Does AI Infringe Copyright?

That argument is being made. It's hard to see how it will succeed. Given the vast input an AI LLM needs to do it's job, it would be REALLY hard to argue that the AI use of anyone's text is copyright infringement, especially given the proprietary algorithms required to produce the output. If anything qualifies for "fair use", certainly using 500 pages as part of a 20 million page data set would qualify. Not only do the proprietary statistical algorithms add value, and differentiate the output, but even the original word-to-number conversion that preps the sentences for statistical analysis is proprietary.

The conversion of the words of the original work into numbers is already a differentiation, a transformation of the original. It is an add-on value given to the work by the people who assign the numbers, the weightings and the numerical categorizations to the words. Arguably, the number string thereby derived from a given work is its own entity, unique in value from the original work, and that's BEFORE it is fed into the algorithms. This manipulation all happens BEFORE the number string is used as input. At that point, the original author of the original work arguably no longer has a copyright claim.

To put it more succinctly, presenting a diagram of a sentence is not plagiarism. To prep a sentence for generative AI LLM input, the sentence has to be essentially "diagrammed". If diagramming a sentence is fair use, then diagramming hundreds of sentences is also fair use. The process of diagramming the sentence adds value and serves a different purpose than the original sentence served. All AI input has to be diagrammed before it can be used. That's what produces the propriety number string for input. This proprietary number string, with its unique weightings and categorizations, is then fed through proprietary statistical algorithms. The output is a unique result of the algorithms, the weighting and the original number conversion. So, what's left to copyright? The output stream? How? What people don't realize is that we cannot apply copyright to a stream of numbers output from a statistical algorithm. It's like trying to copyright the sequence of digits that make up pi. That's all generative AI does - it washes categorized, weighted numbers through a set of algorithms, and spits out more numbers. The fact that the output numbers can then be converted back into words that make sense to us is more an example of anthropomorphism than anything else. Can anthropomorphism be copyrighted? That's one hell of a stretch. Courts have always ruled that machine output cannot be copyrighted. AI won't change that.

There is nothing in the generative AI process that infringes copyright.

Addendum

If this "Office at Night" Phil Lockwood homage to Edward Hopper isn't copyright infringement, neither is AI. Every window in Lockwood's painting is a replica of an Edward Hopper painting.

Similarly, AI detection tools use the same LLM model that the generative AI itself uses. So, if generative AI violates copyright by collecting the work of many authors, then whenever an instructor submits a student essay to an AI detection tool, that instructor violates the student's copyright. The student's paper will become part of the AI detection tool's data set. Ironically, the very instructors who are concerned about AI violating copyright will happily violate student copyright in order to accomplish their own goals in reference to grading their students.

Teachers can violate a student's copyright but students get punished for using AI? SERIOUSLY?

OpenAI has initiated Copyright Shield to protect its users from copyright claims.

Tech Companies generate BILLIONS in government fines... they just don't pay them.

Boss axed 90% of staff and replaced them with AI

Virgin Births in Modern Times

When looking at the virgin birth of Christ, a few disturbing historical facts can be noted. First, due to a dramatically different understanding of how conception takes place, people in ancient times may have been more prone to accept virgin births than those living in the modern era. We have, for example, this case from the late medieval period:

In 1637 in Grenoble, France, the aristocrat Madeleine d’Auvermont was put on trial for adultery. Despite the fact that her husband had left France four years earlier, Madeleine had recently given birth to a healthy baby boy. In the face of what seemed like damning evidence she protested her innocence, claiming that she had thought—ahem—intensely about her husband at night and had conceived through the power of imagination.

Various physicians and theologians were consulted on the case and declared that this was theoretically possible. (You’d think that the theologians maybe spoke a little more forcefully than the physicians.) The child was named the legal offspring of her husband and heir to the de Montleon fortune.

But, the acceptance of a virgin birth is not limited to medieval culture. Even today, it is not uncommon for women to claim that they became pregnant without benefit of sexual intercourse:

Of 7870 eligible women, 5340 reported a pregnancy, of whom 45 (0.8% of pregnant women) reported a virgin pregnancy (table 1)

Is there any medical evidence that such parthenogenesis could take place? While most sources would say "no", there was at least one study done in the 1950s that was a little, shall we say, unsettling: 

The remaining eight pairs were examined by Balfour-Lynn (1956), who blood typed mothers and daughters and found antigens present in six daughters that were absent in their mothers, clear evidence of genetic differences. In another pair, the mother had blue eyes and the daughter brown eyes, indicating genetic differences. In the single remaining case, "Mrs. Alpha and daughter," there was apparent genetic identity in blood groups and several other genetically determined traits including electrophoretic analysis of serum. The probability of such a close match between a mother and daughter produced by heterosexual reproduction was less than one chance in a hundred (P < .01).

But, of course, if parthenogenesis happened, the child would be female, like her mother. Jesus was male, therefore not the product of parthenogenesis. True, offspring of the same sex would be necessary for typical parthenogenesis, but what if the offspring were of a true hermaphrodite? We have a 2016 study that used true hermaphroditic rabbits as the test cases:

In the literature, pregnancy cases that developed through self-fertilization were not reported in humans. However, autofertilization was detected in mammalian hermaphrodites such as domestic rabbit... The number of hermaphrodite pregnants (sic) with ovotestis reported in the literature is 14 while the number of pregnancies in these cases is 26 [7–20]. In these pregnancies, there were one premature, one immature, one stillborn and one abortion performed due to unwanted pregnancy. One baby died 2 h after the birth. There was also an ongoing pregnancy during the publication of the relevant literature. All of the babies born apart from these were healthy. All of the babies (fetuses) whose gender was reported were male (Table 1).

Hermaphrodites could exhibit female mothers with male offspring. That is a little unexpected. This report from 2009 confirms the findings:

Background: There are 11 reported cases of pregnancy in true hermaphrodites, but none with advanced genetic testing. All known fetuses have been male.

Case: A true hermaphrodite with a spontaneous pregnancy prenatally known to have a remaining portion of a right ovotestis, delivered a male neonate. The mother has a 46, XX karyotype with polymerase chain reaction demonstrating low levels of the Yq12 sequence. Postpartum androgen levels were normal.

Conclusion: Partial removal of testicular tissue may enhance fertility in hermaphrodites, and there may be a genetic basis for the progeny to be male. 

For the last century or so, Christians have had a propensity to explain the reported astronomical or meteorological phenomenon around the Gospel stories (the star of Bethlehem, the darkness at the Crucifixion, etc.) as simply a divine intervention that exhibited as a natural phenomenon. That is, the Star of Bethlehem was really a great conjunction of planets while the darkness at the Crucifixion may have been caused by a sandstorm.  This propensity was not restricted to modern Christians. Even Augustine shared this propensity: 

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion [quoting 1 Tim 1:7].”  ― Augustine of Hippo, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Vol 2

Even in the Old Testament, physical reality was used to prove contact with the divine. Gideon's fleece, Daniel's vegetarian diet and the Deuteronomic warning against false prophets all use physical reality as the final test. Reality trumps human eyewitness testimony. 

Christians do not use divine revelation to confirm experimental science, that is, we do not say, "well the experimental results must be accepted as correct because experiment conforms with what God says." Similarly, only the most fundamentalist of Christians say, "We reject any experimental result which does not conform with Biblical revelation." Rather, we use experimental science as the norm which serves to confirm divine revelation: "this event could have happened as the Bible reported, because we have experimental evidence which supports the possibility that the divinely inspired eyewitness testimony could be true." 

The physical world is the norm which norms the Bible. Even the Bible, both Old Testament and New Testament, attests that this is the appropriate way to approach the Divine Word. 

But, while the biological phenomenon of virgin birth can now potentially be explained via experimental science, it is doubtful that Christianity will allow biology to explain the miracle. 

Why Atheists Should Become Christians

Christianity has been doing a deep-dive study of personal relationships for 2000 years. In fact, Christianity was the formal logical system which first invented the term "person."

Even if you don't believe Jesus is God, the results of a long-term study performed across multiple cultures for two thousand years is going to be a bit more reliable than something some yahoo just thought up last week while reading Kerouac. The beauty of Christian teaching isn't the Christ-elements, so much as it is the consistency of the personal relationship teachings. Any teaching which hasn't changed for 2000 years is probably something we need to keep, at least until we fully understand everything it is doing in the culture.

Jesus Christ on Families

You know, when you think about it, it is really hard to come up with a quote from Jesus in the Gospels in which He praises families.

He just doesn't do it. He tells people, in multiple places, that they should abandon their families, and that families are sources of strife and division. But, apart from mentioning - in the context of divorce - that a man and woman will leave their families to cleave together, He just doesn't seem very interested in families or kids. 

If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.

Jesus told a would-be disciple who wanted to show basic decency to his deceased father, “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Luke 9:60). He commanded his disciples: Leave parents, siblings, spouse – even “hate” them – and follow me. When his own mother and brothers came to see him, Jesus’ reaction was terse: “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Looking at those seated around him he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:31–35).

Nor was He that big of a fan of heterosexual marriage. When He gave the teaching on divorce, the disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”

Now, if the disciples had misunderstood him, this was a perfect chance to correct the disciples' misunderstanding. But, Jesus does not use this opportunity to go into a panegyric on marriage and how wonderful it is. Instead, he essentially agrees with them and starts praising celibacy:

11 But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

That is pretty weak sauce on heterosexual marriage. He upholds the Old Testament teaching that heterosexual marriage is acceptable, and parents should be honored, but I cannot think of a passage where He praises marriage, or even praises motherhood or fatherhood.

When He wants to say something nice about mothers, He doesn't talk about human mothers. He talks about chickens. When a mother asks Him to cast demons out of her daughter, Jesus essentially calls her a bitch. 

The epistles are really not any better. The best Paul can say is to honor the marriage bed. Get married only if you aren't good enough to be celibate and you don't want to burn (in hell). Paul explicitly says that family formation is an impediment to holiness. He finds it necessary to point out that marriage is not actually a sin. That's as positive as he gets about it. What a rousing endorsement of a divinizing, deifying sacrament! "Hey guys, I guess you can do it if it is truly the only way to avoid eternal damnation, and technically, it isn't actually a sin.... so.... " 

A woman should not be enrolled as a widow if she is not at least sixty years old. In addition, she must have been married only once, 10 and have a reputation for good works by bringing up her children, offering hospitality to strangers, washing the feet of the saints,[d] helping those in distress, and being active in all kinds of good work.

11 However, refuse to enroll younger widows, for when their passions distract them from the service of Christ, they will want to marry again 12 and will incur condemnation for having broken their original vow....If any woman believer has relatives who are widows, she must assist them herself. The Church should be free of such burdens and consequently able to assist those who are widows in the true sense.

...he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does better (1 Cor 7:38)

The Gospels were not designed to build up family ties. Quite the contrary. Jesus specifically set out to DESTROY family and tribal ties. The ancient world was rife with nepotism and tribal conflict. Every negative event generated some version of the Hatfields and the McCoys. That kind of ancient tribalism, in which every person was required to put family and tribal honor first, was not only common in every society known to man, it is also is the antithesis of the Gospel.

Jesus set out to destroy tribalism. By preaching to non-Jews, He even attacked traditional Judaic tribalism. He succeeded in His goal. Indeed, that destruction of nepotism is part of the reason why Christianity has been so successful: Christians are required to stop engaging in nepotism, stop worrying about family honor, and instead put non-family members on an equal footing with family members. 

Today, the anti-family, anti-tribal Christian message has been so wildly successful that the world suffers from the opposite problem. Family has now been relegated so far into the dust heap of history that the majority of people in the first world no longer even form families. But, because this problem was completely unknown to ancient societies, the Bible has almost nothing to say about how to improve or increase family formation.  

TLDR

Jesus only talks about works as a means of salvation, He never mentions grace at all, much less grace as a means of salvation.

Jesus' parables about wedding feasts always involve torture, punishment and death. Apart from a reference to honoring one's mother and father, he has nothing kind to say about parenthood. Apart from a statement that marriage is indissoluble, he has nothing kind to say about marriage.

In addition to his decidedly negative attitude towards marriage, Jesus never praises the begetting of children or the work of family formation. Instead, his references to family again primarily describe family as a place of combat and violence. He encourages people to abandon their families if family members sin.

For Jesus and Paul, celibacy is the highest good. If the world had been successfully evangelized, and all Christians had followed this highest path to holiness, the human race would have disappeared from the planet by 150 AD.

Are Animals Rational?

Do animals have the use of reason? 

research has shown that animals can remember specific events, use tools and solve problems. But exactly what that means – whether they are making rational decisions or simply reacting to their environment through mindless reflex – remains a matter of scientific dispute.

Cameron Buckner, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Houston, argues in an article published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research that a wide range of animal species exhibit so-called “executive control” when it comes to making decisions, consciously considering their goals and ways to satisfy those goals before acting.

There are many examples of animals using what appears to be rational decision-making:

Jacob Beck (2012) relies on pigeons’ abilities to compare quantities to argue for nonconceptual content; Sidney Carls-Diamante (forthcoming) appeals to octopus behavior and physiology to defend embodied cognition; Richard Moore (2016a) refers to ape gestural communication to rethink the requirements for intentional communication; Andrew Barron and Colin Klein (2016) appeal to insect cognition research to defend new theories of consciousness; Sarah Vincent, Rebecca Ring, and Kristin Andrews (2019) cite dolphins’ social practices to argue for the existence of norms that do not require metacognition.

In addition, philosophers of animal cognition can examine the epistemology and methods used to justify the claims that arise from the science. Research into animal cognition has resulted in surprising claims about animal capacities, such as sociality in garter snakes (Skinner & Miller 2020), tool-use in ants (Maák et al. 2017), mirror self-recognition in fish (Kohda et al. 2019), empathy in rats (Bartal et al. 2011), social learning in fruit flies (Danchin et al. 2018), episodic memory in dogs (Fugazza et al. 2020), addition and subtraction in bees (Howard et al. 2019). How should we evaluate such claims?

If animals have the use of reason, as St. Thomas avers, then Catholic theology has a problem. Catholic theology specifically says only human beings, angels and God have the use of reason. Because humans have the use of reason, the fall of humanity requires sacraments be applied to human beings for their salvation.

But, if animals can reason, then the brokenness of reality means animals are in peril of hell via their immortal rational souls. That is, if animals have immortal rational souls, animals can go to hell (yes, even dogs can go to hell). So animals ALSO need sacraments. But no liturgical Christian denomination has ever applied sacraments to animals. From the non-liturgical, Protestant perspective, animals cannot read, they cannot proclaim with their mouths that Jesus is Lord, they cannot know Jesus through Scripture, and thus they cannot fulfill the conditions necessary for Protestant salvation either. 

If animals can reason, if animals have rational souls, then all animals go to hell.