4 ms·

One option is to completely ban openai’s crawler ip addresses. They steal content without credit anyway - as most ai companies do - so there’s no benefit in all

One option is to completely ban openai’s crawler ip addresses. They steal content without credit anyway - as most ai companies do - so there’s no benefit in allowing them access.

GaggiX 3y ago
>so there’s no benefit in allowing them access. Well, you're helping improving the model.
- dpacmittal 3y ago
  Which benefits the company.
  - GaggiX 3y ago
    Yeah but I don't think it's an inherently bad thing. +100M people use ChatGPT without paying anything, in this it benefits much more than the company.
    - gumballindie 3y ago
      Oh but they do pay. They pay their own time to gradually train the model and feed their data. There's no such thing as "free".
      - GaggiX 3y ago
        That's just a win-win situation, you're using their services for free because it helps you, they use your interaction to improve the model; the model is still free to use.
        gumballindie 3y ago
        There's no win win situation. My content is stolen and given to others. I've lost. Google paid me for traffic via ads, therefore I allowed google to ingest my content. You as a person could read it. I've never given you permission to resell it, and if you did, I'd come after you to pay royalties. The same must apply to openai and other leeches.
        andybak 3y ago
        > My content is stolen Physical property is stolen. Information is copied.
        gumballindie 3y ago
        The term depends on use. Physical property is either borrowed, owned, sold, and so on. If your spouse takes your car to work without your knowledge it's borrowed. If they take it and sell it without consent it's theft. Same applies to data. But data is electrons and as such it can't be moved, it is "copied". So technically speaking you are right, but practically you are not. If you steal NBC's prerelease movie then that's theft. As is copying it without constent. Once you pay for it you can copy it from their servers to your device. But you can't copy it to someone else's machine.
        andybak 3y ago
        > If you steal NBC's prerelease movie then that's theft. No. Advocates of expanded IP law have attempted to spread the idea that copyright infringement is "theft" as it adds emotional weight to their arguments. "You wouldn't download a car" etc. Same for the use of the word "piracy" - borrow an emotionally laden term from another context and hope nobody notices the sleight of hand. And it's important that we reject this definition because it distorts the reality of the situation.
        gumballindie 3y ago
        > And it's important that we reject this definition because it distorts the reality of the situation. Depends who's reality. A content creator's reality is that their content is indeed stolen and monetised by someone without permission. "Advocates of expanded IP law" do appear to be in the right, at least by law. Copying and distributing digital products is treated more or less as theft, particularly when done at scale. AI and current training practices are even worse than stealing someone's work. It steals someone's identity. AI can copy unique characteristics, not just individual content to reproduce identical content. It can replicate a person's unique style without consent, and that's uniquely dangerous.
        npteljes 3y ago
        It would be a win-win if the company promised that they'll keep the AI as it is, and as free as it is, as long as the company functions. Then they would take something, give something, and we could discuss if what we get outweighs what they took. But the street is one-way, and it's the company that has the upper hand. The company can (and does) retract access to the AI, but they themselves keep what they took. If in the meantime people became attached to what the company gave, the company even does damage to them, not just by taking away the access, but because of severing the supply for a dependency. So the people are taken advantage of because the company took the assets, they are taken advantage of because they help to further train the AI by using it, and then they get, at most, the privilege to pay for something that grew out of them. That's why it's not a win-win. It's a win for the company, and a questionable outcome, and a risk for the people.
        skybrian 3y ago
        It’s win-win based on current usage. Even if OpenAI got shut down, I still benefited from using it. Many good things don’t last forever. If they go away that doesn’t invalidate the experiences you had.
        npteljes 3y ago
        I agree wrt/ experience, but I don't think it applies to this situation. Even if you had an experience that would end, their ownership of the data wouldn't, and that, among other things, make this very one-sided. I do want to stress something from your conclusion though. That people do better if they anticipate change, and can adapt to it.
        skybrian 3y ago
        Whether it's one-sided depends on what you think you've gained and lost. I publish code for free (open source) and I publish my writing for free (on my blog and as comments on various websites). I don't expect compensation from anyone who uses them, whether it's public or private use, so I don't feel like I've lost anything. Sometimes people "pay it forward." If I actually get something back, that's a win. There are web search engines and AI chatbots that might be very slightly better (unmeasurably so) due to having been trained on stuff I published over the years. Meanwhile I get a lot of benefit from using free stuff on the Internet. I think that's a one-sided deal in my favor. (I also pay for GPT4 access. Whether it's worth $20 a month is more questionable, but it's fun to play with and so far I'm interested enough that I haven't cancelled.)
  - raincole 3y ago
    If you're making a library/package/rubygem/crate, allowing ChatGPT to understand your API and being able to generate code using it can help the adoption.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  That's of no benefit to me. Quite the contrary.
  - bko 3y ago
    Why? If it helps people it should be good. Why bother posting something on the public web if not to help people. Sure a large org is receiving some ancillary benefit, but do you feel the same hostility for people working at [large corp] using what you worked on to help them at work? I honestly don't understand the hostility towards llms using public data
    - rurp 3y ago
      This is like asking why someone doesn't want to do free work for Oracle's database offerings. I mean, why not try to make things better? Well, because a lot of corporations couldn't care less about the public good and are happy to cause harm if it makes them more money. OpenAI doesn't care about your welfare or mine any more than a sleezy ad company or spyware product does. If OpenAI were actually an open source company working to benefit the broader ecosystem I would agree with you, but that's about as far as possible from the current state.
    - dahwolf 3y ago
      Don't understand or don't agree? Because it's really very simple to understand. Generally people need some kind of incentive to produce content. This could be just the thought of somebody, an actual human, having consumed your content. Or a like, a comment exchange that further enriches the topic. Perhaps it leads to a new follower or even a new (online) friend. A job opportunity. Even a date. Or maybe just plain ad impressions to make your effort worthwhile. The picture of content production was already bleak. Google gets to take it all for free and is the traffic controller deciding who gets the crumbs, and even then is also the sole advertiser. But at least they might throw you some traffic, leading to all the interactions I just mentioned. OpenAI just steals your shit without permission, credit or payment and completely cuts of any direct human interaction with the original content or its maker. How can you not "understand" the hostility? This is existential not just for the open web, also the closed web. Have you missed the developments at Twitter, StackOverflow, Reddit?

One option is to completely ban openai’s crawler ip addresses. They steal content without credit anyway - as most ai companies do - so there’s no benefit in allowing them access.

GaggiX 3y ago

>so there’s no benefit in allowing them access. Well, you're helping improving the model.

dpacmittal 3y ago
Which benefits the company.
- GaggiX 3y ago
  Yeah but I don't think it's an inherently bad thing. +100M people use ChatGPT without paying anything, in this it benefits much more than the company.
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    Oh but they do pay. They pay their own time to gradually train the model and feed their data. There's no such thing as "free".
    - GaggiX 3y ago
      That's just a win-win situation, you're using their services for free because it helps you, they use your interaction to improve the model; the model is still free to use.
      - gumballindie 3y ago
        There's no win win situation. My content is stolen and given to others. I've lost. Google paid me for traffic via ads, therefore I allowed google to ingest my content. You as a person could read it. I've never given you permission to resell it, and if you did, I'd come after you to pay royalties. The same must apply to openai and other leeches.
        andybak 3y ago
        > My content is stolen Physical property is stolen. Information is copied.
        gumballindie 3y ago
        The term depends on use. Physical property is either borrowed, owned, sold, and so on. If your spouse takes your car to work without your knowledge it's borrowed. If they take it and sell it without consent it's theft. Same applies to data. But data is electrons and as such it can't be moved, it is "copied". So technically speaking you are right, but practically you are not. If you steal NBC's prerelease movie then that's theft. As is copying it without constent. Once you pay for it you can copy it from their servers to your device. But you can't copy it to someone else's machine.
        andybak 3y ago
        > If you steal NBC's prerelease movie then that's theft. No. Advocates of expanded IP law have attempted to spread the idea that copyright infringement is "theft" as it adds emotional weight to their arguments. "You wouldn't download a car" etc. Same for the use of the word "piracy" - borrow an emotionally laden term from another context and hope nobody notices the sleight of hand. And it's important that we reject this definition because it distorts the reality of the situation.
        gumballindie 3y ago
        > And it's important that we reject this definition because it distorts the reality of the situation. Depends who's reality. A content creator's reality is that their content is indeed stolen and monetised by someone without permission. "Advocates of expanded IP law" do appear to be in the right, at least by law. Copying and distributing digital products is treated more or less as theft, particularly when done at scale. AI and current training practices are even worse than stealing someone's work. It steals someone's identity. AI can copy unique characteristics, not just individual content to reproduce identical content. It can replicate a person's unique style without consent, and that's uniquely dangerous.
      - npteljes 3y ago
        It would be a win-win if the company promised that they'll keep the AI as it is, and as free as it is, as long as the company functions. Then they would take something, give something, and we could discuss if what we get outweighs what they took. But the street is one-way, and it's the company that has the upper hand. The company can (and does) retract access to the AI, but they themselves keep what they took. If in the meantime people became attached to what the company gave, the company even does damage to them, not just by taking away the access, but because of severing the supply for a dependency. So the people are taken advantage of because the company took the assets, they are taken advantage of because they help to further train the AI by using it, and then they get, at most, the privilege to pay for something that grew out of them. That's why it's not a win-win. It's a win for the company, and a questionable outcome, and a risk for the people.
        skybrian 3y ago
        It’s win-win based on current usage. Even if OpenAI got shut down, I still benefited from using it. Many good things don’t last forever. If they go away that doesn’t invalidate the experiences you had.
        npteljes 3y ago
        I agree wrt/ experience, but I don't think it applies to this situation. Even if you had an experience that would end, their ownership of the data wouldn't, and that, among other things, make this very one-sided. I do want to stress something from your conclusion though. That people do better if they anticipate change, and can adapt to it.
        skybrian 3y ago
        Whether it's one-sided depends on what you think you've gained and lost. I publish code for free (open source) and I publish my writing for free (on my blog and as comments on various websites). I don't expect compensation from anyone who uses them, whether it's public or private use, so I don't feel like I've lost anything. Sometimes people "pay it forward." If I actually get something back, that's a win. There are web search engines and AI chatbots that might be very slightly better (unmeasurably so) due to having been trained on stuff I published over the years. Meanwhile I get a lot of benefit from using free stuff on the Internet. I think that's a one-sided deal in my favor. (I also pay for GPT4 access. Whether it's worth $20 a month is more questionable, but it's fun to play with and so far I'm interested enough that I haven't cancelled.)
- raincole 3y ago
  If you're making a library/package/rubygem/crate, allowing ChatGPT to understand your API and being able to generate code using it can help the adoption.
gumballindie 3y ago
That's of no benefit to me. Quite the contrary.
- bko 3y ago
  Why? If it helps people it should be good. Why bother posting something on the public web if not to help people. Sure a large org is receiving some ancillary benefit, but do you feel the same hostility for people working at [large corp] using what you worked on to help them at work? I honestly don't understand the hostility towards llms using public data
  - rurp 3y ago
    This is like asking why someone doesn't want to do free work for Oracle's database offerings. I mean, why not try to make things better? Well, because a lot of corporations couldn't care less about the public good and are happy to cause harm if it makes them more money. OpenAI doesn't care about your welfare or mine any more than a sleezy ad company or spyware product does. If OpenAI were actually an open source company working to benefit the broader ecosystem I would agree with you, but that's about as far as possible from the current state.
  - dahwolf 3y ago
    Don't understand or don't agree? Because it's really very simple to understand. Generally people need some kind of incentive to produce content. This could be just the thought of somebody, an actual human, having consumed your content. Or a like, a comment exchange that further enriches the topic. Perhaps it leads to a new follower or even a new (online) friend. A job opportunity. Even a date. Or maybe just plain ad impressions to make your effort worthwhile. The picture of content production was already bleak. Google gets to take it all for free and is the traffic controller deciding who gets the crumbs, and even then is also the sole advertiser. But at least they might throw you some traffic, leading to all the interactions I just mentioned. OpenAI just steals your shit without permission, credit or payment and completely cuts of any direct human interaction with the original content or its maker. How can you not "understand" the hostility? This is existential not just for the open web, also the closed web. Have you missed the developments at Twitter, StackOverflow, Reddit?