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Comment by hankchinaski | Hacker News Reader

this alongside the ban on lab grown meat[0] and the recent proposed ban to use english words in government documents[1] is just proof on how antiquated and backward looking the government is. so glad i left almost 10 years ago.

[EDIT] the privacy regulator is independent from the government but elected by the parliament every 7 years. nevertheless this is a testament on how in general, regardless of political party, the situation is at the moment and for the foreseeable future

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65110744 [1] https://www.open.online/2023/03/31/rampelli-fdi-parole-stran...

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To be fair this as nothing to do with the idiotic lab meat ban. It’s actually not even a ban, just a “ban on collecting data from Italian users without a proper disclosure” with a 2 months deadline to comply.

there are frameworks in place for this already, like GDPR. my comment is not about it being related in any way, it shows how you can see a certain decision making process, that is hostile to anything new

This _is_ the GDPR at work here.

Should it apply to the whole of Europe?

If openai perceives this to be just a problem for one 60M people country, not particularly known for tech enterprises, they may just shrug it off and close off service to Italy and call it a day.

That's exactly what they did. My plus account got refunded and blocked. VPN only allows me to access the free service, so no GPT-4 for me.

So unless other countries are following on and ensuring that tech giants are respecting privacy, this will just hurt Italian citizens and their ability to compete globally.

> Should it apply to the whole of Europe?

That's a political question, I just want to point out that this measure is backed by the GDPR, for better or worse.

Well, only Italy is complaining for now, but it applies to the whole EU.

At least some of the big companies take this seriously, because I've worked in consultants and seen it. It would be completely reasonable for OpenAI to be more private in the paid models - make the weights readonly, encrypt conversations, allow permanent deletion.

For the free models, I'd find it OK to train on the input, but GDPR says users should be able to request data deletion - not sure how viable that is for LLMs, where training frons scratch regularly (without the requested deletions) is probably expensive as fuck.

The internet has been a wild west with lots of privacy abuse, it's good to see some rules and enforcement!

Fwiw I used to work for large ML models for a well know big Ads company and we did indeed made sure to retain all the models on all historical logs within a time bound after users have requested for their data to be deleted. This predated GDPR.

It was expensive but we had to retrain models frequently anyway because of other reasons so this just added a more strict cadence and time bound checks but didn't really inflate costs dramatically

AFAIK training on API is opt-in, training on the consumer interface is opt out. And one must also say that there are enough levers in the GDPR to argue a legal basis for processing PII, not the least of which is the catch all "legitimate interest". But you need to implement appropriate controls, otherwise data privacy regulators will complain.

I don't see the connection with the government on this one.

Garante della privacy is an independent office, and there were very simple motivators behind this choice: - illegal or improper use of personal data - nothing to protect children

That's it. Once they "fix it", there can't be so much that can be done on this.

After the TikTok case etc., I believe countries are getting a little bit ahead on such topics, before something small becomes the next Facebook and it's basically impossible to stop.

Well, the parliament is part of the government.

In some countries, the word "Government" is used to refer to the Executive power, not including the Legislative and Executive branches of the State.

I’m not Italian but if it’s a regulator that tells what you can or cannot do, then it’s government.

It's not necessarily true.

The current president of garante of privacy was chosen in 2020, while the current government has been running for less than a year.

I mean conceptually. If they can tell you what you can or cannot do, they’re government because they’re literally governing you.

You can keep your insects and lab meat for yourself. I think they are doing a great job banning lab meat and insects flour... If they really did. Because last time I checked I read they were just displaying insects flour on a special shelf, not a ban.

It is neither "antiquated" nor "idiotic", I value good, tasty and healthy food, in that regards I think Italians and French are alike.

Ahhh, yes, you have your preference, so you support regulations limiting the freedom of those like me who have a different one, rather than allowing the market to serve both segments.

Meanwhile I will keep eating Italian Ferrero Kinder Schoko Bons, that always contained insects

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