7 ms·

I think that is a somewhat narrow view. Maybe to make the contrast sharper: Why should I contribute any information just so that it immediately gets monetized b

I think that is a somewhat narrow view. Maybe to make the contrast sharper: Why should I contribute any information just so that it immediately gets monetized by a handful of LLM firms? The new situation isn't the same as search as that wasn't there to hide information sources or to immediately convert information into useful things (texts, guides, etc.).

TeMPOraL 3y ago
> Why should I contribute any information just so that it immediately gets monetized by a handful of LLM firms? If this matters to you, then you shouldn't. But to flip this around: why should you care? Unless you're doing some unique work targeting a global audience, the point when LLM gets trained on what you created is way outside space you'd normally care about. Trying to capture all the value your work generates does not lead to a good world. Or maybe it's me who isn't profit-minded enough, but e.g. a lot of what I wrote on-line, including blog articles and commentary on Reddit and HN, has been used by search engines for free for a long time (over a decade, in some cases), and now is (most likely) part of the training corpora for LLMs. But I never believed, and still don't believe, that I'm entitled to some share of the gains LLMs (or search engines) make.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  This isn't so much about compensation, but why should I help enrich a large, even more direct rent seeker? Valuable information in a way is becoming more valuable for the LLM provider, so I would expect a drop in high value information in the public domain.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Perhaps there will be a drop in high value information in the public domain, but right now, I can't exactly see LLMs impacting the incentives for creation and sharing of that information. I don't see how LLMs would make someone go "oh well, AI is here, I might as well stop providing people with no-strings-attached high quality information", if the existence of search engines didn't make them stop already.
    - dageshi 3y ago
      For years people have been making travel blogs based on where they've visited and the practical information they've discovered, like experiences of visiting attractions or good places to stay in cities or how they got from one place to another. They monetised with ads and affiliate links so they could travel more based on that income. In LLM land, they get no monetisation any more because nobody visits their sites, instead the LLM just regurgitates the answers they found. The search engines actively supported these authors, by sending them people who needed the answers they had. So in LLM land this information goes away because the feedback loop of the traveller creating information which earns them money to continue travelling goes away. A LOT of the useful information on the web was built on similar feedback loops and they go away in LLM land.
      - TeMPOraL 3y ago
        > They monetised with ads and affiliate links I consider this to be a problem on its own, but it's not relevant here because: > In LLM land, they get no monetisation any more because nobody visits their sites, instead the LLM just regurgitates the answers they found. That can't possibly be true, because if it were, there wouldn't be any travel blogs anymore today. All that travel spam has been made redundant approximately around the time Flickr was created, and every interesting location ever has been photographed from every interesting angle in a way neither me, nor you, nor your favorite travel blogger could ever hope to match. All the information they post has also been posted many times over by travel bloggers that came before. The point being: travel information and photography is worthless commodity these days. Travel bloggers (or Instagrammers, or whatever) are not in the business of selling information. They're selling dreams and personal experiences. The photos and information are necessary as delivery vector ("social object"), but by themselves are worthless and not the point. The point is entertainment, and ideally getting you trapped in a parasocial relationship with the travel blogger/grammer, which gives them a recurring revenue stream. > In LLM land, they get no monetisation any more because nobody visits their sites, instead the LLM just regurgitates the answers they found. It's the same model as with most other ad-monetized social media publishing. People will keep visiting them for the same reason they visit them now, and for the same reason they have their favorite youtubers and tiktokers. LLMs and other generative models don't change anything here, at least not short-to-mid-term, because they can't convincingly replicate human connection and keep it up for long. (Also, I personally don't buy that travel instagrammers can actually sustain their travel lifestyle through ads and affiliate marketing and sponsorship deals. I suspect most are funded in some way, whether by family wealth or by services performed while traveling around.) > The search engines actively supported these authors, by sending them people who needed the answers they had. (...) A LOT of the useful information on the web was built on similar feedback loops and they go away in LLM land. Hard disagree. The only feedback loop this created in practice is the one that displaces quality information from the Internet - the combination of SEO and ad-based monetization means the most scummy players are the ones with most money to stalk every conceivable search query. The results speak for themselves: making a Google query for pretty much any topic of interest to general population will give you only content marketing sites - results that carry negative knowledge, as in if you waste your time reading them, you'll come more misinformed about the topic than you were before. If LLMs make all that go away, I'm 100% for it. As for "A LOT of the useful information" - nope, can't think of a single case where ad/affiliate-supported site was a good information source, vs. just displacing a better free source.
- __loam 3y ago
  A lot of people justifiably care because making that information is their livelihood. Your entitlement to the labor of others is gross.
  - selestify 3y ago
    Then perhaps they should find other means of livelihood, instead of preventing the rest of the world from making full use of the information and technology available to it.
    - dageshi 3y ago
      They will and less information will be put into places that are freely accessible. If it's put anywhere at all it'll be put behind login only/paywalled/unscrapable places that LLM's can't access.
      - TeMPOraL 3y ago
        Why would they suddenly paywall information if they weren't already? The way I see it, there are roughly three groups of information providers: 1. Those who do it pro bono - because they feel like its a worthwhile thing to do, or because they believe in by "pay it forward", or otherwise because they haven't even thought that what they share is worth trying to extract rent from. 2. Those who do it "for free", as a way to lure people to where they can expose them to ads, affiliate marketing, upsells, or other such schemes - making money by being predators using information as bait. 3. Those who just put up a paywall, being up front that they're selling information, not giving it away. (There's also a weird "in-between" group of publishers that are almost like 1., except they're being funded out of marketing budgets of companies that figure providing quality information is good advertising.) LLMs don't change anything for group #1. They may compete with group #3, but that's business as usual, not anything transformative. The group that's directly affected is #2, which also happens to be the group that produces all the garbage on the Internet, so I'm actually very happy to see them forced to find a more useful way of making money. Since group #2 produces "information" that's arguably negative knowledge on the net, it's likely to improve the amount of quality information you'll be able to find on-line.

TeMPOraL 3y ago

> Why should I contribute any information just so that it immediately gets monetized by a handful of LLM firms? If this matters to you, then you shouldn't. But to flip this around: why should you care? Unless you're doing some unique work targeting a global audience, the point when LLM gets trained on what you created is way outside space you'd normally care about. Trying to capture all the value your work generates does not lead to a good world. Or maybe it's me who isn't profit-minded enough, but e.g. a lot of what I wrote on-line, including blog articles and commentary on Reddit and HN, has been used by search engines for free for a long time (over a decade, in some cases), and now is (most likely) part of the training corpora for LLMs. But I never believed, and still don't believe, that I'm entitled to some share of the gains LLMs (or search engines) make.

RandomLensman 3y ago
This isn't so much about compensation, but why should I help enrich a large, even more direct rent seeker? Valuable information in a way is becoming more valuable for the LLM provider, so I would expect a drop in high value information in the public domain.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Perhaps there will be a drop in high value information in the public domain, but right now, I can't exactly see LLMs impacting the incentives for creation and sharing of that information. I don't see how LLMs would make someone go "oh well, AI is here, I might as well stop providing people with no-strings-attached high quality information", if the existence of search engines didn't make them stop already.
  - dageshi 3y ago
    For years people have been making travel blogs based on where they've visited and the practical information they've discovered, like experiences of visiting attractions or good places to stay in cities or how they got from one place to another. They monetised with ads and affiliate links so they could travel more based on that income. In LLM land, they get no monetisation any more because nobody visits their sites, instead the LLM just regurgitates the answers they found. The search engines actively supported these authors, by sending them people who needed the answers they had. So in LLM land this information goes away because the feedback loop of the traveller creating information which earns them money to continue travelling goes away. A LOT of the useful information on the web was built on similar feedback loops and they go away in LLM land.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      > They monetised with ads and affiliate links I consider this to be a problem on its own, but it's not relevant here because: > In LLM land, they get no monetisation any more because nobody visits their sites, instead the LLM just regurgitates the answers they found. That can't possibly be true, because if it were, there wouldn't be any travel blogs anymore today. All that travel spam has been made redundant approximately around the time Flickr was created, and every interesting location ever has been photographed from every interesting angle in a way neither me, nor you, nor your favorite travel blogger could ever hope to match. All the information they post has also been posted many times over by travel bloggers that came before. The point being: travel information and photography is worthless commodity these days. Travel bloggers (or Instagrammers, or whatever) are not in the business of selling information. They're selling dreams and personal experiences. The photos and information are necessary as delivery vector ("social object"), but by themselves are worthless and not the point. The point is entertainment, and ideally getting you trapped in a parasocial relationship with the travel blogger/grammer, which gives them a recurring revenue stream. > In LLM land, they get no monetisation any more because nobody visits their sites, instead the LLM just regurgitates the answers they found. It's the same model as with most other ad-monetized social media publishing. People will keep visiting them for the same reason they visit them now, and for the same reason they have their favorite youtubers and tiktokers. LLMs and other generative models don't change anything here, at least not short-to-mid-term, because they can't convincingly replicate human connection and keep it up for long. (Also, I personally don't buy that travel instagrammers can actually sustain their travel lifestyle through ads and affiliate marketing and sponsorship deals. I suspect most are funded in some way, whether by family wealth or by services performed while traveling around.) > The search engines actively supported these authors, by sending them people who needed the answers they had. (...) A LOT of the useful information on the web was built on similar feedback loops and they go away in LLM land. Hard disagree. The only feedback loop this created in practice is the one that displaces quality information from the Internet - the combination of SEO and ad-based monetization means the most scummy players are the ones with most money to stalk every conceivable search query. The results speak for themselves: making a Google query for pretty much any topic of interest to general population will give you only content marketing sites - results that carry negative knowledge, as in if you waste your time reading them, you'll come more misinformed about the topic than you were before. If LLMs make all that go away, I'm 100% for it. As for "A LOT of the useful information" - nope, can't think of a single case where ad/affiliate-supported site was a good information source, vs. just displacing a better free source.
__loam 3y ago
A lot of people justifiably care because making that information is their livelihood. Your entitlement to the labor of others is gross.
- selestify 3y ago
  Then perhaps they should find other means of livelihood, instead of preventing the rest of the world from making full use of the information and technology available to it.
  - dageshi 3y ago
    They will and less information will be put into places that are freely accessible. If it's put anywhere at all it'll be put behind login only/paywalled/unscrapable places that LLM's can't access.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Why would they suddenly paywall information if they weren't already? The way I see it, there are roughly three groups of information providers: 1. Those who do it pro bono - because they feel like its a worthwhile thing to do, or because they believe in by "pay it forward", or otherwise because they haven't even thought that what they share is worth trying to extract rent from. 2. Those who do it "for free", as a way to lure people to where they can expose them to ads, affiliate marketing, upsells, or other such schemes - making money by being predators using information as bait. 3. Those who just put up a paywall, being up front that they're selling information, not giving it away. (There's also a weird "in-between" group of publishers that are almost like 1., except they're being funded out of marketing budgets of companies that figure providing quality information is good advertising.) LLMs don't change anything for group #1. They may compete with group #3, but that's business as usual, not anything transformative. The group that's directly affected is #2, which also happens to be the group that produces all the garbage on the Internet, so I'm actually very happy to see them forced to find a more useful way of making money. Since group #2 produces "information" that's arguably negative knowledge on the net, it's likely to improve the amount of quality information you'll be able to find on-line.