Virginie Berger ▶️

Tech-obsessed music lover. I don't fully endorse anything I say below.

[Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex]

It’s no longer just AI companies & their founders being sued over AI training - individual researchers are now being sued, too.

In a new lawsuit, two authors allege that Guillaume Lample, while an AI researcher at Meta, torrented 70 terabytes of pirated books for training Llama. (He later co-founded Mistral.) They also accuse Joelle Pineau, a former VP of AI Research, of being involved.

Suspect we will see more researchers sued in this way as the discovery process in other lawsuits reveals who was involved in getting copyrighted work for training.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

In the era of #ArtificialIntelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human. We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendor of which no machine can ever replace. #MagnificaHumanitas
https://t.co/6i9MWs6LJl

[amelia elizalde @ameliaelizalde]

i love the "its inevitable so why fight it" argument coming from rich older women who spend a lot of time and money fighting another supposedly inevitable thing

[Virginie Berger ▶️ @virberg]

@renaudpila La vidéo dure 7 minutes…c’est dommage de juste extraire 3 minutes quand l’entièreté est superbe

[Y Disassembler @loomdoop]

The European Parliament's campaign against AI.

So good.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

The rapid technological evolution we are witnessing has accelerated speculative behavior in search of raw materials. This shift seems to overshadow fundamental imperatives such as the safeguarding of creation, the rights of local communities, the dignity of labor, and the protection of public health. I thus renew the appeal of Pope Francis, who passed away exactly one year ago: “Today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills.”

[Silicon Valley Fodder @Playerinthgame]

This clown. Witherspoon sold a majority stake in her production company, Hello Sunshine, to the Blackstone-backed Candle Media for $900 million in 2021. Blackstone is currently a massive investor in AI infrastructure, including a $25 billion project for AI data centers.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

#ArtificialIntelligence systems increasingly shape and permeate our mentality and social environments. Like every great historical transformation, this too calls not only for technical competence, but also for a humanistic formation capable of making visible the logic behind economics, embedded biases and forms of power that shape our perception of reality.

[Virginie Berger ▶️ @virberg]

Can you clarify what you mean by “bad faith” here? Are you saying that raising factual concerns is itself bad faith?
This is a serious issue, and brushing it aside the way you’re doing comes across as bad faith. None of the technologies you mentioned relied on mass copyright infringement to exist. So how is it bad faith to ask a legitimate question about it?

[Virginie Berger ▶️ @virberg]

Your comment is embarrassing to say the least.

Photography didn’t train itself by ingesting millions of paintings without asking painters. It introduced a new way to capture reality. Same with computers. They changed tools and workflows, not the source of the material.

AI models only exist because they were trained on huge amounts of human work. That part is just skipped.

Then the Monet/Picasso example… that’s nice philosophically, but it avoids the actual issue. The question isn’t whether a model can “transcend” an art world. Models don’t have an art world. They don’t have intent, context, or stakes. They generate outputs from patterns.

And the Colorado competition example is always used the same way, like some big proof. It mostly shows that people can be fooled by outputs, not that the system has any kind of artistic trajectory.

And you are an institute of arts and ideas? Powered by OpenAI I guess..

[Ewan Morrison @MrEwanMorrison]

This is huge evidence of the AI bubble.

$450 billion vanished and produced nothing in the real economy.

[Justine Bateman @JustineBateman]

I’ve long said that current actors will now compete with dead actors for roles, due to AI usage. If anyone wants to see the checklist of ways AI implementation will pollute the business, here’s what I wrote in 2023: https://t.co/r2FjBlQJNx

[Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex]

Groups in the UK who oppose AI exploiting creatives’ work without permission:

- 95% of artists
- Thousands of British musicians & authors
- 79% of Members of Parliament
- The House of Lords
- The Green Party
- 95% of respondents to the UK public consultation on the topic

Groups who explicitly want to entertain the possibility of allowing that exploitation:

- AI companies
- The Labour Party

[Sam Winkler @ThatSamWinkler]

What AI hawkers simply can't understand is: even if you put aside the stolen training data, unwanted integration, environmental impact, creation of low-trust culture, and dogshit output, they still talk and behave like fanatical tent preachers and no one wants to be around them.

[Elie Habib @eliehabib]

@pacifica_fi wtf you stole my GPL3 project and copied it - not even forced it

Removed attribution and you are posting it as MIT

Are you serious?!

[Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex]

🚨 It looks like the UK government is gearing up to upend copyright law in favour of AI companies, legalising the theft of their work.

This is despite creatives' huge protests, and despite previous proposals being roundly rejected by the public.

There are rumours it is considering introducing a 'commercial research exception' for AI training. This would be disastrous. It would mean handing the life's work of British creatives to AI companies for free, to train their models on.

In the House of Lords today, a government minister refused to rule this out.

To be clear, this would amount to legalising theft. It would fly in the face of public opinion on what is fair, and would mean a surrender of British creatives' work by this Labour government. It would mean the lobbying by big US tech firms had succeeded, and the protests of the UK's creatives had been ignored.

People's work is not the government's to give away.

If you're in the UK and you care about creatives and the creative industries, please write to your MP!

[Virginie Berger ▶️ @virberg]

@air_franceHQs Are you another scam?

[Virginie Berger ▶️ @virberg]

@AirFranceFR dites cela fait 30
Jours (!) que j’attends une réponse à mon claim du 30/12. J’ai perdu 400€ et 16h à cause de vos erreurs (particulièrement problèmatique la ligne platinum). Vous avez tellement été mauvais que même la chef de cabine et le capitaine ont appuyé mon claim. Depuis j’ai appelé 3x la ligne platinum qui m’a dit que vous aviez du retard “20 jours max”. Mais cela fait un mois! Et rien ne bouge le message n’est même pas lu! Que se passe t’il?

[Virginie Berger ▶️ @virberg]

@AirFranceFR @airfrance Et « récemment » ça fait 2 mois les intempéries. Et non je n’attendrais pas sur WhatsApp pour qu’ils me disent la même chose que la ligne Platinum

[Virginie Berger ▶️ @virberg]

@AirFranceFR @airfrance Non je suis désolée. Cela fait 5 semaines bientôt 6 que je patiente. On m’avait dit 20 jours puis 30. On arrive sur 2 mois. J’ai perdu 400€ à cause des erreurs commises par la ligne Platinum. Je ne patiente plus, je n’avance pas de l’argent à Air France gratuitement.

[Virginie Berger ▶️ @virberg]

@AirFranceFR @airfrance Donc @AirFranceFR ?? On fait quoi maintenant après 5 semaines sans réponse, la ligne platinum qui ne fait rien, votre ligne WhatsApp qui ne répond à rien, vos autres comptes qui ne lisent pas les DMs? 5 semaines après avoir déposé un claim!

[Virginie Berger ▶️ @virberg]

@AirFranceFR , j’essaie de comprendre. J’ai contacté la ligne WhatsApp comme vous l'indiquiez, même réponse que la ligne Platinum : attendre 5 semaines après un claim et perdre 400€, c’est apparemment normal. Aucun délai, aucune date, aucune évolution. La discussion WhatsApp est clôturée alors même que j'ai repondu que le problème n’est pas réglé, et le compte @ResponseTeamvc France ici ne répond même pas aux DM qu’il m’a demandé d’envoyer. Claim déposé en décembre, on est en février, 400€ sortis, zéro réponse. On fait quoi maintenant ?