Artificial intelligence (AI) has been exploding across the digital landscape — from people sharing text and images generated by AI platforms, to new policy that tries to shape a future where AI is expected to play an even bigger role — all while we aren’t really sure yet even how to define AI, much less understand all the impact it will have.

Here at CC, we’ve been thinking about what AI means for the commons we support, both in our strategy for better sharing and for our collaboration for a better internet. Are all these new works generated by AI part of the open, public commons? Should they be? If someone does hold copyright for an AI work, who is it? The technologists who created the AI tool? The person who uses AI to generate a work? The countless creators whose works trained the AI? The machine itself? Or should works generated by AI live in the public domain, as they do in many interpretations of established law?

Going beyond AI’s outputs: How do and should human works participate in training AI? Currently, AI platforms are using untold amounts of existing content to train their systems. Not every creator welcomes their work being used in AI, especially when AI is put to life-changing uses that could amplify biases, like predictive policing, facial recognition, job recruiting, insurance claims, or loan approvals. At the same time, if AI inputs are limited, AI could be based on a more narrow view of the world that could also perpetuate biases and block insights. How can we best ensure AI is trained to support creators and good outcomes?

As we form our positions at CC, we are bringing together people with diverse perspectives to participate in broad discussions about how AI intersects with open sharing in a commons that serves the public interest.

How does the proliferation of AI connect to better sharing: sharing that is inclusive, just and equitable — where everyone has wide opportunity to access content, to contribute their own creativity, and to receive recognition and rewards for their contributions? How does the proliferation of AI connect to a better internet: a public interest vision for an internet that benefits us all?

Join us to engage in this discussion at two free, public webinars: one focused on how open works and better sharing intersect with AI inputs — works used in training and supplying AI — and another focused on how open works and better sharing intersect with AI outputs — works generated by AI that are, could be, or should be participating in the open commons.

Webinars

AI Inputs and the Public Commons: 5–6pm UTC Wednesday 9 November 2022

(check the time in your local timezone)

Join us for a free, public webinar on how open works and better sharing intersect with AI inputs — works used in training and supplying AI — with panelists:

• Abeba Birhane, Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI, Mozilla Foundation
• Alek Tarkowski, Co-Founder and Director of Strategy, Open Future Foundation
• Anna Bethke, Principal Data Scientist, Salesforce
• Florence Chee, Associate Professor, School of Communication, Director, Center for Digital Ethics and Policy, and Director, SIMLab, Loyola University Chicago
• Moderator: Stephen Wolfson, Associate Director for Research and Copyright Services, School of Law, University of Georgia

Register now to join the webinar live. Can’t join live? Register anyway to hear when the recording is available.

AI Outputs and the Public Commons: 4–5pm UTC Thursday 10 November 2022

(check the time in your local timezone)

Join us for a free, public webinar on how open works and better sharing intersect with AI outputs — works generated by AI that are, could be, or should be participating in the open commons  — with panelists:

• Amanda Levendowski, Associate Professor of Law and Director, Intellectual Property and Information Policy Clinic, Georgetown University
• Daniel Ambrosi, Artist
• Mark Riedl, Professor, School of Interactive Computing and Associate Director, Machine Learning Center, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Meera Nair, Copyright Specialist, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology
• Moderator: Kat Walsh, General Counsel, Creative Commons

Register now to join the webinar live. Can’t join live? Register anyway to hear when the recording is available.

The post Webinars: AI Inputs, Outputs and the Public Commons appeared first on Creative Commons.

This week, the international community celebrates 30 years of the UNESCO Memory of the World Program. At Creative Commons (CC), we applaud the program’s achievements in enhancing preservation and access to documentary heritage from galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) around the globe. We laud the multitude of efforts enlisting documentary heritage to promote inclusive, just and peaceful societies. 

UNESCO’s work is important now more than ever, as climate change, global health crises, and violent conflicts are posing some of the greatest threats to documentary heritage and the memory institutions that hold it. For example:  

• The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the cultural sector: many institutions had to close their doors, reorganize their workforce, and face drastic drops in attendance and harsh declines in revenue. 
• On any given day, a site, a monument, or an artifact can be irremediably damaged or lost due to extreme weather conditions induced by global warming, something CC helps to address through our Open Climate Campaign. 
• Wars, armed conflicts, and violence in all its forms — notably in Ukraine, Ethiopia, Syria, Yemen and Myanmar — has heightened the importance of protecting cultural heritage, including GLAM collections, as embodiments of cultural identity and human spirit.

At CC, we believe that it is our collective duty and privilege to protect, preserve, safeguard, use and reuse, and celebrate heritage. That’s why through our Open Culture program, we influence policy, we maintain the world’s leading open infrastructure, made up of our licenses and tools, we support our community, and we build capacity to accompany open culture enthusiasts on their journey towards better sharing of cultural heritage. Our CC Certification in Open Culture offers professional development training for institutions or community groups engaged in cultural heritage. This course builds peoples’ capacity in opening access to cultural heritage ethically, and inclusively. Participants develop a deeper understanding of open licensing and copyright considerations with digitization projects, CC licenses and tools, Rights Statements, Traditional Knowledge Labels, working with the public domain, and more. 

As we work towards better sharing of cultural heritage and open culture, we will continue to be guided by UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program, as it fosters dialogue and mutual understanding between people and cultures. Here’s how you can join CC’s efforts: 

→ Register for a 2023 course with the following scholarship code, and receive 60% off course registration: Y2GLAMSCHOLAR60%. 

→ Join the Creative Commons Open Culture platform: https://network.creativecommons.org/cc-openculture-platform/ 

→ Become a member of the CC Global Network

→ Get in touch with us: info@creativecommons.org 

The post CC celebrates 30 years of UNESCO Memory of the World appeared first on Creative Commons.

As part of Creative Commons’ key strategic goal of Better Sharing, today we have joined six other organizations spanning the globe to launch the Movement for a Better Internet, a diverse community of advocates, activists, academics, and civil society groups working together to promote policies that create a better internet for people everywhere. The movement is a collaborative effort seeking to drive policy change based on a public interest vision for an internet that benefits us all.

For two decades, Creative Commons has worked tirelessly to facilitate the sharing of content across the planet and support an internet guided by public interest values — including privacy, openness, diversity, and equity. As part of this movement, we are committed to collaborating with other members to promote these and other values that we will determine together.

“It’s inspiring to see what started over a year ago in so many different conversations now take shape as a rich, organized movement to work toward a better internet for all,” said Catherine Stihler, CC CEO. “From governmental initiatives like over 60 nations signing the Declaration for the Future of the Internet just in April, to the new policies we now see taking shape in the EU and the USA, we can already see work for a better internet gain new momentum. This movement will bring together everyone who is dedicated to making sure the public interest shapes the future of the remarkable global network that connects us all.”

By joining the movement, we can ensure an internet shaped by our shared values — an internet for the people that puts our communities first. We encourage academics, activists, and advocates working at organizations passionate about creating this better internet to join us in this movement. Together, we can achieve a better internet for us all.

As an organizing partner, Creative Commons also joins in launching a digital hub at movementforabetterinternet.org to facilitate connection and communication among those striving to build a better internet. The full list of organizing partners includes: Association for Progressive Communications; Creative Commons; Derechos Digitales; Internet Archive; Niskanen Center; Public Knowledge; and Wikimedia Foundation.

To join the movement and learn more, visit the Movement for a Better Internet digital hub. 

Check out CC’s Better Internet blog post series to learn more about how the idea for the movement came about and the early groundwork that led us to this launch today.

The post A Better Internet for Better Sharing: Join the Movement for a Better Internet appeared first on Creative Commons.

Beginning in 2021, the European Union has been considering a new AI Act, which would regulate certain uses of AI. In particular, it seeks to ban certain uses of AI, such as broad-based real-time biometric identification for law enforcement in public places, and it seeks to ensure that certain precautions are taken before deployment of uses deemed ‘high-risk,’ such as the use of AI for access to education, employment, financial credit, or other essential services.

Creative Commons has proactively worked with policymakers and other key stakeholders, creating a constructive dialogue to inform both the content of the text and the context of the debate. We agree with the objectives of the Act: ensuring AI systems placed on the Union market are used in a way that respects fundamental rights and Union values; providing legal certainty to facilitate investment and innovation in AI; and facilitating the development of a single market for lawful, transparent, and trustworthy AI applications to prevent market fragmentation.

While the proposal covers a broad range of topics, we have focused on two areas that are pertinent to our strategy, better sharing.

First, we have advocated for the benefits of supporting open data, open source, and interoperability as means to support a healthy marketplace for and robust competition in the development and use of AI.

Harmful uses of AI are best addressed through a contextual approach, based on clear principles that can adapt to new developments in how AI is designed and implemented for different use cases based on their risks to society. Such a tailored approach can and should avoid overbroad restrictions on general purpose artificial intelligence (GPAI) and the sharing and use of open source tools.

The European Commission’s original draft proposal did not directly address GPAI, and we agree that this is an appropriate approach. Requirements on GPAI creators are unnecessary because the follow-on developers of high-risk systems will already be covered by this Act. To the extent GPAI creators wish to serve that market, they already have incentives to cooperate with high-risk users to ensure broad compliance.

We also recognize that the EU legislators are currently considering ways to address responsibilities related to GPAI, including open source tools. If that moves forward, we recommend adding language to ensure that GPAI regulations are tailored and proportionate. These regulations should not constrain open source tools, and should focus on ensuring cooperation between GPAI creators and users with whom they have an ongoing relationship.

We believe this is important to get right in part because it’s vital that the capacity to develop and use AI not be concentrated in the hands of a small number of large commercial operators. Lowering barriers to the development and use of AI — such as by supporting the availability of open data and open source tools, including as part of General Purpose AI (GPAI) — can spur innovation in services and lead to major social benefits. Empowering people to share their data among services and enabling them to move between services (ie, through data portability and interoperability) also can play a role in facilitating innovation and inhibiting user lock-in. While it is crucial to ensure commercial viability and incentives for investment, it is also crucial to ensure that this does not come at the expense of robust competition, consumer protection, and the public interest more broadly.

In addition to these topics, we’ve also taken this opportunity to ensure the intersection of copyright and AI is well understood. While copyright’s relationship to AI is not at core to this proposal, it is important that policymakers understand that appropriate limits on copyright are also core to serving the public interest. As we’ve explored in the past, AI generated content should not be copyrightable, and training AI on copyrighted works should not be limited.

The post CC’s Engagement on EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act appeared first on Creative Commons.

During 2021–2022, CC has been celebrating the 20th anniversary of our founding in 2001 and the first release of the CC licenses in 2002, successfully concluding an ambitious fundraising campaign to support programs like Open Culture, Open Climate, and Open Education, and to help ensure CC’s ongoing sustainability.

In November 2022, CC will bring the 20th anniversary celebration to an official close with both online and in-person activities. The CC Global Network and our broader community are at the heart of CC’s work to support better sharing for an open commons, so we are inviting you to be a part of marking this milestone. There are several ways you can join the celebration — pick one or all!

Attend a global CC 20th Anniversary event

San Francisco

Creative Commons invites you to a 20th Anniversary Celebration on Thursday 17 November 2022 at 7pm PST at Terra Gallery, San Francisco*. Join us for an evening of entertainment as we toast to the past and mobilize support for the future! Save your seat >

Virtual

Can’t come to San Francisco? Join a virtual 20th Anniversary Celebration on Tuesday 22 November 2022. Register for 3:00–5:00 UTC and/or 15:00–17:00 UTC >

Make a contribution to support CC

Creative Commons empowers people, institutions, and governments to share content openly to advance knowledge, equity, and creativity for everyone, everywhere. As we look ahead to the next 20 years, our focus is on better sharing, sharing that is contextual, inclusive, just, equitable, reciprocal, and sustainable. As a nonprofit, we rely on contributions from people like you. Make a contribution of any size >

Share a digital artifact showcasing your community’s open contributions

Share a digital artifact that showcases your local community’s past or future work to build the open commons. CC will share accepted artifacts with the world to illustrate the variety of activities and points of view that represent the Creative Commons Global Network and CC community.

Requirements: All artifacts must be shared with CC licenses or CC0 public domain dedications, and demonstrate CC’s better sharing values. Describe your artifact >

CC chapters: Get a grant to mark CC’s 20th Anniversary locally 

Celebrate CC’s anniversary locally in your local CC chapter with a #20CC Anniversary US$500 grant to support a local event, activity, or project to celebrate CC’s past 20 years and our shared future. 

Requirements: Grant projects should have a regional focus, be clearly supported by your local CC chapter, and coordinated by one person acting as lead. See grant program details >

Celebrate on social media

Help get the word out about CC’s 20th Anniversary celebration: Share this post with the #20CCAnniversary hashtag and what CC, better sharing, and the open commons mean to you.

Do you like what other people are sharing? Favorite and reshare #20CCAnniversary posts from other CC community members.

Questions?

Reach out to communications@creativecommons.org, or start a conversation in the #cc-community channel in the CC community slack. 

The post Join Us to Celebrate 20 Years of Creative Commons appeared first on Creative Commons.