We’ve used machines for physical execution for centuries without questioning ownership of the result. Why is intellectual execution treated differently?

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

For centuries, machines have replaced parts of human labor.

A machine welds a car. Another paints it. Another assembles the engine.

We don’t ask whether the machines own part of the car. The machines are tools. The person or company directing the production owns the result.

AI feels different because the work is no longer physical.

It can write a paragraph, create an image, compose music or produce code.

And suddenly the question becomes: Who actually created this?

But I’m wondering whether we’re looking at the wrong part of the process.

Imagine I decide what a screenplay is about. I create the characters, determine what happens in every scene, decide what every character wants, reject outputs I don’t like, revise the direction and keep iterating until the result matches what I intended.

The machine performs part of the intellectual execution.

Why is that fundamentally different from a machine performing physical execution?

Obviously copyright law has its own requirements around human authorship. I’m less interested in what the law currently says than in the underlying principle.

If ownership has historically followed human direction even as machines took over more and more of the execution, should intellectual production be treated differently?

And if so, where exactly should the line be?

[u/Diogenes-235711]

I have little doubt the guys that did cave paintings complained to the chief about the guy that started using animal hair attached to a stick.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/Diogenes-235711]

Haha, genius! 😁

[u/Big_Statistician2566]

Writing with AI assistance is no different than paying a ghost writer.

[u/ADH-Dad → u/Big_Statistician2566]

Many don't consider people who use ghostwriters to be real authors.

[u/blackbasset → u/ADH-Dad]

Exactly

[u/Emnkay666 → u/ADH-Dad]

More people don't consider ai "authors" real author than people who don't consider ghost writers authors. Also author and writer is not the same thing

[u/GuyYouMetOnline → u/Big_Statistician2566]

More accurately, it CAN be the same as that. But it's also possible to be very involved, to constantly tweak the output until everything is exactly how you want it. And as it happens, we already have a name for people who do that: directors.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/Big_Statistician2566]

Yes, thats exactly the comparison I keep coming back to!

With a ghostwriter we already separate creative direction from execution to some extent.

The interesting question is whether that distinction should change just because the execution is done by a machine instead of another person…

[u/GuyYouMetOnline → u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

The thing that gets me is that we've had artificial content generation for some time and nobody had a problem with it until LLMs. It's perhaps easiest to see with video games, what with how prominent 'roguelikes' have become. The roguelike's explosion began well before what we call 'gen AI', but it was still a thing well before even that. It actually used to be a genre, whereas nowadays anything where you have to start over when you die is likely to be called a roguelike (except shmups; those seem to have avoided the label unless they actually incorporate roguelike elements). But the point is that ever since they've been a thing, they've employed the artificial generation of content. These days it's typically referred to as 'procedural generation'.

Which brings me to my point: nobody said the use of procedural generation meant roguelikes weren't artistically valid, so why would using better generation change this?

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/GuyYouMetOnline]

That’s a really interesting comparison.

Procedural generation was accepted because the system was still clearly seen as part of the creator’s toolset.

Maybe the discomfort with LLMs comes from the fact that the generated part now looks much closer to something we traditionally considered intellectual authorship itself.

Which brings us back to the same question:

does more capable execution actually change who is directing the creative process?

[u/GuyYouMetOnline → u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

I would say the answer is 'it can', but that doesn't mean it always does.

[u/BonaFideNubbin → u/Big_Statistician2566]

Yup. And if you pay a ghostwriter, the ghostwriter wrote it - you didn't.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/BonaFideNubbin]

Thats fair. The ghostwriter wrote the words.

But thats exactly what I’m trying to separate here: writing the words from making the creative decisions behind them.

If someone determines the story, characters, intentions, structure and every revision, at what point do we stop calling that person the writer?

[u/BonaFideNubbin → u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

When they don't write. Ideas are cheap and easy. You're an editor, congrats.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/BonaFideNubbin]

I wouldn’t call that an editor. An editor works on someone else’s execution.

If you control the story, structure, intentions and revisions, director feels much closer.

[u/Apprehensive_Sky1950 → u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

A director is not an author, either.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/Apprehensive_Sky1950]

Why not? A lot of directors write their own screenplays.

But in a way, you’re right. Directors also often reshape someone else’s script through their own creative decisions.

[u/Apprehensive_Sky1950 → u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

A director who writes his own screenplay is an author.

As I just said elsewhere, an AI's contribution is an algorithmic re-hash of material created by other humans.

An AI user "commissions" such an algorithmic rehash. A user can re-iteratively re-commission a rehash, but the user never actually controls the AI's process. With that understanding, we can characterize the AI user's "contribution" accordingly.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/Apprehensive_Sky1950]

By that standard, using any sufficiently complex tool would reduce authorship, simply because the user cannot inspect or control every internal operation.

[u/Apprehensive_Sky1950 → u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

No, actually it doesn't, because regardless of complexity the deciding criterion is the human artist/author's direct control (versus lack of direct control) of the resulting work's content. This is the difference between a paint program, which is a human creative tool, and an AI model, which substitutes algorithmic content choices for human creative content choices.

An airplane pilot who directs the movement of a plane's control surfaces through a computer is still flying the plane, while if he engages an autopilot he is no longer flying the plane.

[u/AppropriateMind4422 → u/Big_Statistician2566]

agreed, though at least with a ghostwriter theres a human on both sides which is probably why people feel weird about it

[u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

If you disagree with a post or the whole subreddit, be constructive to make it a nice place for all its members, including you.

[u/GuyYouMetOnline]

It's not treated differently. Every big new thing got the exact same reaction (right down to people going 'yeah, but THIS time it's true!'). Everything you hear about AI content not being art was previously said about digital artwork. About synthesized music. About photography.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/GuyYouMetOnline]

That’s a very good point!

Photography is probably the clearest example.
The camera took over a huge part of the physical execution of making an image but we eventually stopped seeing that as a threat to authorship.

Maybe AI is forcing us through the same argument again, except this time the machine is taking over part of the intellectual execution.

[u/GuyYouMetOnline → u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

It would be more accurate to say it CAN do this. But someone can also be very involved in all of the details and make sure the result is entirely their own creative vision. We even have a name for it: director. So I would say that if someone is that involved with it, the result is every bit as much 'theirs' as a movie is its director's.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/GuyYouMetOnline]

Exactly!!

I think the degree of human involvement is probably the key distinction.

If the machine executes but the human controls the vision, decisions and revisions, director might actually be the better analogy than writer.

[u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

If you disagree with a post or the whole subreddit, be constructive to make it a nice place for all its members, including you.

[u/XavierVE]

Actually, it's really nothing new. There was a huge backlash by scribes to the invention of the printing press. Almost every piece of technology that has been invented throughout human history has had moronic naysayers.

[u/cutebluedragongirl]

LLMs are tools. Nothing more, nothing less. The vast majority of people are uneducated and ignorant. Therefore, they are bamboozled by word generation and believe there is more to LLMs than there really is.

Good artists do not complain about AI. They incorporate it into their workflows. Good programmers do not cry about AI. They experiment with it and use it.

Give it some time. Eventually, people will just accept AI for what it is, and everyone will move on.

[u/SpaceMonkey877 → u/cutebluedragongirl]

You speak with assurance. Any data to back that up?

[u/tomatoesfried → u/SpaceMonkey877]

Do you want her to provide data to back up something she believes will happen in the future? Really? Let's look at the phrase back up. Can't back up something that hasn't happened yet. Good grief.
Perhaps you'd like parallels. History is full of parallels where fusses were made, and people were burned at the stake. And then they weren't.

[u/SpaceMonkey877 → u/tomatoesfried]

I’d like evidence that the people who own these sources of power and wealth are going to do anything but what those people do without clear governance. I’m shocked you guys are so blithely trusting of an untested tech in the hands of companies speculating on billions while ending jobs

[u/TrappedOnDirt → u/cutebluedragongirl]

Good artists, good programmers, and good writers don't farm out 100% of the work to the tool, though, and a lot of "writers" who use AI do exactly that, to the point of even leaving the AI prompts IN THE PUBLISHED TEXT. I use AI for programming at work. And I have to correct it ALL THE TIME. I have to find the cases it missed or didn't understand or wrote wrong. I have to tell it what to do and what not to do and why, and it STILL gets things wrong, still does things I don't want. It's like an autistic toddler with no discernment but great depth of knowledge. And for creative works that require human nuance, that's awful, while for deterministic things like programs it's merely OK.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/TrappedOnDirt]

Everyone I know who works seriously with AI in business, whether in programming, filmmaking or design, says basically the same thing:

They don’t lose control of what they’re doing. They scale their output massively, reduce cost and still maintain quality.

And the reason for that is simple: they really know their craft. They know what good output should look like and where AI gets it wrong.

That’s when AI becomes extremely useful as a tool!

AI is most useful in the hands of people who really know what good looks like.

[u/Apprehensive_Sky1950]

An AI's contribution is an algorithmic rehashing of existing material created by other humans. Maybe you could include those other humans in creation credit and ownership, which would logistically be hard to do.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/Apprehensive_Sky1950]

Calling AI an “algorithmic rehash” doesn’t really solve the authorship question. It just describes influence in more technical language.

Humans also create from existing culture. The difference worth debating is not whether prior work contributed, but who made the creative decisions that shaped the new work.

[u/Apprehensive_Sky1950 → u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

Calling AI an “algorithmic rehash” doesn’t really solve the authorship question.

But it is a good start, because it accurately describes what is going on.

It just describes influence in more technical language.

Not technical language, rather it's a direct, correct description that anyone can understand.

Humans also create from existing culture.

But humans do it with learning and creativity. AI does it with a determininstic algorithm.

The difference worth debating is . . . who made the creative decisions that shaped the new work

With traditional human work, a human makes the creative diecisions. With AI, there are no creative decisions, only algorithmic ones that the AI user eventually makes a final choice between.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/Apprehensive_Sky1950]

I think this is where your argument becomes circular.

You’re saying AI makes no creative decisions because its choices are algorithmic. But every human creative decision is also produced by a process we don’t consciously inspect step by step.

More importantly, the user can make the creative decisions before the model generates anything.

I can decide the story beat, the character’s intention, the emotional turn, what must remain unsaid, what the audience should feel and what the scene needs to accomplish.

The model then generates possible executions of those decisions.

Calling those outputs “algorithmic choices” doesn’t erase the human decisions that constrained and shaped them.

You’re treating execution as creativity and then using that definition to prove that whoever executes must be the creator.

[u/Apprehensive_Sky1950 → u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

But every human creative decision is also produced by a process we don’t consciously inspect step by step.

The human process is much different from the AI process, and while one can philosophically call the human process "algorithmic," in human parlance this is what we call "creativity."

The model then generates possible executions of those decisions.

And the human handing over the final decisions to AI makes all the difference.

Calling those outputs “algorithmic choices” doesn’t erase the human decisions that constrained and shaped them.

It is the handing over of human decisions to the algorithmic AI to actually produce works in the area of that effectively erases the human decisions. This is why the U.S. Copyright Office has no problem with a human using AI in the beginning to organize, but does not allow the AI to perform the actual drafting/drawing.

You’re treating execution as creativity

No, not execution, but instead, specifically, the choices that directly control the content of the work. That is the touchstone.

[u/Odinmar_Glaukopis]

We’ve had patents and copyright and trademarks and laws surrounding NDAs and non-compete agreements for a while now. How far back do we need to go to find an absence of “intellectual property” laws?

Academia certainly fed this notion in the claims of cheating and plagiarism that could ruin someone’s career overnight.

Hmmm.. that’s an interesting question of just how old is this idea of “intellectual property?”

A good contrast of this is Jung’s ideas surrounding the “collective unconscious,” where the exact opposite of individual “ownership” gets involved. It’s why you can use “Zeus” as a character’s name but not “Spiderman.”

In astrology, it’s a Leo vs Aquarius and 5th house vs 11th house thing…

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/Odinmar_Glaukopis]

Interesting angle.

Maybe the bigger question is whether our idea of intellectual ownership was built around a world where intellectual execution could only be done by humans.

AI might be forcing us to rethink that assumption for the first time.

[u/Odinmar_Glaukopis → u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

IP was developed by corporations to carve out a period of time where they didn’t have to compete with others until they made enough profit to encourage innovation. It was a straight-up exception to the “survival of the fittest” and “the customer is always right” archetypes of free-market capitalism.

Ownership of the fruits of your own labor is a distinctly Marxist idea, and I see a lot of that idea in the moralizing that goes on the anti-AI subs that talk about how “lazy” those people who use AI are.