ReHacked vol. 345: Japanese IP holders demand OpenAI stop using their content to train AI, Reviving Classic Unix Games and more
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Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix demand OpenAI stop using their content to train AI | The Verge #ai #copyrights
The Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), an anti-piracy organization representing Japanese IP holders like Studio Ghibli and Bandai Namco, released a letter last week asking OpenAI to stop using its members’ content to train Sora 2, as reported by Automaton. The letter states that “CODA considers that the act of replication during the machine learning process may constitute copyright infringement,” since the resulting AI model went on to spit out content with copyrighted characters.
Sora 2 generated an avalanche of content containing Japanese IP after it launched on September 30th, prompting Japan’s government to formally ask OpenAI to stop replicating Japanese artwork. This isn’t the first time one of OpenAI’s apps clearly pulled from Japanese media, either — the highlight of GPT-4o’s launch back in March was a proliferation of “Ghibli-style” images. Even Sam Altman’s own profile picture on X is currently a portrait in a style reminiscent of Studio Ghibli.
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Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology - VEJETA #games #software #computers #history #longread
Picture this: October 26, 1987. The Berlin Wall still stands, the World Wide Web is just text, and software is distributed through USENET newsgroups in text files split across multiple posts. On that day, Edward Barlow posted something special to comp.sources.games:
“conquest – middle earth multi-player game, Part01/05”
That’s how Ed Barlow announced it at the time, before quickly changed the name to Conquer.
This was Conquer – a sophisticated multi-player strategy game that would influence countless others. Players controlled nations in Middle Earth, managing resources, armies, magic systems, and diplomatic relations. What made it remarkable wasn’t just the gameplay, but how it was built and distributed in an era when “open source” wasn’t even a term yet.
Denmark plans to ban access to social media for children under 15 | AP News #socialnetworks #society
Denmark’s government on Friday announced an agreement to ban access to social media for anyone under 15, ratcheting up pressure on Big Tech platforms as concerns grow that kids are getting too swept up in a digitized world of harmful content and commercial interests.
The move would give some parents — after a specific assessment — the right to let their children access social media from age 13. It wasn’t immediately clear how such a ban would be enforced: Many tech platforms already restrict pre-teens from signing up. Officials and experts say such restrictions don’t always work.
Superagers All Have This 1 Behavior in Common #health #psychology
Want to be a super-ager? Focus on your relationships
This might come as a surprise to laypeople who think aging well is all about HIIT workouts and plentiful kale. But it likely isn’t a huge shock to other scientists. The Harvard Study of Adult Development has been minutely tracking the lives of some 724 original participants (and now some of their descendants) since 1938.
It discovered the biggest predictor of a long, healthy life isn’t biological. It’s social. The better the quality of your relationships, the more likely you are to age well. And while you have only indirect influence on things like your cholesterol level and brain health, you are directly in control of your social life.
It’s something we can and should prioritize, according to study director Robert Waldinger. “We think of physical fitness as a practice, as something we do to maintain our bodies. Our social life is a living system, and it needs maintenance too,” he told the Harvard Gazette.
The effects of keeping up your social ties aren’t minor. Neuroscientist Bryan James, author of another study on aging and social contact, summed up his findings this way: “Social activity is associated with a decreased risk of developing dementia and mild cognitive impairment […] the least socially active older adults developed dementia an average of five years before the most socially active.”
Keeping up with friends helps with healthy aging. But so does keeping up with learning. Research has shown a strong link between keeping your brain active and maintaining cognitive performance deep into your later years. One study found that just joining a class to learn a new skill or hobby improved brain performance as if subjects were 30 years younger. Another one, done at Stanford, found no cognitive decline at all until retirement and beyond if you stay mentally active.
What Happened to Piracy? Copyright Enforcement Fades as AI Giants Rise #ai #copyright
Since the mid-nineties, software giants led by Microsoft have waged a global war against copyright infringement and online piracy. They bankrolled groups like the Business Software Alliance to demand increased penalties for copyright violations and pressured FBI agents to raid foreign hosts accused of harboring illicit content-sharing servers. For the old software model, duplicated Microsoft Office disks and fake software licenses posed the greatest risk.
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In a case that signified this old era of aggressive copyright enforcement, the Justice Department in 2011 pursued criminal charges against Aaron Swartz, a young open internet activist, for downloading JSTOR’s repository of scholarly papers without authorization. Faced with the prospect of decades in prison, he died by suicide during the prosecution.
Much has changed since advances in artificial intelligence have made the technology the focal point of Silicon Valley innovation. Smith is now president of Microsoft, and the company and its partner OpenAI—which exclusively runs on Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing network and was backed with $13.75 billion in investment funds from Microsoft—are at the center of a very different type of copyright dispute. This time, as the power of the tech industry still looms over Washington, D.C., prosecutors are less interested in going after those suspected of engaging in illegal downloads of copyrighted work.
That is because it is now the tech giants that are accused of exploiting pirated content on an industrial scale. Meta, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, xAI, and OpenAI are competing to vacuum up as much data as humanly possible in a race to develop their respective AI models. The most prized training data, it turns out, are vast quantities of copyrighted material, largely in the form of published works such as academic articles, novels, and nonfiction books.
The Problem with Farmed Seafood #economy #nature
In the cold waters of the Pacific, the anchoveta once shimmered in swarms so vast that sailors described them as turning the sea into a river of quicksilver. They were small, unassuming fish, yet the abundance of the ocean rested upon their delicate bones. Seabirds wheeled overhead in their millions, sea lions and whales dove into their depths, and predatory fish rose through the blue to feed on them. In those shoals lived the vitality of the sea itself. But in our age, the anchoveta, along with sardines and menhaden, have been transformed from living threads in an ancient web into bags of meal and casks of oil. Ninety percent of the forage fish caught by human hands are not eaten by us but ground down to feed salmon being raised in the cold fjords of Norway and shrimp and fish in the tropical ponds of Southeast Asia.
It is one of the great ironies of our time. To farm the sea, we strip the sea. We take from the ocean’s foundation to build its surface anew, and in the process we imperil both. In 2016, the anchoveta failed to arrive in the expected numbers, and entire fishing seasons in Peru were canceled. Again in 2023, the same collapse occurred, this time coinciding with a spike in ocean temperatures that drove the fish to depths where nets could not reach. The seabirds starved, their nests abandoned. Seal pups died in the thousands. Farmers watched as the price of feed climbed and their livelihoods faltered. What seemed infinite revealed itself as fragile.
Japanese Publishers Take Stand Against OpenAI's Sora 2 Over Unauthorized Training - Karmatic #ai #copyrights
Japan’s Content Overseas Distribution Association, representing powerhouse studios like Sony’s Aniplex, Bandai Namco, Studio Ghibli, and Square Enix, has formally requested that OpenAI cease training its Sora 2 video generation model on their intellectual property. The October 28 announcement marks an escalating tension between creative industries and AI developers over the use of copyrighted material in machine learning. CODA claims to have identified outputs from Sora 2 that closely resemble specific Japanese works, suggesting the model was trained on their members’ content without authorization.
The core dispute hinges on a fundamental disagreement about consent and liability. While OpenAI has implemented an opt-out system for content holders, CODA argues that Japanese law requires prior permission before copyrighted works can be used for training purposes. The publishers contend that the act of copying during machine learning itself may constitute infringement, and that subsequent objections cannot retroactively shield a company from liability. Beyond demanding OpenAI stop the unauthorized use, CODA is calling for the company to respond directly to claims of infringement related to Sora 2’s outputs.
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