>> ... we've jumped to the conclusion backpropagation in neural networks should be legally treated the same as human learning.
replyI agree. However, the reverse is also likely true, i.e., it cannot currently be denied that learning in humans is different from learning in artificial neural networks from the point of view of production of works that mix ideas/memes from several works processed/read. Surely, as the article says, copyright law talks exclusively about humans, not machines, not animals.
I understand the article - the point about 'learning' is that if the model and its outputs are a derivative works then the copyright belongs to the human creators of the works it was trained on.
replyEdit*: Or perhaps put more pseudo legally that the created works infringe on the copyrights of the original human creators.
The part I agree to is that copyright law calls out humans specifically as the potential owners of copyright. So what you suggest seems to be the only possibility out. Calling out humans could imply that when a human reads a thousand books and then writes something basis the same but which is not a substantial copy of anything explicitly read, that human owns the copyright to the text written. Whereas, if an artificial neural network does the same (hypothetically writing the same text), it would not.
replyThe above does not follow from, imply or conclude anything about learning in artificial neural networks and humans being similar or dissimilar.