Comment by tailspin2019 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tailspin2019 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Privacy right is an integral part of the freedom of speech

I completely agree with you, but as a ChatGPT user I have to admit my fault in this too.

I have always been annoyed by what I saw as shameless breaches of copyright of thousands of authors (and other individuals) in the training of these LLMs, and I've been wary of the data security/confidentiality of these tools from the start too - and not for no reason. Yet I find ChatGPT et al so utterly compelling and useful, that I poured my personal data[0] into these tools anyway.

I've always felt conflicted about this, but the utility just about outweighed my privacy and copyright concerns. So as angry as I am about this situation, I also have to accept some of the blame too. I knew this (or other leaks or unsanctioned use of my data) was possible down the line.

But it's a wake up call. I've done nothing with these tools which is even slightly nefarious, but I am today deleting all my historical data (not just from ChatGPT[1] but other hosted AI tools) and will completely reassess my approach of using them - likely with an acceleration of my plans to move to using local models as much as I can.

[0] I do heavily redact my data that goes into hosted LLMs, but there's still more private data in there about me than I'd like.

[1] Which I know is very much a "after the horse has bolted" situation...

Keeping in mind that the purpose of IP law is to promote human progress, it's hard to see how legacy copyright interests should win a fight with AI training and development.

100 years from now, nobody will GAF about the New York Times.

IP law was to promote human progress by giving financial incentive to create this IP knowing it was protected, and you could make money off it.

We will all make a lot more money and a lot more progress by storing, organizing, presenting, and processing knowledge as effectively as possible.

Copyright is not a natural right by any measure; it's something we pulled out of our asses a couple hundred years ago in response to a need that existed at the time. To the extent copyright interferes with progress, as it appears to have sworn to do, it has to go.

Sorry. Don't shoot the messenger.

Why would you expect NYT or any other news organization to report accurate data to feed into your AI models if they can't make any money off of it?

It's not just about profits, it's about paying reporters to do honest work and not cut corners in their reporting and data collection.

If you think the data is valuable, then you should be prepared to pay the people who collect it, same as you pay for the service that collates it (ChatGPT)

I wish I knew what the eventual business model will look like, but I don't. A potential guess might be to consider what MSNBC was, or was supposed to be -- a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC network news, where the idea was to take advantage of the emerging WWW to get a head start on everyone else. The pie-in-the-sky synergies that were promised never materialized, so the outcome just amounted to a new name for an old-media player. As it turned out, the business of gathering and delivering news and editorial content didn't change much at all. It just migrated from paper and screens to, well, screens.

Now, as you point out, companies like OpenAI have a problem, and so do the rest of us. Fair compensation for journalists and editors requires attribution before anything else can even be negotiated, and AI literally transforms its input into something that is usually (but obviously not always) untraceable. For the big AI players, the solution to that problem might involve starting or acquiring news and content networks of their own. Synergies that Microsoft and NBC were hoping might materialize could actually be feasible now.

So to answer your question, maybe ChatGPT will end up paying journalists directly.

Again, I don't know how plausible that kind of scenario might turn out to be. But I am absolutely certain that countries that allow their legacy rightsholders to impede progress in AI are going to be outcompeted by those with less to lose.

>We will all make a lot more money and a lot more progress by storing, organizing, presenting, and processing knowledge as effectively as possible.

That's a huge assumption in the first place. An even bigger leap to tie that general proposition to what's happening here.

Copyright is the thing that allows software companies to sell their products and make money. It’s not just about “knowledge”.

I sometimes wonder if people commenting on this topic on HN really understand how fundamental copyright as a concept is to the entire tech industry. And indeed even to capitalism itself.

But the main point is the human progress here. If there is an obvious case where it seriously gets in the way of human progress, then thats a problem and I hope we can correct it through any means necessary.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com