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> Sounds awfully cultish This is some high-strung rhetoric. And claiming GDPR outlaws machine learning is just FUD. ML performed on personal data collected wit
by olavk 8y ago
> Sounds awfully cultish
This is some high-strung rhetoric. And claiming GDPR outlaws machine learning is just FUD. ML performed on personal data collected without the user's consent is illegal - but so is doing anything with illegally obtained data. ML is not the issue here, and ML has many other applications besides stealth user profiling.
- downandout 8y agoPlease see https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/how-will-the-gdpr-impact-machine-learning https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/how-will-the-gdpr-impact-machi...
- azernik 8y agoKeep reading: "So why is interpreting the GDPR as placing a ban on ML so misleading? Because there are significant exceptions to the prohibition on the autonomous use of ML—meaning that “prohibition” is way too strong of a word. Once the GDPR goes into effect, data scientists should expect most applications of ML to be achievable—just with a compliance burden they won’t be able to ignore. Now, a bit more detail on the exceptions to the prohibition. The regulation identifies three areas where the use of autonomous decisions is legal: where the processing is necessary for contractual reasons, where it’s separately authorized by another law, or when the data subject has explicitly consented. In practice, it’s that last basis—when a data subject has explicitly allowed their data to be used by a model—that’s likely to be a common way around this prohibition. Managing user consent is not easy. Users can consent to many different types of data processing, and they can also withdraw that consent at anytime, meaning that consent management needs to be granular (allowing many different forms of consent), dynamic (allowing consent to be withdrawn), and user friendly enough that data subjects are actually empowered to understand how their data is being used and to assert control over that use. So, does the GDPR really prohibit the use of ML models? Not completely - but it will, in many of ML’s most powerful use cases, make the deployment and management of these models and their input data increasingly difficult."
- downandout 8y agoI’m aware, I read it and I’m the one that posted the link in this thread. But as I said far above, the odds that most users will explicitly authorize this kind of thing for most applications are nil. Many, many arguments on HN could be avoided if people would just read the comments they are responding to in full.
- azernik 8y agoI did read your comment. You claimed "outlaws most machine learning applications". That is a pretty far cry from "makes it harder to get training data".
- downandout 8y agoHuh? It contains a blanket ban on most forms of machine learning. There is a way around that ban, in the form of special authorization, but the ban exists nonetheless.
- azernik 8y agoYou're conflating "machine learning" with "machine learning based on data you hoovered up indiscriminately from non-consenting third parties". Want to use machine learning to analyze stock price movements? For self-driving cars? You're fine. For an example, looking at kaggle's page of open competitions, only 2 of 19 use datasets that I suspect would run into consent issues (predicting home credit default risk, and predicting demand for classified ads).
- olavk 8y agoI'm starting to think you are not arguing in good faith. This is like saying a ban on using illegally obtained private photos is "a blanket ban on most photos".