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Comment by hansonkd | Hacker News Reader

In the soup story the villagers freely gave up their carrots and onions and the travelers didn't give any guarantees that they wouldn't be consumed.

In the AI analogy, it is a bit closer in my mind if the travelers would say "Don't worry your onions and carrots and garnishes won't be consumed by us! Put them in the pot and we will strain them out, they are still yours to keep!"

We, the villagers, are dumping our data into the AI soup with a promise that it won't be used when we are using the API or check a little "private mode" box.

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The analogy breaks down because physical property and intellectual property are different. When we input creative works into training sets, we do not withhold those works from someone else! Digital copies are different than scarce resources. *

Also, all the AI ToS I've read have stated they will use my inputs to improve their services. I haven't seen an AI service state they won't use my inputs.

* Against Intellectual Property is a good book that explores this idea https://cdn.mises.org/15_2_1.pdf

Huh. I wouldn't have expected free software and libertarianism to converge on this one.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html

It's either a horseshoe or a bipartisan line

The analogy is perfectly apt. When an AI is trained on work that you've produced, it steals your effort - your work and effort and sweat has been taken by the model and its users.

...unless you think that your employer should be able to withhold wages from you because there's no "physical property" that you've provided to them.

And to top it all off, they're charging us for the soup, and it's getting more expensive every time we give them another ingredient.

It would be more accurate to imagine a version of the tale where the stone soup chef rifles through people's houses to collect ingredients without permission (if they were against it surely they would've opted out of his services and obtained guard dogs?), and then opened a stand to sell the soup in the town square at premium prices while tainting the wares of his fellow vendors with his leftover slop.

Yes! This nuance captures more of today's reality -- esp. the "tainting", which others have also noted (e.g. Emily Bender's "Information Oil Spill")

Literally all “promises” mean nothing unless backed up by force.

The government was a nice backplane to ensure that, but now that its decisions are unreliable, all interactions with other parties are under these natural law rules.

I don’t think this being AI really changes the deal given that starting situation

A frequent trope, but not universally true.

Many social conventions are less implemented by force than by withdrawal of cooperation. That's an aggression, but of a very mild formf, but regardless one which is remarkably effective without requiring an offensive stance or the risks concomitant to same.

Psh, the companies are freely giving up the data. It is unmentioned where the villagers got the carrot initially, maybe they also stole it from the library or promised their users the carrot would not be eaten. Lol

In the folk tale, the villagers give stuff they own, willingly. The soup chefs do not go sneakily pick stuff up.

Oh but the villagers were kind of fooled into giving.

OK, but it benefits everyone. No mention of soup costing money later.

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