If I read copyrighted material and then write my own story using information in what I read is that infringement?

It depends. If you wrote the same story, but with just the names of characters and places changed, then yes. In general, it depends on how similar your story is to the original.

Do clif notes have to pay for the rights to publish notes on other authors books?

No. Their notes were written by them and so are copyrighted by them. If they give excerpts, that falls under fair use. They can't quote the entire book, however, even if they give notes on every paragraph.

Isn't this is what ChatGPT does?

There are two parts to this: whether the copy of what CharGPT was trained on was a legally obtained copy in the first place and whether ChatGPT can be induced to regurgitate verbatim copies. The NYT demonstrated that, with the right prompting, ChatGPT can be induced to regurgitate copies of NYT articles.

Once I learn about something I am able to tell people what I have learned. Am I breaking the law if I tell my grandkids about a story I read.

It depends how you tell them. If you give, for example, highlights, then no. If you write down a copy and give them the copy, then yes. Also note that, assuming you either paid for your copy of the book or you borrowed it from a library, then the copy you used was a legally authorized copy to begin with.

I just don't see a lot of difference between asking an AI a question and having it tell me what it has learned than asking a human and having them tell me what they learned assuming they were trained on the same materials.

In many cases, ChatGPT used unauthorized copies to begin with. At that point, they're already guilty of copyright infringement. If the book the human read was an unauthorized copy, then that human is guilty of copyright infringement. Whether they tell you anything is irrelevant: they're already guilty.

Assuming both legally obtained the info they were trained on.

Bingo.

ChatGPT doesn't copy most works

It copies every work verbatim. It has to have a copy in the first place to train from. If it made its copy from an unauthorized copy to begin with, then it's already guilty of copyright infringement. At this point, the training is irrelevant.

For example, if its web crawler came upon an unauthorized PDF of a book that somebody uploaded to some web site, then the uploader and every downloader has committed copyright infringement. What they do with the copies is irrelevant: they're already guilty.

I don't believe the government has the right to ban me from harming myself in their eyes.

If you signed a contract stating that you agreed either to forgo any treatments for health issues arising from your choice to smoke or agreed to pay for all such treatments out of your own pocket, then fine. But, and especially if you live in a country with socialized medicine, then everyone else is paying for your treatment. So to minimize everyone's expenses for your completely avoidable health issues, the government is doing what it's doing. And they haven't stopped you from harming yourself. They just put images and words on the package.

What is the point?

This is actually a really good idea and I can’t believe nobody thought of it before.

I often maximize Windows, but I've never wanted full-screen windows. It's pretty annoying that simply clicking the green button full-screens; to maximize, it's option-click.

Quick-to-anger, quick-to-use profanity are the first recourse of the small-minded.

I get not having to deal with carrying sufficient cash and restocking at ATMs not dealing with coins. Like I said: cash and coins are annoying.

I've been buying everything on credit since I got a credit card 35+ years ago. I also always pay off the bill in full. For me, it's an interest-free loan for approximately a month. Historically, dealing with cash and coins was just annoying. Now that I can pay with my phone (linked to my credit card), paying with credit is even easier.

BNPL is an unfortunate name since, technically, credit cards are also buy-now-pay-later. But BNPL is a different kind of credit, i.e., the terms, repayment schedule, and interest are different than credit cards.

Except there's no ROI for any private entity to fund a Mars mission. Science is done for its own sake, not ROI.

People used to manage to unfold paper maps and refer to them while driving, back in the 1970's and earlier, without wrecking into people, too.

Sure, but that doesn't mean there were zero accidents caused by it. For those that were, they fell under the umbrella law of distracted driving where the source of the distraction is irrelevant.

The anti-cellphone laws aren't really new laws. They just explicitly call out one specific source of distraction to make convictions easier, e.g., a cop can see you holding a phone whereas they can't see an unfolded map in your lap or on the passenger seat. (If you hit someone or were pulled over and had any sense, you'd fold up the map and put it away before the cop could see it.) For the phone, just holding it is a crime rather than trying to prove you were actually distracted. Whether you were or not is irrelevant, i.e., easier conviction.

No, because it's pointless, both then and now. Then, we were in a pissing contest with the Soviets for space supremacy. Now, there's not even that.

I can't speak for the OP, but the big difference for the moon is that it's much closer, so much less radiation exposure, much less bone loss due to zero gravity, etc. Plus remote rover technology wasn't possible in the '60s. Now that we have rovers, it's just silly to send humans and have to engineer life-support systems and the means for a return trip. Rovers mean the trip is one-way.

My fifth speed is an overdrive.

Everyone keeps complaining that everything is too expensive, but almost no one is buying the low cost options anymore.