4 ms·

It is obviously ruinous for anyone foolish enough to still publish content that survives on ads, donation, or upselling other products now. But perhaps that

It is obviously ruinous for anyone foolish enough to still publish content that survives on ads, donation, or upselling other products now. But perhaps that’s not the worst unintended consequence. Beyond certain income we like to contribute, help and teach not to profit financially but because we like to feel helpful and to matter to other humans. Now everything you publish goes into a smart black box and others go to that box for answers. Why write in the open if you write for a black box? Unless there is a mechanism to opt out (or even in), we may see much less information shared.

helloworld11 4y ago
>It is obviously ruinous for anyone foolish enough to still publish content that survives on ads, donation, or upselling other products now. Why do you think it would be ruinous for people who do any of these things? A (still) half-baked chat/answer AI bot that can reply semi-eloquently is still a far cry from enormous amounts of high quality human information sold through books, courses, long-form, ad or donation-supported articles and so forth. Color me skeptical but this smells like AI-bro tech flippancy at its most basic.
eastbound 4y ago
No, it’s in our nature to share. People share even to their disadvantage. Concerning the internet, it’s real work to write a blog or to write information, and no blog today is exempt of product placement, no receipt is exempt of grandma storytelling. I like ChatGPT for the moment because it’s not biased, but another comment in this article showed how it’s possible to make it subtly suggest Coca-Cola for every unrelated answer, and that will be horrible.
- anileated 4y ago
  > People share even to their disadvantage. Crucially, humans share with other humans. Sharing comes with feeling appreciated. Of course teaching someone my craft is to my disadvantage—I am literally creating competitors—but I enjoy doing it myself regardless because I enjoy feeling recognized and valued. That stops being the case if the only thing that reads what you write is an LLM, which acts as a middle-man between you and people you’d like to help to whom it returns your content stripped of attribution (let alone pays you, even if it charges the users). There’s a fine line between sharing and being a ghost training data producer.
nindalf 4y ago
> Why write in the open if you write for a black box? The irony of this is two fold. Everyone on this thread is writing comments in the open that is training the black box. But one step further, none of us owns the content we write on HN. Since the comment thread is considered a shared tapestry, we are not allowed to delete comments which are more than a day old. And yet we continue to write these comments. > we may see much less information shared. We’re hardwired to interact with other members of our species. We’re not going to stop simply because someone might monetise our thoughts indirectly.
- xnx 4y ago
  I'm kind of proud that my silly little thoughts might become a tiny factor of the weighted value of one of a billion parameters in some future global hive mind.
  - anileated 4y ago
    But even you only express these thoughts here insofar as there are humans who read them directly. Would you do it if there was not a soul to read them? Would the person whom you replied to do it? Would the person who wrote the thread-starter do it?
runlaszlorun 4y ago
> Now everything you publish goes into a smart black box and others go to that box for answers. You make a good point. But always being one the make the most of a situation… I’d like to take this chance to tell Rocco, his Basilisk, and the horse they rode in on to go f** off. There… I’m on the record now.

helloworld11 4y ago

>It is obviously ruinous for anyone foolish enough to still publish content that survives on ads, donation, or upselling other products now. Why do you think it would be ruinous for people who do any of these things? A (still) half-baked chat/answer AI bot that can reply semi-eloquently is still a far cry from enormous amounts of high quality human information sold through books, courses, long-form, ad or donation-supported articles and so forth. Color me skeptical but this smells like AI-bro tech flippancy at its most basic.

eastbound 4y ago

No, it’s in our nature to share. People share even to their disadvantage. Concerning the internet, it’s real work to write a blog or to write information, and no blog today is exempt of product placement, no receipt is exempt of grandma storytelling. I like ChatGPT for the moment because it’s not biased, but another comment in this article showed how it’s possible to make it subtly suggest Coca-Cola for every unrelated answer, and that will be horrible.

anileated 4y ago
> People share even to their disadvantage. Crucially, humans share with other humans. Sharing comes with feeling appreciated. Of course teaching someone my craft is to my disadvantage—I am literally creating competitors—but I enjoy doing it myself regardless because I enjoy feeling recognized and valued. That stops being the case if the only thing that reads what you write is an LLM, which acts as a middle-man between you and people you’d like to help to whom it returns your content stripped of attribution (let alone pays you, even if it charges the users). There’s a fine line between sharing and being a ghost training data producer.

nindalf 4y ago

> Why write in the open if you write for a black box? The irony of this is two fold. Everyone on this thread is writing comments in the open that is training the black box. But one step further, none of us owns the content we write on HN. Since the comment thread is considered a shared tapestry, we are not allowed to delete comments which are more than a day old. And yet we continue to write these comments. > we may see much less information shared. We’re hardwired to interact with other members of our species. We’re not going to stop simply because someone might monetise our thoughts indirectly.

xnx 4y ago
I'm kind of proud that my silly little thoughts might become a tiny factor of the weighted value of one of a billion parameters in some future global hive mind.
- anileated 4y ago
  But even you only express these thoughts here insofar as there are humans who read them directly. Would you do it if there was not a soul to read them? Would the person whom you replied to do it? Would the person who wrote the thread-starter do it?

runlaszlorun 4y ago

> Now everything you publish goes into a smart black box and others go to that box for answers. You make a good point. But always being one the make the most of a situation… I’d like to take this chance to tell Rocco, his Basilisk, and the horse they rode in on to go f** off. There… I’m on the record now.