#web scraping expert | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mostlysignssomeportents · 10 months ago

Text

On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! On July 20, I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

We're living through one of those moments when millions of people become suddenly and overwhelmingly interested in fair use, one of the subtlest and worst-understood aspects of copyright law. It's not a subject you can master by skimming a Wikipedia article!

I've been talking about fair use with laypeople for more than 20 years. I've met so many people who possess the unshakable, serene confidence of the truly wrong, like the people who think fair use means you can take x words from a book, or y seconds from a song and it will always be fair, while anything more will never be.

Or the people who think that if you violate any of the four factors, your use can't be fair – or the people who think that if you fail all of the four factors, you must be infringing (people, the Supreme Court is calling and they want to tell you about the Betamax!).

You might think that you can never quote a song lyric in a book without infringing copyright, or that you must clear every musical sample. You might be rock solid certain that scraping the web to train an AI is infringing. If you hold those beliefs, you do not understand the "fact intensive" nature of fair use.

But you can learn! It's actually a really cool and interesting and gnarly subject, and it's a favorite of copyright scholars, who have really fascinating disagreements and discussions about the subject. These discussions often key off of the controversies of the moment, but inevitably they implicate earlier fights about everything from the piano roll to 2 Live Crew to antiracist retellings of Gone With the Wind.

One of the most interesting discussions of fair use you can ask for took place in 2019, when the NYU Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy held a symposium called "Proving IP." One of the panels featured dueling musicologists debating the merits of the Blurred Lines case. That case marked a turning point in music copyright, with the Marvin Gaye estate successfully suing Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams for copying the "vibe" of Gaye's "Got to Give it Up."

Naturally, this discussion featured clips from both songs as the experts – joined by some of America's top copyright scholars – delved into the legal reasoning and future consequences of the case. It would be literally impossible to discuss this case without those clips.

And that's where the problems start: as soon as the symposium was uploaded to Youtube, it was flagged and removed by Content ID, Google's $100,000,000 copyright enforcement system. This initial takedown was fully automated, which is how Content ID works: rightsholders upload audio to claim it, and then Content ID removes other videos where that audio appears (rightsholders can also specify that videos with matching clips be demonetized, or that the ad revenue from those videos be diverted to the rightsholders).

But Content ID has a safety valve: an uploader whose video has been incorrectly flagged can challenge the takedown. The case is then punted to the rightsholder, who has to manually renew or drop their claim. In the case of this symposium, the rightsholder was Universal Music Group, the largest record company in the world. UMG's personnel reviewed the video and did not drop the claim.

99.99% of the time, that's where the story would end, for many reasons. First of all, most people don't understand fair use well enough to contest the judgment of a cosmically vast, unimaginably rich monopolist who wants to censor their video. Just as importantly, though, is that Content ID is a Byzantine system that is nearly as complex as fair use, but it's an entirely private affair, created and adjudicated by another galactic-scale monopolist (Google).

Google's copyright enforcement system is a cod-legal regime with all the downsides of the law, and a few wrinkles of its own (for example, it's a system without lawyers – just corporate experts doing battle with laypeople). And a single mis-step can result in your video being deleted or your account being permanently deleted, along with every video you've ever posted. For people who make their living on audiovisual content, losing your Youtube account is an extinction-level event:

https://www.eff.org/wp/unfiltered-how-youtubes-content-id-discourages-fair-use-and-dictates-what-we-see-online

So for the average Youtuber, Content ID is a kind of Kafka-as-a-Service system that is always avoided and never investigated. But the Engelbert Center isn't your average Youtuber: they boast some of the country's top copyright experts, specializing in exactly the questions Youtube's Content ID is supposed to be adjudicating.

So naturally, they challenged the takedown – only to have UMG double down. This is par for the course with UMG: they are infamous for refusing to consider fair use in takedown requests. Their stance is so unreasonable that a court actually found them guilty of violating the DMCA's provision against fraudulent takedowns:

https://www.eff.org/cases/lenz-v-universal

But the DMCA's takedown system is part of the real law, while Content ID is a fake law, created and overseen by a tech monopolist, not a court. So the fate of the Blurred Lines discussion turned on the Engelberg Center's ability to navigate both the law and the n-dimensional topology of Content ID's takedown flowchart.

It took more than a year, but eventually, Engelberg prevailed.

Until they didn't.

If Content ID was a person, it would be baby, specifically, a baby under 18 months old – that is, before the development of "object permanence." Until our 18th month (or so), we lack the ability to reason about things we can't see – this the period when small babies find peek-a-boo amazing. Object permanence is the ability to understand things that aren't in your immediate field of vision.

Content ID has no object permanence. Despite the fact that the Engelberg Blurred Lines panel was the most involved fair use question the system was ever called upon to parse, it managed to repeatedly forget that it had decided that the panel could stay up. Over and over since that initial determination, Content ID has taken down the video of the panel, forcing Engelberg to go through the whole process again.

But that's just for starters, because Youtube isn't the only place where a copyright enforcement bot is making billions of unsupervised, unaccountable decisions about what audiovisual material you're allowed to access.

Spotify is yet another monopolist, with a justifiable reputation for being extremely hostile to artists' interests, thanks in large part to the role that UMG and the other major record labels played in designing its business rules:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/12/streaming-doesnt-pay/#stunt-publishing

Spotify has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to capture the podcasting market, in the hopes of converting one of the last truly open digital publishing systems into a product under its control:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/27/enshittification-resistance/#ummauerter-garten-nein

Thankfully, that campaign has failed – but millions of people have (unwisely) ditched their open podcatchers in favor of Spotify's pre-enshittified app, so everyone with a podcast now must target Spotify for distribution if they hope to reach those captive users.

Guess who has a podcast? The Engelberg Center.

Naturally, Engelberg's podcast includes the audio of that Blurred Lines panel, and that audio includes samples from both "Blurred Lines" and "Got To Give It Up."

So – naturally – UMG keeps taking down the podcast.

Spotify has its own answer to Content ID, and incredibly, it's even worse and harder to navigate than Google's pretend legal system. As Engelberg describes in its latest post, UMG and Spotify have colluded to ensure that this now-classic discussion of fair use will never be able to take advantage of fair use itself:

https://www.nyuengelberg.org/news/how-explaining-copyright-broke-the-spotify-copyright-system/

Remember, this is the best case scenario for arguing about fair use with a monopolist like UMG, Google, or Spotify. As Engelberg puts it:

The Engelberg Center had an extraordinarily high level of interest in pursuing this issue, and legal confidence in our position that would have cost an average podcaster tens of thousands of dollars to develop. That cannot be what is required to challenge the removal of a podcast episode.

Automated takedown systems are the tech industry's answer to the "notice-and-takedown" system that was invented to broker a peace between copyright law and the internet, starting with the US's 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA implements (and exceeds) a pair of 1996 UN treaties, the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the Performances and Phonograms Treaty, and most countries in the world have some version of notice-and-takedown.

Big corporate rightsholders claim that notice-and-takedown is a gift to the tech sector, one that allows tech companies to get away with copyright infringement. They want a "strict liability" regime, where any platform that allows a user to post something infringing is liable for that infringement, to the tune of $150,000 in statutory damages.

Of course, there's no way for a platform to know a priori whether something a user posts infringes on someone's copyright. There is no registry of everything that is copyrighted, and of course, fair use means that there are lots of ways to legally reproduce someone's work without their permission (or even when they object). Even if every person who ever has trained or ever will train as a copyright lawyer worked 24/7 for just one online platform to evaluate every tweet, video, audio clip and image for copyright infringement, they wouldn't be able to touch even 1% of what gets posted to that platform.

The "compromise" that the entertainment industry wants is automated takedown – a system like Content ID, where rightsholders register their copyrights and platforms block anything that matches the registry. This "filternet" proposal became law in the EU in 2019 with Article 17 of the Digital Single Market Directive:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/today-europe-lost-internet-now-we-fight-back

This was the most controversial directive in EU history, and – as experts warned at the time – there is no way to implement it without violating the GDPR, Europe's privacy law, so now it's stuck in limbo:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/05/eus-copyright-directive-still-about-filters-eus-top-court-limits-its-use

As critics pointed out during the EU debate, there are so many problems with filternets. For one thing, these copyright filters are very expensive: remember that Google has spent $100m on Content ID alone, and that only does a fraction of what filternet advocates demand. Building the filternet would cost so much that only the biggest tech monopolists could afford it, which is to say, filternets are a legal requirement to keep the tech monopolists in business and prevent smaller, better platforms from ever coming into existence.

Filternets are also incapable of telling the difference between similar files. This is especially problematic for classical musicians, who routinely find their work blocked or demonetized by Sony Music, which claims performances of all the most important classical music compositions:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/08/copyfraud/#beethoven-just-wrote-music

Content ID can't tell the difference between your performance of "The Goldberg Variations" and Glenn Gould's. For classical musicians, the best case scenario is to have their online wages stolen by Sony, who fraudulently claim copyright to their recordings. The worst case scenario is that their video is blocked, their channel deleted, and their names blacklisted from ever opening another account on one of the monopoly platforms.

But when it comes to free expression, the role that notice-and-takedown and filternets play in the creative industries is really a sideshow. In creating a system of no-evidence-required takedowns, with no real consequences for fraudulent takedowns, these systems are huge gift to the world's worst criminals. For example, "reputation management" companies help convicted rapists, murderers, and even war criminals purge the internet of true accounts of their crimes by claiming copyright over them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#dark-ops

Remember how during the covid lockdowns, scumbags marketed junk devices by claiming that they'd protect you from the virus? Their products remained online, while the detailed scientific articles warning people about the fraud were speedily removed through false copyright claims:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/18/labor-shortage-discourse-time/#copyfraud

Copyfraud – making false copyright claims – is an extremely safe crime to commit, and it's not just quack covid remedy peddlers and war criminals who avail themselves of it. Tech giants like Adobe do not hesitate to abuse the takedown system, even when that means exposing millions of people to spyware:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/13/theres-an-app-for-that/#gnash

Dirty cops play loud, copyrighted music during confrontations with the public, in the hopes that this will trigger copyright filters on services like Youtube and Instagram and block videos of their misbehavior:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/10/duke-sucks/#bhpd

But even if you solved all these problems with filternets and takedown, this system would still choke on fair use and other copyright exceptions. These are "fact intensive" questions that the world's top experts struggle with (as anyone who watches the Blurred Lines panel can see). There's no way we can get software to accurately determine when a use is or isn't fair.

That's a question that the entertainment industry itself is increasingly conflicted about. The Blurred Lines judgment opened the floodgates to a new kind of copyright troll – grifters who sued the record labels and their biggest stars for taking the "vibe" of songs that no one ever heard of. Musicians like Ed Sheeran have been sued for millions of dollars over these alleged infringements. These suits caused the record industry to (ahem) change its tune on fair use, insisting that fair use should be broadly interpreted to protect people who made things that were similar to existing works. The labels understood that if "vibe rights" became accepted law, they'd end up in the kind of hell that the rest of us enter when we try to post things online – where anything they produce can trigger takedowns, long legal battles, and millions in liability:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/08/oh-why/#two-notes-and-running

But the music industry remains deeply conflicted over fair use. Take the curious case of Katy Perry's song "Dark Horse," which attracted a multimillion-dollar suit from an obscure Christian rapper who claimed that a brief phrase in "Dark Horse" was impermissibly similar to his song "A Joyful Noise."

Perry and her publisher, Warner Chappell, lost the suit and were ordered to pay $2.8m. While they subsequently won an appeal, this definitely put the cold grue up Warner Chappell's back. They could see a long future of similar suits launched by treasure hunters hoping for a quick settlement.

But here's where it gets unbelievably weird and darkly funny. A Youtuber named Adam Neely made a wildly successful viral video about the suit, taking Perry's side and defending her song. As part of that video, Neely included a few seconds' worth of "A Joyful Noise," the song that Perry was accused of copying.

In court, Warner Chappell had argued that "A Joyful Noise" was not similar to Perry's "Dark Horse." But when Warner had Google remove Neely's video, they claimed that the sample from "Joyful Noise" was actually taken from "Dark Horse." Incredibly, they maintained this position through multiple appeals through the Content ID system:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/05/warner-chappell-copyfraud/#warnerchappell

In other words, they maintained that the song that they'd told the court was totally dissimilar to their own was so indistinguishable from their own song that they couldn't tell the difference!

Now, this question of vibes, similarity and fair use has only gotten more intense since the takedown of Neely's video. Just this week, the RIAA sued several AI companies, claiming that the songs the AI shits out are infringingly similar to tracks in their catalog:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/record-labels-sue-music-generators-suno-and-udio-1235042056/

Even before "Blurred Lines," this was a difficult fair use question to answer, with lots of chewy nuances. Just ask George Harrison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Sweet_Lord

But as the Engelberg panel's cohort of dueling musicologists and renowned copyright experts proved, this question only gets harder as time goes by. If you listen to that panel (if you can listen to that panel), you'll be hard pressed to come away with any certainty about the questions in this latest lawsuit.

The notice-and-takedown system is what's known as an "intermediary liability" rule. Platforms are "intermediaries" in that they connect end users with each other and with businesses. Ebay and Etsy and Amazon connect buyers and sellers; Facebook and Google and Tiktok connect performers, advertisers and publishers with audiences and so on.

For copyright, notice-and-takedown gives platforms a "safe harbor." A platform doesn't have to remove material after an allegation of infringement, but if they don't, they're jointly liable for any future judgment. In other words, Youtube isn't required to take down the Engelberg Blurred Lines panel, but if UMG sues Engelberg and wins a judgment, Google will also have to pay out.

During the adoption of the 1996 WIPO treaties and the 1998 US DMCA, this safe harbor rule was characterized as a balance between the rights of the public to publish online and the interest of rightsholders whose material might be infringed upon. The idea was that things that were likely to be infringing would be immediately removed once the platform received a notification, but that platforms would ignore spurious or obviously fraudulent takedowns.

That's not how it worked out. Whether it's Sony Music claiming to own your performance of "Fur Elise" or a war criminal claiming authorship over a newspaper story about his crimes, platforms nuke first and ask questions never. Why not? If they ignore a takedown and get it wrong, they suffer dire consequences ($150,000 per claim). But if they take action on a dodgy claim, there are no consequences. Of course they're just going to delete anything they're asked to delete.

This is how platforms always handle liability, and that's a lesson that we really should have internalized by now. After all, the DMCA is the second-most famous intermediary liability system for the internet – the most (in)famous is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

This is a 27-word law that says that platforms are not liable for civil damages arising from their users' speech. Now, this is a US law, and in the US, there aren't many civil damages from speech to begin with. The First Amendment makes it very hard to get a libel judgment, and even when these judgments are secured, damages are typically limited to "actual damages" – generally a low sum. Most of the worst online speech is actually not illegal: hate speech, misinformation and disinformation are all covered by the First Amendment.

Notwithstanding the First Amendment, there are categories of speech that US law criminalizes: actual threats of violence, criminal harassment, and committing certain kinds of legal, medical, election or financial fraud. These are all exempted from Section 230, which only provides immunity for civil suits, not criminal acts.

What Section 230 really protects platforms from is being named to unwinnable nuisance suits by unscrupulous parties who are betting that the platforms would rather remove legal speech that they object to than go to court. A generation of copyfraudsters have proved that this is a very safe bet:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

In other words, if you made a #MeToo accusation, or if you were a gig worker using an online forum to organize a union, or if you were blowing the whistle on your employer's toxic waste leaks, or if you were any other under-resourced person being bullied by a wealthy, powerful person or organization, that organization could shut you up by threatening to sue the platform that hosted your speech. The platform would immediately cave. But those same rich and powerful people would have access to the lawyers and back-channels that would prevent you from doing the same to them – that's why Sony can get your Brahms recital taken down, but you can't turn around and do the same to them.

This is true of every intermediary liability system, and it's been true since the earliest days of the internet, and it keeps getting proven to be true. Six years ago, Trump signed SESTA/FOSTA, a law that allowed platforms to be held civilly liable by survivors of sex trafficking. At the time, advocates claimed that this would only affect "sexual slavery" and would not impact consensual sex-work.

But from the start, and ever since, SESTA/FOSTA has primarily targeted consensual sex-work, to the immediate, lasting, and profound detriment of sex workers:

https://hackinghustling.org/what-is-sesta-fosta/

SESTA/FOSTA killed the "bad date" forums where sex workers circulated the details of violent and unstable clients, killed the online booking sites that allowed sex workers to screen their clients, and killed the payment processors that let sex workers avoid holding unsafe amounts of cash:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/09/fight-overturn-fosta-unconstitutional-internet-censorship-law-continues

SESTA/FOSTA made voluntary sex work more dangerous – and also made life harder for law enforcement efforts to target sex trafficking:

https://hackinghustling.org/erased-the-impact-of-fosta-sesta-2020/

Despite half a decade of SESTA/FOSTA, despite 15 years of filternets, despite a quarter century of notice-and-takedown, people continue to insist that getting rid of safe harbors will punish Big Tech and make life better for everyday internet users.

As of now, it seems likely that Section 230 will be dead by then end of 2025, even if there is nothing in place to replace it:

https://energycommerce.house.gov/posts/bipartisan-energy-and-commerce-leaders-announce-legislative-hearing-on-sunsetting-section-230

This isn't the win that some people think it is. By making platforms responsible for screening the content their users post, we create a system that only the largest tech monopolies can survive, and only then by removing or blocking anything that threatens or displeases the wealthy and powerful.

Filternets are not precision-guided takedown machines; they're indiscriminate cluster-bombs that destroy anything in the vicinity of illegal speech – including (and especially) the best-informed, most informative discussions of how these systems go wrong, and how that blocks the complaints of the powerless, the marginalized, and the abused.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/27/nuke-first/#ask-questions-never

Image: EFF https://www.eff.org/files/banner_library/yt-fu-1b.png

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

677 notes · View notes

literaticat · 2 years ago

Note

I have a question about your post regarding AI in which you detailed some agents' concerns. In particular you mentioned "we don't want our authors or artists work to be data-mined / scraped to "train" AI learning models/bots".

I completely agree, but what could be done to prevent this?

(I am no expert and clearly have NO idea what the terminology really is, but hopefully you will get it, sorry in advance?)

I mean, this is literally the thing we are all trying to figure out lol. But a start would be to have something in the contracts that SAYS Publishers do not have permission to license or otherwise permit companies to incorporate this copyrighted work into AI learning models, or to utilize this technology to mimic an author’s work.

The companies that are making AI bots or whatever are not shadowy guilds of hackers running around stealing things (despite how "web scraping" and "data mining" and all that sounds, which admittedly is v creepy and ominous!) -- web scraping, aka using robots to gather large amounts of publicly available data, is legal. That's like, a big part of how the internet works, it's how Google knows things when you google them, etc.

It's more dubious if scraping things that are protected under copyright is legal -- the companies would say that it is covered under fair use, that they are putting all this info in there to just teach the AI, and it isn't to COPY the author's work, etc etc. The people whose IP it is, though, probs don't feel that way -- and the law is sort of confused/non-existent. (There are loads of lawsuits literally RIGHT NOW that are aiming to sort some of this out, and the Writer's Guild strike which is ongoing and SAG-AFTRA strike which started this week is largely centered around some of the same issues when it comes to companies using AI for screenwriting, using actor's likeness and voice, etc.) Again, these are not shadowy organizations operating illegally off the coast of whatever -- these are regular-degular companies who can be sued, held to account, regulated, etc. The laws just haven’t caught up to the technology yet.

Point being, it's perhaps unethical to "feed" copyrighted work into an AI thing without permission of the copyright holder, but is it ILLEGAL? Uh -- yes??? but also ?????. US copyright law is pretty clear that works generated entirely by AI can't be protected under copyright -- and that works protected by copyright can't be, you know, copied by somebody else -- but there's a bit of a grey area here because of fair use? It’s confusing, for sure, and I'm betting all this is being hashed out in court cases and committee rooms and whatnot as I type.

Anywhoo, the first steps are clarifying these things contractually. Authors Guild (and agents) take the stance that this permission to "feed" info to AI learning models is something the Author automatically holds rights to, and only the author can decide if/when a book is "fed" into an AI... thing.

The Publishers kinda think this is something THEY hold the rights to, or both parties do, and that these rights should be frozen so NEITHER party can choose to "feed", or neither can choose to do so without the other's permission.

(BTW just to be clear, as I understand it -- which again is NOT MUCH lol -- this "permission" is not like, somebody calls each individual author and asks for permission -- it's part of the coding. Like how many e-books are DRM protected, so they are locked to a particular platform / device and you can't share them etc -- there are bits of code that basically say NOPE to scrapers. So (in my imagination, at least), the little spider-robot is Roomba-ing around the internet looking for things to scrape and it comes across this bit of code and NOPE, they have to turn around and try the next thing. Now – just like if an Etsy seller made mugs with pictures of Mickey Mouse on them, using somebody else’s IP is illegal – and those people CAN be sued if the copyright holder has the appetite to do that - but it’s also hard to stop entirely. So if some random person took your book and just copied it onto a blog -- the spider-robot wouldn't KNOW that info was under copyright, or they don't have permission to gobble it up, because it wouldn't have that bit of code to let them know -- so in that way it could be that nobody ever FULLY knows that the spider-robots won't steal their stuff, and publishers can't really be liable for that if third parties are involved mucking it up -- but they certainly CAN at least attempt to protect copyright!)

But also, you know how I don't even know what I'm talking about and don't know the words? Like in the previous paragraphs? The same goes for all the publishers and everyone else who isn't already a tech wizard, ALL of whom are suddenly learning a lot of very weird words and phrases and rules that nobody *exactly* understands, and it's all changing by the week (and by the day, even).

Publishers ARE starting to add some of this language, but I also would expect it to feel somewhat confused/wild-west-ish until some of the laws around this stuff are clearer. But really: We're all working on it!

87 notes · View notes

kanguin · 13 days ago

Text

Hi, idk who's going to see this post or whatnot, but I had a lot of thoughts on a post I reblogged about AI that started to veer off the specific topic of the post, so I wanted to make my own.

Some background on me: I studied Psychology and Computer Science in college several years ago, with an interdisciplinary minor called Cognitive Science that joined the two with philosophy, linguistics, and multiple other fields. The core concept was to study human thinking and learning and its similarities to computer logic, and thus the courses I took touched frequently on learning algorithms, or "AI". This was of course before it became the successor to bitcoin as the next energy hungry grift, to be clear. Since then I've kept up on the topic, and coincidentally, my partner has gone into freelance data model training and correction. So while I'm not an expert, I have a LOT of thoughts on the current issue of AI.

I'll start off by saying that AI isn't a brand new technology, it, more properly known as learning algorithms, has been around in the linguistics, stats, biotech, and computer science worlds for over a decade or two. However, pre-ChatGPT learning algorithms were ground-up designed tools specialized for individual purposes, trained on a very specific data set, to make it as accurate to one thing as possible. Some time ago, data scientists found out that if you have a large enough data set on one specific kind of information, you can get a learning algorithm to become REALLY good at that one thing by giving it lots of feedback on right vs wrong answers. Right and wrong answers are nearly binary, which is exactly how computers are coded, so by implementing the psychological method of operant conditioning, reward and punishment, you can teach a program how to identify and replicate things with incredible accuracy. That's what makes it a good tool.

And a good tool it was and still is. Reverse image search? Learning algorithm based. Complex relationship analysis between words used in the study of language? Often uses learning algorithms to model relationships. Simulations of extinct animal movements and behaviors? Learning algorithms trained on anatomy and physics. So many features of modern technology and science either implement learning algorithms directly into the function or utilize information obtained with the help of complex computer algorithms.

But a tool in the hand of a craftsman can be a weapon in the hand of a murderer. Facial recognition software, drone targeting systems, multiple features of advanced surveillance tech in the world are learning algorithm trained. And even outside of authoritarian violence, learning algorithms in the hands of get-rich-quick minded Silicon Valley tech bro business majors can be used extremely unethically. All AI art programs that exist right now are trained from illegally sourced art scraped from the web, and ChatGPT (and similar derived models) is trained on millions of unconsenting authors' works, be they professional, academic, or personal writing. To people in countries targeted by the US War Machine and artists the world over, these unethical uses of this technology are a major threat.

Further, it's well known now that AI art and especially ChatGPT are MAJOR power-hogs. This, however, is not inherent to learning algorithms / AI, but is rather a product of the size, runtime, and inefficiency of these models. While I don't know much about the efficiency issues of AI "art" programs, as I haven't used any since the days of "imaginary horses" trended and the software was contained to a university server room with a limited training set, I do know that ChatGPT is internally bloated to all hell. Remember what I said about specialization earlier? ChatGPT throws that out the window. Because they want to market ChatGPT as being able to do anything, the people running the model just cram it with as much as they can get their hands on, and yes, much of that is just scraped from the web without the knowledge or consent of those who have published it. So rather than being really good at one thing, the owners of ChatGPT want it to be infinitely good, infinitely knowledgeable, and infinitely running. So the algorithm is never shut off, it's constantly taking inputs and processing outputs with a neural network of unnecessary size.

Now this part is probably going to be controversial, but I genuinely do not care if you use ChatGPT, in specific use cases. I'll get to why in a moment, but first let me clarify what use cases. It is never ethical to use ChatGPT to write papers or published fiction (be it for profit or not); this is why I also fullstop oppose the use of publicly available gen AI in making "art". I say publicly available because, going back to my statement on specific models made for single project use, lighting, shading, and special effects in many 3D animated productions use specially trained learning algorithms to achieve the complex results seen in the finished production. Famously, the Spider-verse films use a specially trained in-house AI to replicate the exact look of comic book shading, using ethically sources examples to build a training set from the ground up, the unfortunately-now-old-fashioned way. The issue with gen AI in written and visual art is that the publicly available, always online algorithms are unethically designed and unethically run, because the decision makers behind them are not restricted enough by laws in place.

So that actually leads into why I don't give a shit if you use ChatGPT if you're not using it as a plagiarism machine. Fact of the matter is, there is no way ChatGPT is going to crumble until legislation comes into effect that illegalizes and cracks down on its practices. The public, free userbase worldwide is such a drop in the bucket of its serverload compared to the real way ChatGPT stays afloat: licensing its models to businesses with monthly subscriptions. I mean this sincerely, based on what little I can find about ChatGPT's corporate subscription model, THAT is the actual lifeline keeping it running the way it is. Individual visitor traffic worldwide could suddenly stop overnight and wouldn't affect ChatGPT's bottom line. So I don't care if you, I, or anyone else uses the website because until the US or EU governments act to explicitly ban ChatGPT and other gen AI business' shady practices, they are all only going to continue to stick around profit from big business contracts. So long as you do not give them money or sing their praises, you aren't doing any actual harm.

If you do insist on using ChatGPT after everything I've said, here's some advice I've gathered from testing the algorithm to avoid misinformation:

If you feel you must use it as a sounding board for figuring out personal mental or physical health problems like I've seen some people doing when they can't afford actual help, do not approach it conversationally in the first person. Speak in the third person as if you are talking about someone else entirely, and exclusively note factual information on observations, symptoms, and diagnoses. This is because where ChatGPT draws its information from depends on the style of writing provided. If you try to be as dry and clinical as possible, and request links to studies, you should get dry and clinical information in return. This approach also serves to divorce yourself mentally from the information discussed, making it less likely you'll latch onto anything. Speaking casually will likely target unprofessional sources.

Do not ask for citations, ask for links to relevant articles. ChatGPT is capable of generating links to actual websites in its database, but if asked to provide citations, it will replicate the structure of academic citations, and will very likely hallucinate at least one piece of information. It also does not help that these citations also will often be for papers not publicly available and will not include links.

ChatGPT is at its core a language association and logical analysis software, so naturally its best purposes are for analyzing written works for tone, summarizing information, and providing examples of programming. It's partially coded in python, so examples of Python and Java code I've tested come out 100% accurate. Complex Google Sheets formulas however are often finicky, as it often struggles with proper nesting orders of formulas.

Expanding off of that, if you think of the software as an input-output machine, you will get best results. Problems that do not have clear input information or clear solutions, such as open ended questions, will often net inconsistent and errant results.

Commands are better than questions when it comes to asking it to do something. If you think of it like programming, then it will respond like programming most of the time.

Most of all, do not engage it as a person. It's not a person, it's just an algorithm that is trained to mimic speech and is coded to respond in courteous, subservient responses. The less you try and get social interaction out of ChatGPT, the less likely it will be to just make shit up because it sounds right.

Anyway, TL;DR:

AI is just a tool and nothing more at its core. It is not synonymous with its worse uses, and is not going to disappear. Its worst offenders will not fold or change until legislation cracks down on it, and we, the majority users of the internet, are not its primary consumer. Use of AI to substitute art (written and visual) with blended up art of others is abhorrent, but use of a freely available algorithm for personal analyticsl use is relatively harmless so long as you aren't paying them.

We need to urge legislators the world over to crack down on the methods these companies are using to obtain their training data, but at the same time people need to understand that this technology IS useful and both can and has been used for good. I urge people to understand that learning algorithms are not one and the same with theft just because the biggest ones available to the public have widely used theft to cut corners. So long as computers continue to exist, algorithmic problem-solving and generative algorithms are going to continue to exist as they are the logical conclusion of increasingly complex computer systems. Let's just make sure the future of the technology is not defined by the way things are now.

#kanguin original #ai #gen ai #generative algorithms #learning algorithms #llm #large language model #long post

5 notes · View notes

fixfoxnox · 1 year ago

Text

D&D Is Sexy (Gaz/Jackson)

Description: All that Gaz's boyfriend wants to do for his birthday is DM a short one-shot for the 141. Gaz doesn't expect to be turned on while playing a game he was sure he wouldn't like.

Warnings: Trans! Gaz, Unprotected Sex, Fluff and Smut, Clothed Sex (One clothed, one unclothed), Couch Sex, Fingering

Notes: For my darling @wmdamadeof

It was Roach who had finally convinced the 141 to sit down and play D&D with Jackson. Jackson had been begging for months, practically on his knees whenever the subject was brought up. According to Roach, Jackson hadn’t gotten to play D&D since he’d elected to leave the military because of his leg. If Gaz did the math for that, he’d say it had been at least four years since his boyfriend had played the game.

He didn’t particularly understand why his boyfriend liked the game so much. He always spotted him watching or listening to one of those online D&D podcasts, and he just couldn’t get it. Sitting around a table, pretending to be someone else, being forced to do math (simple as it was, it was still math). It didn’t sound like an ideal evening or, based on how Jackson had described it, an ideal day.

Still, it was clearly something that Jackson loved, something that he practically adored. Roach seemed to like it too, which was why he’d suggested that as a gift for Jackson on his birthday, they should all allow him to DM a short one-shot for them. It had taken some convincing, particularly for Price, but in the end, he’d given in just like the rest of them had.

When they’d told Jackson, you’d have thought they had given him a billion pounds and told him that Gaz was lying on top of it all naked and covered in whipped cream. He’d looked like he was going to collapse on the spot and Gaz had noticed that he was shaking when he’d hugged him. It was only then that Gaz had finally realized just how important D&D was to his boyfriend.

It made the long process of designing his character and filling out the sheet feel a little less pointless.

“You guys are going to love this,” Jackson swore for what had to be the fifth time since they’d all sat down at the table. It seemed more like he was trying to convince himself than he was them. They’d all agreed to, at the very least, pretend to enjoy themselves today. Gaz was reminded of that specifically when Roach shot them all a harsh look, silently telling them all to behave and put on their best faces.

Jackson gave the group a general overview of game rules and encouraged them to ask any questions that they needed to as they went along. With that, he checked in to make sure that everyone was good to go before beginning with slow words, building an environment around them, and slowly introducing their characters into the mix.

Gaz didn’t know that his boyfriend had such a way with words. Listening to him speak was like watching a spider spinning their web, an expert and intricate weaving of lines and descriptions that had even Price on the edge of his seat, waiting for what he would say next. What exactly would he do to their little characters next? It was as surprising as it was intriguing.

They were at a banquet now. Their entire party had been captured and now they were chained to their chairs in some big fancy mansion. So far, Jackson had done nothing but set the scene for them. He painted a vivid picture of a large banquet table overflowing with their favorite foods. Their glasses were each filled to the brim with a dark red liquid.

“Across the banquet hall, you hear the large double doors begin to creak open slowly. The wood scrapes the floor, adding to the noise of the room. It's a cacophony, echoing around in the silence. When the doors open fully, your eyes find a tall figure with short black hair. He looks like a charming young man and you each notice his beauty. He wears clothing similar to something that you would find from royalty.”

Jackson stood up taller then and his entire demeanor changed. It was rather impressive and Gaz watched him with curious eyes as he began to march around the table, watching them all closely.

“What a group,” he spoke after a moment. His voice carried a thick accent and was much deeper than Gaz had been expecting. “Such powerful warriors. All come to my banquet. I am quite honored.”

“Who are you?” Roach hissed, completely in character. Despite knowing it was only his boyfriend, Gaz felt suddenly intimidated by Jackson. The look that he fixed Roach with was downright disgusted.

“Has it really been so long Talor? So long that you no longer recognize my face? My eyes?” Just as suddenly as he’d gotten into character and Jackson was out of it, he went back to describing the moment for them. “The air around you all seems to spark with energy as this man steps closer to Talor.” Jackson rounded the table and leaned close to Roach, getting right in his face, “Take a look.”

The two paused for a moment as Jackson wrote something out on a notecard, folded it, and handed it to Roach. The message was clear. “For your eyes only.”

Everyone at the table watched as Roach unfolded the paper, his eyes widening as he read what was written. A moment passed before he folded the note and glared up at Jackson. “It takes Talor a moment, but eventually realization goes across his face. Everyone can see as he tenses before he just goes,” Roach leaned forward against the table and bared his teeth at Jackson, “You!”

Jackson gave a short wicked laugh before leaning over the table again, “So you do recognize me, Talor. Good.” He pushed himself up and started to circle the table again. “New friends you have made.”

“Free us, now,” Roach demanded, “This will only cause trouble for you.”

“The only thing that consistently causes me trouble, is you,” Jackson wheeled on Roach with a snarl. “You never learn, you never stop.” He slammed his hands down on the table and met Roach’s glare with a harsh one of his own. It was an impressive act by the two men and one that only served to draw Gaz further into the story that Jackson was crafting for them. “That is why we are here. So I can finally be free of you.”

Jackson pushed himself to stand just as Soap replied, “Free of him? You’d do best not to touch him or any of us and do as he says. Better for you if we all make it out alive.”

Soap had been the member of the group who’d taken to the game the best, so it was no surprise that he joined in on the two’s conversation, his character voice near identical to his actual voice, only slightly deeper of course.

Jackson turned to him with a snap, a gleeful grin on his face. Gaz wondered how much of it was the character and how much of it was his delight at having a member of the 141 actively participate in the story he was telling. “Ah,” he stood up straight and made his way over to Soap, “The half-orc speaks. A monster made only for rage and yet…” He trailed off and came to rest behind Soap. He let his hands fall on Soap’s shoulder, giving a slow shake, “I sense…care. Do you fear for your friend Boyman?”

Gaz was nearly taken out of the moment by the reminder of Soap’s character name, but he was soon brought back to it by Soap’s low growl, “I fear what I’ll do to you if you touch him.”

“I can sense it, I can practically smell the fear radiating off of you,” he leaned down, letting himself get right next to Soap’s ear before he responded, “Just as I can taste the love that you feel for him. Affection. Adoration. A beast in love with a beauty. Tell me, Boyman McFury, do you think that an elf, that Talor could ever truly love you?”

There was a pause and Gaz could see as Soap’s mouth fell open, his face going a tinge pink as though he’d been caught. It wasn’t a secret, everyone at the table had been able to tell that he was fighting hard for his and Roach’s characters to end up together. Gaz had even peeked over and seen him drawing little doodles of their characters together in his notebook.

Jackson was an expert at crafting his story, so he gave Soap no chance to catch up and respond before moving over to Ghost. “And you, Ravencroft. Do you believe that your gods will protect you from me? Protect your friends? Everything you have built for yourself. You believe you know loss? I will show you loss.”

“You will die before you touch anyone in this group,” Ghost only responded in a monotone voice, but it was clear that Jackson was pleased with even that response.

“Won’t I?” He reached over then, placing a hand on Price’s shoulder, “I already have. And you sit here powerless. Useless.” He turned his head then, looking at Price with a raised eyebrow, “How does it feel to be powerless Captain? Once the commander of a great army and now,” Jackson fixed him with a look of disgust and removed his hand from his shoulder, “Now look at you. Pathetic. Captain Jonathan Pearce is a folk hero. A god. Look now how a god falls.”

He pushed himself away from the table and started to pace around again, only stopping for a moment when Roach asked, “What are your intentions here, Adzeiros? You think you will kill us with ease?”

“Yes,” Jackson answered simply. He continued moving around the table and after a moment came to a rest behind Gaz, his hands landing softly on Gaz’s shoulders. “I intend to kill you all. All to finally rid myself of your stain Talor.”

“My friends have done nothing!”

“They have aligned themselves with you,” Jackson’s hands tightened on Gaz’s shoulders and, for a moment, Gaz could feel a chill go down his spine, “That is enough. I will rid myself of all of you. Tear you limb from limb until I can feed your worthless meat to my dogs. I will be the death of each of you.” He paused for a moment before, “Well, perhaps most of you.” Gaz felt one of his fingers begin to trace up his neck gently and he felt himself go warm. “Perhaps I will keep one,” Jackson leaned down and Gaz could feel his breath against his ear and the warmth of his lips only inches from his skin. He felt overwhelmingly hot for a moment and goosebumps seemed to raise along his skin. “I have other, more pleasurable, uses for you.”

As soon as Jackson had touched him and he’d gone, lifted back up to move on with the story, detailing to the group as the tall elf exited, leaving them alone to try and find a way out of their binds. With it, Gaz felt as though he’d been left on an edge, left high and dry with a boiling desire flooding through his bloodstream all to pool between his legs.

He hadn’t known that his boyfriend could play a part like that. He hadn’t known that D&D could be so…sexy.

The so-called “short” one-shot had lasted the entire day. From ten in the morning to almost eight at night before they’d finally finished, killing Azdeiros and earning each of their characters a happy ending. Gaz had been sure that Soap was going to cry when Jackson had detailed the small homestead that his character and Roach’s character had built together to live in when they wanted a break from adventuring.

Everyone had seemed quite pleased with the game and, by the end, even Ghost had gotten more involved, getting more into his character and the gameplay than anyone else. Jackson had even allowed Ghost to paint a vivid picture of his character using magic to crush a wyvern they’d been made to fight between two boulders. It had been rather graphic, but both Jackson and Ghost had been more than excited as they played off of each other to build the death for the creature. Jackson had excitedly told Ghost that he should try to dm sometime, that he had a natural talent for it. Ghost had shrugged it off, but they’d all seen the small smile that tugged at his lips from the words.

And now, as Gaz waved goodbye to Roach, Soap, and Ghost from the door of his and Jackson’s shared apartment, the day was over. Gaz was left alone with his darling boyfriend who was still buzzing with energy from the day's activity.

Normally, Gaz would have questioned where his boyfriend found all of the energy, normally he would have been surprised to still see Jackson so chipper at the end of the night as he worked on removing his prosthetic to switch into his wheelchair. Normally, Gaz wouldn’t have felt such a strong buzzing of energy under his own skin, calling for the man he was watching from the doorway of the living room.

“Well,” Jackson called to him, shooting him a quick grin as he set his prosthetic to the side, “what do you think? How was your first D&D experience?”

Gaz gave him a small smile and crossed the room, picking up his prosthetic and moving it to the usual place for him. “I didn’t know you were such an actor, it was…impressive.”

“That?” Jackson gave a chuckle, “All roleplaying love. ‘Fraid I wouldn’t be able to do any of that in any other situation. Something about D&D, you know?”

“Not in any other situation?” Gaz questioned, turning around with a carefully raised eyebrow. “Nothing other than D&D?” He could feel his face warming up again, but he did his best to squash any of the nerves he felt back down into his chest.

Jackson watched him for a moment, tilting his head curiously. “What are you thinking?”

Gaz gave a quick shrug, trying to appear nonchalant as he spoke, “I just thought your…performance was good. I, um, I enjoyed it.”

A moment of silence passed between the two before a look of knowing seemed to cross Jackson’s face, followed by an easy grin. Gaz shuffled a bit as he watched his boyfriend lean back casually against the couch, spreading his legs wide in a position that was all too enticing. His hips lifted for just a moment, allowing him to get more comfortable in his seat. Gaz’s eyes were drawn to the movement, his mouth going a bit dry.

“Kyle, baby,” Jackson’s voice had dropped just a bit, going a touch deeper. It was something much closer to the voice he’d used for the villain of their campaign and Gaz found himself resisting the urge to squirm. Jackson watched him for a moment, a twinkle of delight in his eyes, “You must have really enjoyed my performance, huh?” His eyes raked down Gaz’s form and Gaz knew that he knew.

“Shut up,” he grumbled out, feeling all too embarrassed at himself. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“What part of it got you?” Jackson gave him a teasing grin and tilted his head curiously, “The character? Or was it just me talking about using you for my pleasure?” Gaz could feel heat burning at his face and he glanced away quickly, refusing to meet Jackson’s eyes. “Maybe a bit of both?”

“Alright now,” Gaz brushed him off and went to move toward the kitchen, “It’s late, we should get ready for bed.”

“Kyle.”

Gaz stopped in his place, turning slowly to face the other man, something warm settling into his bones as he met the low look that the other man gave to him. There was a short moment of silence before Jackson lifted a hand and quirked two of his fingers, motioning for Gaz to come to him.

Gaz could feel his breathing stutter for a moment before he caught himself, taking in a deep breath to calm his nerves. His hands were still shaking as he obediently stepped closer to Jackson, moving until he was standing between the other’s parted legs.

Jackson leaned forward and looked up at Gaz with low pleading eyes. One of his hands found Gaz’s hip, taking hold and rubbing soft circles with his thumb. For a brief moment, his fingers slipped below the material of Gaz’s shirt. He seemed to think for a moment before he spoke, “I have such pleasurable uses for you, my love.”

Gaz could feel himself shake as Jackson’s voice matched that of the character he’d done earlier. It was so similar to his own, yet there was this tone to it, some sort of warm sultry touch that tainted every word and wormed itself into Gaz’s brain. “You,” Jackson began to tug Gaz toward him, “mean more to me alive. You are more than the others, worth more. Perfect. Beautiful. Enchanting.” He paused, “Made for my pleasure.”

Slowly, he guided Gaz onto his lap, forcing his knees to each side of his thighs and their hips to press just lightly against one another. Just that slight movement was enough to cause a hitch in Gaz’s breath, warmth curling in his gut as the words that Jackson spoke rushed right between his legs.

“Fuck,” he breathed out, looking down at the look of pure confidence and smug amusement that his boyfriend wore. It was clear that Jackson was channeling some of the character that he’d teased Gaz with during the entire game and it was still working, still making Gaz warm and bothered and all too willing to do whatever Jackson asked of him. “What, um,” he let his hands rest on Jackson’s shoulders for a moment before beginning to trail them down over his chest slowly, “what do you want me to do.”

Jackson’s hands tightened for a split second before they guided his hips forward, encouraging him to grind their clothed bodies together. Gaz gave a small sigh of delight at the bit of friction against his aching cunt. He could tell that he was already growing slicker, the simple movement and words from Jackson were enough to have his body reacting without hardly any stimulation.

“Just this,” Jackson continued guiding Gaz’s hips against his for several moments before he finally pulled back, spreading his arms over the back of the couch to relax back and watch Gaz with a smirk on his face. “Show me how much you want me, how you’ll do anything to please me. Then I’ll touch you.”

Gaz let his head fall back, a groan pulling from his throat at those words. He continued moving his hips, grinding down harder against Jackson and enjoying the feeling of his boyfriend growing harder against him. “Yes,” he breathed, his hips jumping a bit as the seam of his pants rubbed deliciously against his clit. “Fuck, yes. Yes.”

Jackson watched him with careful eyes, twinged with a bit of darkened desire that Gaz had never quite seen there before. It pulled a shiver down his spine and had his cunt pulsing with the desire to be filled. He was sure his boxers were going to be soaked by the time Jackson finally stopped torturing him and touched him.

As Gaz rolled his hips again Jackson shifted, lifting his own hips up to meet Gaz’s movement. Twin groans fell from their lips, desire painting Jackson’s face as he let his mask slip just a bit. It wasn’t for long, only just enough to allow Gaz to see just how much his boyfriend was also affected by the little game that they were playing.

“So perfect,” Jackson breathed. His hands caressed Gaz’s face before trailing down his neck and over his chest. They kept moving lower, only stopping as they reached the edge of Gaz’s shirt. “Take this off,” he growled after a moment, “I want to see all of what is mine.”

Gaz didn’t think he’d ever stripped himself of his shirt quicker than he did at that moment. The useless piece of clothing was discarded with a toss, lost to the void until he went looking for it. As soon as his skin was exposed, Jackson’s hands were on him.

Despite the possessive mask that Jackson had put on, his touch didn’t change. It was the same as it always was when he touched Gaz: sweet and reverent. Filled with so much adoration that it made Gaz feel dizzy. He adored it, leaning further into Jackson’s hands with a small groan, his hips stuttering for a moment.

“Look at you,” Jackson muttered, his fingers tracing teasingly along the underside of Gaz’s pectorals, skating oh so close to his nipples but never touching. It was near torturous for Gaz, who was desperate for some sort of stimulation from his boyfriend’s hands. “So fucking perfect.”

“Paul,” Gaz panted the other's name, prepared to beg for what he wanted, “Touch me, please. I need it. I need you.”

“Ah,” Jackson pulled his hands away completely. Gaz gave a pathetic whine and sent his boyfriend a pleading look. When Jackson didn’t respond, he took one of his boyfriend’s hands in his own, trying to tug him forward to force him to touch. Within a second, Gaz found his hands restrained behind his back and his body flipped around.

Jackson pulled him back, manhandling him until he was back on his lap, only now his back was pressed flush to Jackson’s chest and he could feel his boyfriend’s beard rubbing against his neck. It was enticing and more than enough to have him squirming in desperation. Now Jackson had taken all of the stimulation away from his aching cunt and he was near the point of getting to his knees and begging.

“Remember love,” Jackson pressed a careful kiss to Gaz’s neck, “You’re here for my pleasure. Not the other way around.”

“But-”

“No.” Jackson's voice was harsh and Gaz found that he enjoyed his boyfriend being so firm with him. He never thought it would be something he would be into, never even considered it a possibility. But he assumed that the day was just a good one for discovering new things about himself. Like the fact that he quite enjoyed it when his boyfriend took such tight control.

Jackson held Gaz in place for a quiet moment before he let one of his hands slip down to the waistband of his pants. He toyed for a moment with the top button before swiftly undoing it and allowing his hand to slip below Gaz’s pants and boxers.

Gaz squirmed a bit in Jackson’s hold again, though Jackson still hadn’t even touched him, Gaz could feel his warmth. He was so close, his hand so close to where he desperately needed to be touched. Where his body was practically aching just for the man behind him. “Paul,” he pleaded again with the man behind him, adding a small whimper to the end of his words, “please.”

“You beg so sweetly for me.” Gaz gasped as he finally felt Jackson’s fingers touch his aching cunt. It was only a small caress, just a simple touch along his dripping slit, but it was enough to have his hips bucking up and his head tossed back against Jackson’s shoulder. His mouth fell open as Jackson dipped one of his fingers just inside of him before tracing them up to begin rubbing slow circles against his clit.

He was panting, sweat slicking at his skin as Jackson made a point of touching him slowly, dragging out every bit of pleasure that he could from Gaz’s body. It was already overwhelming enough, but Jackson wasn’t satisfied. He let his free hands trace along Gaz’s naked chest for several moments before his hand found Gaz’s nipples and began to slowly play with them.

He teased them with careful flicks and pinches, all while his other hand continued to finger and tease at Gaz’s cunt, nearly making him cum just from finally having his pent-up fantasies from the day fulfilled. “So wet, love. Let me guess, you’ve been dripping like this all day for me.” Gaz could feel himself go impossibly hotter at the low words whispered into his ear. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. My pleasure is your pleasure.”

“Paul, I,” Gaz cut himself off with a desperate gasp as Jackson slipped a finger fully inside of his cunt. Jackson’s thumb was still toying with his clit, but his finger was working slowly at stretching out his sopping wet hole, working to prepare Gaz to take his cock. “Fuck, fuck,” he whined a bit, “please, baby, I want to take care of you. Let me make you feel good.”

“I will,” Jackson assured him, a soothing kiss pressed to his neck. “First I have to get you ready baby. Let me enjoy myself. Let yourself enjoy this.” He started carefully working a second finger into Gaz’s cunt, scissoring him open slowly as he did so. Gaz’s eyes nearly rolled back at the pleasure that struck him from Jackson’s hands teasing his body. The hand playing with his nipples was just as good as the hand playing with his cunt and all of it was swirling together to create a tightly wound tension just above his cunt that threatened to snap more with every growing moment.

Gaz had no choice but to try and fight his shaking legs and desire to buck his hips into Jackson's hand and force the harsh pace that his body was desperate for. He could only toss his head back and hope that Jackson would take pity on his needy body soon.

Jackson was hard himself and Gaz was sure that he could feel the other’s cock aching through his jeans. He could also feel the subtle thrusts of Jackson’s hips, a simple attempt to give himself some sort of stimulation to his cock as he stole pleasure from Gaz’s body.

Jackson curled his fingers inside of Gaz for a moment, the whine pulled from Gaz’s lips was nearly sinful and it was enough to pull a matching groan from Jackson’s lips before he pulled his fingers from Gaz’s body and away from his cunt. He gave a quick slap to Gaz’s thigh before ordering, “Get rid of the rest of those clothes, unless you want them shredded.”

Gaz wasted no time in following Jackson’s orders. He was too desperate to argue, much less feel annoyed at the implication that Jackson would destroy any of his clothes. They both knew it wouldn’t come to that, not when his thighs were damp and he was forced to peel his boxers from his body rather than simply kick them off like he normally would.

When he turned back to Jackson, he expected to find his boyfriend working on taking his own clothes off. Instead, he found Jackson still reclined on the couch, his legs spread wide with his hand around his hard cock. He hadn’t bothered to take anything off, only unbuttoned his pants and pulled down his underwear enough that he could free his cock. Something about that made Gaz shudder, a low gasp pulling from his throat as his breathing went heavy.

Jackson watched Gaz for a moment, his eyes raking over him in a way that forced Gaz to resist the urge to squirm. Those eyes were filled with so much heat, so much lust. And, Gaz noted an enticingly sharp prick of possessiveness. He wanted that possessiveness carved into his bones, he wanted his body marked down to the molecules as belonging to Jackson. And Jackson knew it.

Jackson stroked his cock for a long moment, his eyes never leaving Gaz’s body, even as precum leaked from his slit, he just made a point to spread it down his shaft while staring Gaz down. It seemed like his gaze was just glued to Gaz’s body. Gaz couldn’t make any comments about it, his own heated gaze stuck on the sight of Jackson working his hard cock. Gaz could feel his cunt clenching at the thought of finally having his boyfriend inside of him.

Finally, Jackson raised a hand and motioned Gaz forward with two fingers, the same way he’d done it only ten or so minutes earlier. Gaz stumbled toward him, as though drawn with an invisible string connected to Jackson’s fingers.

With Jackson’s guidance, Gaz settled back on his lap, neither of them able to tear their gaze away from the other. “That’s a good boy,” Jackson rumbled, helping to slowly guide Gaz down, rubbing the tip of his cock along Gaz’s entrance for a short moment. With a simple roll of his hips, he let the head of his cock slip inside Gaz’s body.

Gaz struggled to breathe for a short moment at the feeling, but soon he was lowering himself down slowly, his breathing still heavy as he slowly sank down onto Jackson’s hard cock. Jackson did his best to guide him, gripping tight to Gaz’s plush thighs as they shook under his hands. “Fuck,” his head fell back just slightly, but his eyes stayed on Gaz’s face. “So good for me baby, such a good fuck toy for me.”

Gaz could only whimper at the words, feeling his cunt clench around Jackson’s cock in response to the heat that they caused. Jackson gave a choked-out laugh at the feeling, that smug look returning to his face with something wild in his eyes. “Liked that, did you?”

Gaz didn’t answer, he just let his eyes fall shut as he finally managed to sink all the way down on Jackson’s cock. He was completely out of it, the feeling of being so full and his clit just slightly rubbing against the hair at the base of Jackson’s cock, was so fucking good. He was just reveling in the feeling when a harsh smack landed on his ass, causing his eyes to fly open as he met Jackson’s gaze with a shocked look.

“I asked you a question.” Jackson punctuated his words with another quick roll of his hips, pulling a gasp from Gaz’s throat. “Answer me.” Jackson started to lift Gaz off of his cock, quickly setting a deep slow pace. His cock seemed to split Gaz open, near impaling him with a slow and steady pleasure.

“Yes!” Gaz’s mouth seemed to work despite the white static flooding his brain. Pleasure rushed through his body. A consistent slow-building pleasure that buzzed through his veins and made his legs shake and his toes curl. “Yes, yes, Paul, please! Need, need- fuck, need you to use me, take your pleasure from me!”

“I intend to, baby.” Jackson gripped Gaz’s bare hips tighter, fucking into him with gritted teeth and something akin to a growl ripped from his throat. His fingers dug into the fat of Gaz’s hips, hard enough that Gaz was sure there would be bruises decorating his skin in the morning. Beautiful blues and yellows and purples that would show Jackson’s claim on him. Painting him with his touch.

Jackson made good on his promise, guiding Gaz’s hips as he fucked into his tight cunt, groaning at the feeling of the other clenching and fluttering around his cock. Gaz did nothing but grip tight to Jackson’s shoulders and let himself be used. His mouth had dropped open and the only things he managed to get out were desperate pants and moans of Jackson’s name, dripping from his tongue like a sweet nectar. It only served to encourage Jackson to move quicker, fucking Gaz with greater desperation.

Gaz was pushed closer and closer to his end, the feeling of his cunt being filled over and over and his clit being abused with every thrust of Jackson’s cock and every brush of the hair at the base of his cock against him. It was too fucking good. Too fucking good and Gaz wasn’t going to last. He was too pent up from Jackson playing with his cunt and now finally having the other’s cock bullying its way inside of him…it was too fucking good.

Luckily for him, Jackson seemed to be stuck in the same boat because, before he could react, he found himself flipped to his back on the couch, Jackson’s body hovering over his as he began pounding into Gaz’s cunt, chasing his own release and driving Gaz closer to his own as he did.

“So perfect for me baby.” Words spilled from Jackson’s lips like a fountain, praises for Gaz, compliments piled on compliments, desperate thanks for doing something as simple as playing D&D with him on his birthday. It was less of the game they’d been playing and more of the Jackson that Gaz was used to having pressed between his thighs. He adored it. He adored his boyfriend.

Jackson made it much easier to adore him when one of his hands dropped between their bodies, frantically rubbing circles into Gaz’s clit. Gaz’s head knocked back at the feeling, his brain fizzing out as everything seemed to go higher and higher before finally coming down in a heavy crash, waves of pleasure flooding through his body as he shook and nearly screamed at the feeling.

He was so far gone that he hardly noticed as Jackson cursed, his hips stuttered for several moments before he finally buried himself deep into Gaz’s cunt, filling him with warm sticky cum.

There was a long moment of silence, the only sounds echoing in their silent apartment being the sounds of their labored breathing. Neither of them spoke, but Jackson was soon to practically collapse against Gaz’s chest, letting his mouth and tongue explore the sweat-slicked skin beneath his touch. Sweet kisses and swipes of his tongue, speaking volumes of his affection for Gaz with the reverence that he touched him with.

Gaz wrapped his arms around Jackson’s shoulders, a tired smile tugging at his lips as he pulled the other man up higher, bringing their mouths to just hover over one another’s. “Happy birthday, Paul.”

Jackson responded with a simple, “I love you,” before pressing their mouths together in a slow sweet kiss.

#kyle gaz garrick #paul jackson cod #kyle gaz garrick x paul jackson #gaz/jackson #call of duty #call of duty mw #call of duty modern warfare #john soap mactavish #simon ghost riley #gary roach sanderson #john price #d&d

30 notes · View notes

sindhu14 · 2 months ago

Text

What is Python, How to Learn Python?

What is Python?

Python is a high-level, interpreted programming language known for its simplicity and readability. It is widely used in various fields like: ✅ Web Development (Django, Flask) ✅ Data Science & Machine Learning (Pandas, NumPy, TensorFlow) ✅ Automation & Scripting (Web scraping, File automation) ✅ Game Development (Pygame) ✅ Cybersecurity & Ethical Hacking ✅ Embedded Systems & IoT (MicroPython)

Python is beginner-friendly because of its easy-to-read syntax, large community, and vast library support.

How Long Does It Take to Learn Python?

The time required to learn Python depends on your goals and background. Here’s a general breakdown:

1. Basics of Python (1-2 months)

If you spend 1-2 hours daily, you can master:

Variables, Data Types, Operators

Loops & Conditionals

Functions & Modules

Lists, Tuples, Dictionaries

File Handling

Basic Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)

2. Intermediate Level (2-4 months)

Once comfortable with basics, focus on:

Advanced OOP concepts

Exception Handling

Working with APIs & Web Scraping

Database handling (SQL, SQLite)

Python Libraries (Requests, Pandas, NumPy)

Small real-world projects

3. Advanced Python & Specialization (6+ months)

If you want to go pro, specialize in:

Data Science & Machine Learning (Matplotlib, Scikit-Learn, TensorFlow)

Web Development (Django, Flask)

Automation & Scripting

Cybersecurity & Ethical Hacking

Learning Plan Based on Your Goal

📌 Casual Learning – 3-6 months (for automation, scripting, or general knowledge) 📌 Professional Development – 6-12 months (for jobs in software, data science, etc.) 📌 Deep Mastery – 1-2 years (for AI, ML, complex projects, research)

Scope @ NareshIT:

At NareshIT’s Python application Development program you will be able to get the extensive hands-on training in front-end, middleware, and back-end technology.

It skilled you along with phase-end and capstone projects based on real business scenarios.

Here you learn the concepts from leading industry experts with content structured to ensure industrial relevance.

An end-to-end application with exciting features

Earn an industry-recognized course completion certificate.

For more details:

#classroom #python #education #learning #teaching #institute #marketing #study motivation #studying #onlinetraining

2 notes · View notes

jcmarchi · 1 year ago

Text

Generative AI’s end-run around copyright won’t be resolved by the courts

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/generative-ais-end-run-around-copyright-wont-be-resolved-by-the-courts/

Generative AI’s end-run around copyright won’t be resolved by the courts

Generative AI companies have faced many copyright lawsuits, but something is different about the recent complaint by the New York Times. It is filled with examples of ChatGPT outputting near-verbatim copies of text from the NYT. Copyright experts think this puts the Times in a very strong position.

We are not legal experts, and we won’t offer any commentary on the lawsuit itself. Our interest is in the bigger picture: the injustice of labor appropriation in generative AI. Unfortunately, the legal argument that has experts excited — output similarity — is almost totally disconnected from what is ethically and economically harmful about generative AI companies’ practices. As a result, that lawsuit might lead to a pyrrhic victory for those who care about adequate compensation for creative works used in AI. It would allow generative AI companies to proceed without any significant changes to their business models.

There are two broad types of unauthorized copying that happen in generative AI. The first is during the training process: generative AI models are trained using text or media scraped from the web and other sources, most of which is copyrighted. OpenAI admits that training language models on only public domain data would result in a useless product.

The other is during output generation: some generated outputs bear varying degrees of resemblance to specific items in the training data. This might be verbatim or near-verbatim text, text about a copyrighted fictional character, a recognizable painting, a painting in the style of an artist, a new image of a copyrighted character, etc.

An example of a memorized output from an NYT article presented in the lawsuit. Source: The New York Times

The theory of harm here is that ChatGPT can be used to bypass paywalls. We won’t comment on the legal merits of that argument. But from a practical perspective, the idea of people turning to chatbots to bypass paywalls seems highly implausible, especially considering that it often requires repeatedly prompting the bot to continue generating paragraph by paragraph. There are countless tools to bypass paywalls that are more straightforward.

Let’s be clear: we do think ChatGPT’s knowledge of the NYT’s reporting harms the publisher. But the way it happens is far less straightforward. It doesn’t involve users intentionally getting it to output memorized text, but rather completely innocuous queries like the one below, which happen millions of times every day:

A typical user who asked this question would probably have no idea that ChatGPT’s answer comes from a groundbreaking 2020 investigation by Kashmir Hill at the NYT (which also led to the recently published book Your Face Belongs To Us).

Of course, this doesn’t make for nearly as compelling a legal argument, and that’s the point. In this instance, there is no discernible copying during generation. But ChatGPT’s ability to provide this accurate and useful response is an indirect result of the copying that happened during training. The NYT’s lawsuit argues that copying during training is also unlawful, but the sense among experts is that OpenAI has a strong fair use defense.

Here’s another scenario. As search engines embrace AI-generated answers, what they’ve created is a way to show people news content without licensing it or sending traffic to news sites. We’ve long had this problem with Google News, as well as Google search scraping content to populate search results, but generative AI takes it to the next level.

In short, what harms creators is the intended use of generative AI to remix existing knowledge, not the unintended use of bypassing paywalls. Here’s a simple way to see why this is true. If generative AI companies fixed their products to avoid copyrighted outputs (which they can and should), their business model would be entirely unaffected. But if they were forced to license all data used for training, they would most likely immediately go out of business.

We think it is easy to ensure that generative AI products don’t output copyright-violating text or images, although some experts disagree. Given the prominence of this lawsuit, OpenAI and other companies will no doubt make it a priority, and we will soon find out how well they are able to solve the problem.

In fact, it’s a bit surprising that OpenAI has let things get this far. (In contrast, when one of us pointed out last summer that ChatGPT can bypass paywalls through the web browsing feature, OpenAI took the feature down right away and fixed it.)

There are at least three ways to try to avoid output similarity. The simplest is through the system prompt, which is what OpenAI seems to do with DALL-E. It includes the following instruction to ChatGPT, guiding the way it talks to DALL-E behind the scenes:

Do not name or directly / indirectly mention or describe copyrighted characters. Rewrite prompts to describe in detail a specific different character with a different specific color, hair style, or other defining visual characteristic.

But this method is also the easiest to bypass, for instance, by telling ChatGPT that the year is 2097 and a certain copyright has expired.

A better method is fine tuning (including reinforcement learning). This involves training to refuse requests for memorized copyrighted text and/or paraphrase the text during generation instead of outputting it verbatim. This approach to alignment has been successful at avoiding toxic outputs. Presumably ChatGPT has already undergone some amount of fine tuning to address copyright as well. How well does it work? OpenAI claims it is a “rare bug” for ChatGPT to output memorized text, but third-party evidence seems to contradict this.

While fine tuning would be more reliable than prompt crafting, jailbreaks will likely always be possible. Fine tuning can’t make the model forget memorized text; it just prevents it from outputting it. If a user jailbreaks a chatbot to output copyrighted text, is it the developer’s fault? Morally, we don’t think so, but legally, it remains to be seen. The NYT lawsuit claims that this scenario constitutes contributory infringement.

Setting all that aside, there’s a method that’s much more robust than fine tuning: output filtering. Here’s how it would work. The filter is a separate component from the model itself. As the model generates text, the filter looks it up in real time in a web search index (OpenAI can easily do this due to its partnership with Bing). If it matches copyrighted content, it suppresses the output and replaces it with a note explaining what happened.

Output filtering will also work for image generators. Detecting when a generated image is a close match to an image in the training data is a solved problem, as is the classification of copyrighted characters. For example, an article by Gary Marcus and Reid Southen gives examples of nine images containing copyrighted characters generated by Midjourney. ChatGPT-4, which is multimodal, straightforwardly recognizes all of them, which means that it is trivial to build a classifier that detects and suppresses generated images containing copyrighted characters.

To recap, generative AI will harm creators just as much, even if output similarity is fixed, and it probably will be fixed. Even if chatbots were limited to paraphrasing, summarization, quoting, etc. when dealing with memorized text, they would harm the market for the original works because their usefulness relies on the knowledge extracted from those works without compensation.

Note that people could always do these kinds of repurposing, and it was never a problem from a copyright perspective. We have a problem now because those things are being done (1) in an automated way (2) at a billionfold greater scale (3) by companies that have vastly more power in the market than artists, writers, publishers, etc. Incidentally, these three reasons are also why AI apologists are wrong when claiming that training image generators on art is just like artists taking inspiration from prior works.

As a concrete example, it’s perfectly legitimate to create a magazine that summarizes the week’s news sourced from other publications. But if every browser shipped an automatic summarization feature that lets you avoid clicking on articles, it would probably put many publishers out of business.

The goal of copyright law is to balance creators’ interests with public access to creative works. Getting this delicate balance right relies on unstated assumptions about the technologies of creation and distribution. Sometimes new tech can violently upset that equilibrium.

Consider a likely scenario: NYT wins (or forces OpenAI into an expensive settlement) based on the claims relating to output similarity but loses the ones relating to training data. After all, the latter claims stand on far more untested legal ground, and experts are much less convinced by them.

This would be a pyrrhic victory for creators and publishers. In fact, it would leave almost all of them (except NYT) in a worse position than before the lawsuit. Here’s what we think will happen in this scenario: Companies will fix the output similarity issue, while the practice of scraping training data will continue unchecked. Creators and publishers will face an uphill battle to have any viable claims in the future.

IP lawyer Kate Downing says of this case: “It’s the kind of case that ultimately results in federal legislation, either codifying a judgment or statutorily reversing it.” It appears that the case is being treated as a proxy for the broader issue of generative AI and copyright. That is a serious mistake. As The danger is that policymakers and much of the public come to believe that the labor appropriation problem has been solved, when in fact an intervention that focuses only on output similarity will have totally missed the mark.

We don’t think the injustice at the heart of generative AI will be redressed by the courts. Maybe changes to copyright law are necessary. Or maybe it will take other kinds of policy interventions that are outside the scope of copyright law. Either way, policymakers can’t take the easy way out.

We are grateful to Mihir Kshirsagar for comments on a draft.