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>> This is not to endorse the European position - which is foolish, regressive and short sighted Potentially, but I’m glad somebody is taking a minute to quest

>> This is not to endorse the European position - which is foolish, regressive and short sighted Potentially, but I’m glad somebody is taking a minute to question whether or not a handful of tech companies have the right to consume everyone’s information, build their entire business with it and then sell that back to the people whose data they wouldn’t have existed without in the first place.

hunglee2 4y ago
yes I agree that the query is not a bad thing. However, what I think is a bad thing is if the query ends up with a ban (which I think it will) and prevents the obvious value of this new class of technology for the rest of humanity
berkle4455 4y ago
> have the right to consume everyone’s information, build their entire business with it and then sell that back to the people That’s quite literally what google has done for 25 years, just with advertising for monetization.
- medvezhenok 4y ago
  Yes, and arguably Google has been way under-regulated for the externalities they caused to the system (one example is having adversarial bidding wars for companies over their own keywords, which is simply a rentier tax on Google advertising) I think we're finally coming around on that (I think a lot of regulators were slow on antitrust in the internet space because the harm to the consumer/environment is not immediately obvious - i.e. it's mostly non-monetary externalities) Same as America as a whole and offshoring to reduce labor cost. The externalities are slow but they're clearly there in the increasing polarization and the growth of the precariat.
- basisword 4y ago
  It’s not. Indexing and linking to primary sources is very different to consuming all of those primary sources and spitting it back without attribution. Google entered this area a bit with the info boxes they display alongside results but it’s a very different proposition from AI.
  - Avicebron 4y ago
    This is an interesting point, if someone develops a card catalogue for a library, they aren't providing a market substitute for each one of those books. As far as I know, "fair use" law has to account whether or not the end product can serve as a substitute for the original work.
    - nradov 4y ago
      Fair use copyright law in the US allows for selling summaries of books, and those can serve as a substitute for the original work in many cases. Many students use Cliff Notes to get through their literature courses without ever doing the assigned reading. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature
- qgin 4y ago
  Except it was considered by most as a win-win situation. Google consumed it for the purpose of directing people to the original content (except for Google’s recent foray into info cards and quick answers within search). The info in the LLM doesn’t reference back to the source. There may be 1000 sources for a given concept embedded in the model anyhow.
- Angostura 4y ago
  And that's what no-robots was for
ahmedbaracat 4y ago
Exactly that. I wrote about the problem and a potential solution here for the interested https://barac.at/essays/request-for-funding-a-business-experiment-in-data-dignity https://barac.at/essays/request-for-funding-a-business-exper...
FpUser 4y ago
This logic applies to nearly everything. People invent things and then sell it but the invention is not possible if they did not rely on the information they often have for free.
celestialcheese 4y ago
This is so backwards. If you limit scraping and fair use, it further entrenches the power of the tech and content giants. If you're upset about big tech's power and influence, you should be cheering on the free use of publicly available information, as it has the best shot at unseating that power.
- rout39574 4y ago
  I'm not sure it's "unseating". Moving from one lobe of enclosed corporate power to another doesn't help. I think this serves more to enclose that which was free, than to liberate what was closed.
  - celestialcheese 4y ago
    >I think this serves more to enclose that which was free, than to liberate what was closed. What has been closed? Every day there's new foundational models being released. It's exhausting trying to keep up with the pace of change - Alpaca, Vicuna, LLaMA, etc. I'd be shocked if there wasn't a truly open source foundational model with performance equivalent to OpenAI's GPT-4 by the end of the year. Any move to limit fair-use and scraping of publicly available information through copyright laws, no matter how good of a reason it is, gives more power to the biggest companies.
- digging 4y ago
  > If you limit scraping and fair use, it further entrenches the power of the tech and content giants. Explain?
  - celestialcheese 4y ago
    Fair use has been a thorn in the side of content and publishing giants for a long time as it allows for upstarts to create derivative works and databases without violating the original copyright. If you block fair-use and scraping, those that hold the most data and copyrights (the largest companies) will be the only ones able to create quality foundational models, thus holding the keys and further entrenching their power.
williamcotton 4y ago
Luckily the US courts will not agree with their foolish, regressive and short-sighted European counterparts.
coliveira 4y ago
This is not the first time. Google built a trillion dollar business based on taking content created by people over the internet and monetizing it without prior consent of the creators. It was the largest information heist in the history of mankind. They also tried to do the same with the book industry, fortunately publishers had money to pay for lawsuits against Google.
- fithisux 4y ago
  Exactly
csomar 4y ago
Based on that, anyone who has read something on the Internet can no longer start a business? > handful of tech companies What about the Open Source models? What prevents the rest of the companies to innovate here?
- basisword 4y ago
  I find any comparison between a human reading something and a model owned by a private company ingesting all the worlds information absolutely ridiculous.
bostonsre 4y ago
It's a more advanced google search. They may not like the fact that it was built on publicly available data but pandoras box has been opened for the world and European companies will become less competitive without this valuable tool in all of their companies' tool boxes.
ptrhvns 4y ago
"It was beautiful. We were selling rich women their own fat asses back to them." -- Fight Club

hunglee2 4y ago

yes I agree that the query is not a bad thing. However, what I think is a bad thing is if the query ends up with a ban (which I think it will) and prevents the obvious value of this new class of technology for the rest of humanity

berkle4455 4y ago

> have the right to consume everyone’s information, build their entire business with it and then sell that back to the people That’s quite literally what google has done for 25 years, just with advertising for monetization.

medvezhenok 4y ago
Yes, and arguably Google has been way under-regulated for the externalities they caused to the system (one example is having adversarial bidding wars for companies over their own keywords, which is simply a rentier tax on Google advertising) I think we're finally coming around on that (I think a lot of regulators were slow on antitrust in the internet space because the harm to the consumer/environment is not immediately obvious - i.e. it's mostly non-monetary externalities) Same as America as a whole and offshoring to reduce labor cost. The externalities are slow but they're clearly there in the increasing polarization and the growth of the precariat.
basisword 4y ago
It’s not. Indexing and linking to primary sources is very different to consuming all of those primary sources and spitting it back without attribution. Google entered this area a bit with the info boxes they display alongside results but it’s a very different proposition from AI.
- Avicebron 4y ago
  This is an interesting point, if someone develops a card catalogue for a library, they aren't providing a market substitute for each one of those books. As far as I know, "fair use" law has to account whether or not the end product can serve as a substitute for the original work.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Fair use copyright law in the US allows for selling summaries of books, and those can serve as a substitute for the original work in many cases. Many students use Cliff Notes to get through their literature courses without ever doing the assigned reading. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature
qgin 4y ago
Except it was considered by most as a win-win situation. Google consumed it for the purpose of directing people to the original content (except for Google’s recent foray into info cards and quick answers within search). The info in the LLM doesn’t reference back to the source. There may be 1000 sources for a given concept embedded in the model anyhow.
Angostura 4y ago
And that's what no-robots was for

ahmedbaracat 4y ago

Exactly that. I wrote about the problem and a potential solution here for the interested https://barac.at/essays/request-for-funding-a-business-experiment-in-data-dignity https://barac.at/essays/request-for-funding-a-business-exper...

FpUser 4y ago

This logic applies to nearly everything. People invent things and then sell it but the invention is not possible if they did not rely on the information they often have for free.

celestialcheese 4y ago

This is so backwards. If you limit scraping and fair use, it further entrenches the power of the tech and content giants. If you're upset about big tech's power and influence, you should be cheering on the free use of publicly available information, as it has the best shot at unseating that power.

rout39574 4y ago
I'm not sure it's "unseating". Moving from one lobe of enclosed corporate power to another doesn't help. I think this serves more to enclose that which was free, than to liberate what was closed.
- celestialcheese 4y ago
  >I think this serves more to enclose that which was free, than to liberate what was closed. What has been closed? Every day there's new foundational models being released. It's exhausting trying to keep up with the pace of change - Alpaca, Vicuna, LLaMA, etc. I'd be shocked if there wasn't a truly open source foundational model with performance equivalent to OpenAI's GPT-4 by the end of the year. Any move to limit fair-use and scraping of publicly available information through copyright laws, no matter how good of a reason it is, gives more power to the biggest companies.
digging 4y ago
> If you limit scraping and fair use, it further entrenches the power of the tech and content giants. Explain?
- celestialcheese 4y ago
  Fair use has been a thorn in the side of content and publishing giants for a long time as it allows for upstarts to create derivative works and databases without violating the original copyright. If you block fair-use and scraping, those that hold the most data and copyrights (the largest companies) will be the only ones able to create quality foundational models, thus holding the keys and further entrenching their power.

williamcotton 4y ago

Luckily the US courts will not agree with their foolish, regressive and short-sighted European counterparts.

coliveira 4y ago

This is not the first time. Google built a trillion dollar business based on taking content created by people over the internet and monetizing it without prior consent of the creators. It was the largest information heist in the history of mankind. They also tried to do the same with the book industry, fortunately publishers had money to pay for lawsuits against Google.

fithisux 4y ago
Exactly

csomar 4y ago

Based on that, anyone who has read something on the Internet can no longer start a business? > handful of tech companies What about the Open Source models? What prevents the rest of the companies to innovate here?

basisword 4y ago
I find any comparison between a human reading something and a model owned by a private company ingesting all the worlds information absolutely ridiculous.

bostonsre 4y ago

It's a more advanced google search. They may not like the fact that it was built on publicly available data but pandoras box has been opened for the world and European companies will become less competitive without this valuable tool in all of their companies' tool boxes.

ptrhvns 4y ago

"It was beautiful. We were selling rich women their own fat asses back to them." -- Fight Club