Exactly. AI companies distilled the whole internet into AI weights, now other AI companies are distilling their work to generate new AI weights. Nothing wrong with that, and the world gets open weights AI models.

> I think it would be totally incoherent to say that copyrighted information is essentially fair game to include in your model but the outputs of your model are privileged against being included in other models.

IANAL, but going from copyrighted texts to an AI model likely constitutes a new original creation, not a slavish reproduction. Whereas going from one AI model to another is more likely to be considered a slavish reproduction reproduction, although arguably AI models are not copyrightable to the extent that the weights are objective facts, like entries in a phone book.

And this stance isn’t new - AI output is already considered public domain.

One is allegedly a copyright violation (fair use IMHO but still a grey area legally AIUI), one is a very explicitly a violation of the terms of service you agree to when signing up. And yes I do think that if somebody puts their website behind some barrier where a user has to actively affirm they won't download the contents and use it to train an LLM that should be protected by the same law for the same reason.

Edit: I realize I can't justify this and it's an irresponsible comment. Please ignore it.

Original:

Smells like a CEO justifying theft. It is reasonable to believe Wong thinks differently about law breaking, given this article.

Something something legal liabilities something something?

And building a tool that can reverse-engineer other people’s products but going out of your way to prevent yours being reverse-engineered.

I agree that AI companies shouldn’t be allowed to bar distillation under grounds of fairness and societal benefit.

But I don’t see how copyright has anything to do with anything. Copyright is a legal concept, not an ethical concept. Training an LLM on copyrighted material is legal. Ethically, whether a work that the LLM trained on is copyrighted or not has no relevance

The accusation of theft by anyone is really only as strong as their financial capability to enforce it. The leg that the model companies stand on is their bank account, which is increasingly becoming the only force that moves the needle in this economic and political environment.

If your recommendation algorithm always recommends B when it sees A, and I derive this information from exfiltrating your masked data , is it not theft simply because I didn’t unmask the true identity of A and B?

Stole all other important information embedded in the relationship (the essence of the relationship itself).

This is not seen as theft to only two or three types of people:

1) Technically ignorant

2) Or Technically ignorant and morally bankrupt

3) Truly evil, a combination of technically capable, and morally bankrupt.

(An “Abomination” is also possible, unaware and unable to perceive morality , not just mere ignorance. For example, it is tremendously generous to call an Abomination ignorant or amoral, that’s a compliment to such a thing. Would Jensen Huang know about the words coming out of his mouth, is the true question really.)

the worst thing I heard him say is that he doesn't think kids should learn their multiplication tables anymore on the Ezra podcast

while I generally agree on his open weight stances, I lost all respect in that moment, everyone of these people are so out of touch

Yes, see ROCm.

He is selling shovels and piling manure so that he always comes out on top.

In Claude Code (at least inside VSCode) thinking traces are hidden by default. You can reenable them via JSON. They’re not the real thinking traces though, they are something like thinking summaries.

Haven't they already? (at least in the regular chat UI)

Pretty sure those are just summarized traces, which obscure the valuable reasoning traces used by the actual model.

Thinking traces aren't in the Claude app (at least, not visibly). I assumed it's only available (if at all) via API.

'Fair play' is a dimension of competition. They aren't orthogonal attributes.

You can compete fairly or unfairly.

In any event, distillation seems to be in a grey enough area that reasonable people can disagree (IMO). It strikes me as more akin to theft than to fair competition, but it doesn't seem like it should be treated as criminal. Rather, I think the onus should be on the labs to defend themselves against it.

All that said, Jensen's take is clearly quite biased.

Expect that the best chips are still banned.

No. If a CEO makes self-serving comments that are in their interests, but not the company’s interests, that could be fiduciary misconduct. With that being said, CEOs have a fair amount of latitude in what they can say, since it’s difficult to tell what the “optimal” thing to say at any point would be (see: Tim Cook telling an activist investor to “get out of the stock” if he didn’t like Apple’s environmental initiatives).

The idea that CEOs’ hands are tied, and that they are kept on some sort of short legal leash, is largely (though not entirely) a fiction.

Don’t know why this is down voted. Jensen Huang has literally made this comment on stage when asked critical questions.

His company has been public longer than you’ve been solvent.