You only have to make that leap if you suppose that machine learning algorithms actually learn and then become capable of creating their own original works, rather than producing mechanical transformations of their inputs.

Which, I don’t think that’s an inherently absurd statement. I mean, at some point humans physically exist, so a sufficiently complex artificial being could exactly replicate our physically processes, and it would be hard (imo) to argue that such a thing isn’t a person.

But I don’t see the non-big-leap option. Either we admit that machines can actually perform creative works which are their own ideas, or we call the thing they do a derivative work, and we admit that we can’t just eyeball the difference between an original work and a derivative work anymore. That there’s something intrinsically special about having a human in the loop.

> You only have to make that leap if you suppose that machine learning algorithms actually learn and then become capable of creating their own original works, rather than producing mechanical transformations of their inputs.

Why do you think humans can do that, and that what we call “original works” of humans are not just mechanical transformations of the human’s inputs.

How, in a universe of deterministic physical laws, is it possible for a human to do anything else?

That seems pretty close to what I said in the next paragraph, just approaching from the other direction.