism? Where do you draw the line? Where would a reasonable person draw the line?

A human is both capable of reciting things from memory in an infringing manner, and learning from experiences to create something new. Maybe we should tape people's mouth shut if they dare to violate copyright by reciting a copyrighted book word for word or put them in a straight jacket if they recreate a copyrighted painting from memory.

Like with everything in law, "intent" is paramount. Obviously it's not the trainer's, nor the end-user's goal to reproduce training set data verbatim; quite contrary, overfitting as such is undesirable.

Intent only goes so far. If I continually but unintentionally reproduce copyrighted works verbatim, I could still face consequences, particularly if I did not show due diligence in preventing it from happening in the first place.

But ChatGPT doesn’t spit out verbatim from the blog.

Actually I fear that people that say this are doing worse than anthropomorphizing.

Often rather than claiming human aspects to the machine, they are going further, and claiming machine aspects to the human.

Using mechanistic analogies for explaining the human body or mind isn't new, but as machines become better and better at imitating humans, those analogies become more seductive.

That's my rant; the danger with 'AI' isn't so much that humans are enslaved by machines, but that we enslave each other -- or dehumanize each other -- with machines.