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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

I had an idea a couple of weeks ago -- vintage data.

Data that you could guarantee was not generated by AI. Stuff like scans of old microfiche archives, scans of rare but unpopular books found in old boxes and attics. Things like that.

Free startup idea! Go to garage sales and look for boxes of books that maybe have never been digitized.

Just be careful that the entire training set doesn't have the moral values of 100 years ago!

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A bit like trying to find steel made before all of the atomic testing started, I suppose.

You know, the Hathi Trust might not be a bad way to collect that data as a start.

I mean, I'm sure curated datasets that are guaranteed (within some margin of error, probably) to not have been AI-generated will be a valuable commodity, or rather already are. Maybe that would include old reddit posts/comments, not sure how far back you'd need to go. (You would know better than I).

The problem with Reddit posts is that they might be edited. But if you limit yourself to non-edited comments from before 2022 you’d be good.

An old Reddit post is how we ended up with glue on pizza.

But how can you know your curated dataset isn't curated by an AI?

After all the company providing it needs to make more money, and using people is costly.

Yeah, it's the same "low-background / pre-war steel" of training data metaphor that's been floating around for years.

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