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Companies that have content all see dollar signs. NYT won't mind if you use their content to train LLMs - as long as they get a commission. Reddit will shut do

Companies that have content all see dollar signs. NYT won't mind if you use their content to train LLMs - as long as they get a commission. Reddit will shut down their free API and make you pay to get training content. Discord is going to be selling content for AI training too - if they haven't already done so. Twitter is doing it. They didn't care before because LLMs were just experiments. Now we're talking trillions of dollars of value.

MuffinFlavored 3y ago
> They didn't care before because LLMs were just experiments. Now we're talking trillions of dollars of value. Can you make the argument this was their fault for not having forward vision/being asleep at the wheel and "accidentally, in hindsight" letting OpenAI/others have free, open, unlimited access to their content?
- bloppe 3y ago
  Basically none of the training material for GPT was used under an "unlimited" license. There are very important legal limitations. GPT just doesn't care much about them.
- aurareturn 3y ago
  No, I can't. It's just an observation with no personal opinion.
up2isomorphism 3y ago
"They" also include the people working there. Why someone work with full time writing articles should give the work for free just let someone to train it and make money out of it as a consequence?
- tucnak 3y ago
  >Why someone work with full time writing articles should give the work for free They are not giving it out "for free", in fact they're being paid by their employer to write these articles. Moreover, the writers themselves stand noth' to gain from their past writings financially as they don't belong to the ownership structure of the business.
  - bloppe 3y ago
    > the writers themselves stand noth' to gain from their past writings financially as they don't belong to the ownership structure of the business. This is a dumb argument. We're not just talking about ancient articles. We're talking about new content, including content that is yet to be written.
  - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
    Their ability to make money in the future is directly tied to their employers' ability to make money with their content. This is a closed financial loop. If OpenAI or any other AI company wants in, they should pay a licensing fee or get the laws changed, not just assume that they can take what they want and pretend like there are no negative consequences for the creator or the rights-holder.
    - malwrar 3y ago
      In this limited example, are there such consequences? Are people dropping NYT subscriptions because they trust chatgpt to inform them of current events? I don’t buy it.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      No one is pretending there are no "there are no negative consequences for the creator or the rights-holder". Of course there are. But this is a story of rights-holders, who've already outgrown their usefulness, wanting to tap themselves into money stream they are not entitled to. ChatGPT isn't competing with NYT on a core competency. No one uses LLMs for original news reporting. They're obviously incapable of doing that, by virtue of not being there on the scene or able to independently research a topic, maintain relationships with sources, etc. What ChatGPT can do is quote/reproduce some parts of past articles, and reason from them. Or at least produce new text that's somewhat related to the old text. The threat to NYT is this: ChatGPT is much better bullshitter than they are, so it reduces NYT to its core competency: providing original information. Which is all it should be doing in the first place. But instead, NYT wants to not only keep the bullshitting part of its revenue, but also take a cut or destroy the much greater and much more useful part of where this all feeds a general-purpose language model.
- amadvance 3y ago
  > Why someone work with full time writing articles should give the work for free OpenSource developers did that ;)
  - KETHERCORTEX 3y ago
    When open source developers do that, they also include an explicit licensing information that lists cases when the usage is allowed and restricted. So even if the code is open source and licensed under GPL, its usage in a closed source product like ChatGPT is not allowed.
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      GPL code usage in closed source ChatGPT is allowed "for internal use"; it just would not be allowed to distribute binaries of ChatGPT that are closed source without making source available; also a GPL3 license violation to allow online access to a ChatGPT program that used GPL3 code without making source available.
  - up2isomorphism 3y ago
    So Just because some people give out something for free at certain time, all the other people should do the same all the time? Not to mention most open source comes with a well-defined term not just exploited from free by a closed service making money for another company. Earnestly I found ";)" deeply troublesome.
- ReptileMan 3y ago
  With the ways NYTimes has degraded since 2010 even if people there are working for free, they're still being overpaid. The only adequate section there is the food.
- johngladtj 3y ago
  You understand that news aren't copyrightable right? You're fighting a scarecrow that doesn't exist...
mvdtnz 3y ago
NYT do not "have" content, they create content. It's their raison d'etre.
- aurareturn 3y ago
  They have content that LLMs want to use in training - millions of historical articles.
  - esperent 3y ago
    They created that content. It's an important distinction to make as compared to Reddit or Facebook where the users created the content.
    - midasuni 3y ago
      The journalists created the content for the NYT, the users created it for Facebook. Both received something in return for their effort, and the content ended up being owned by NYT/facebook
      - esperent 3y ago
        The journalists were paid to assign ownership of their work to the NYT corporation, with a clear and well understood contract of work that they signed, either in real ink or with an equivalent electronic signature, as consenting adults. Can you say the same for user created content on Reddit, Twitter, or Facebook? A user agreement that nobody reads doesn't have anything like the same legal basis as a signed contract. Not to mention that a large percentage of users are not adults.

MuffinFlavored 3y ago

> They didn't care before because LLMs were just experiments. Now we're talking trillions of dollars of value. Can you make the argument this was their fault for not having forward vision/being asleep at the wheel and "accidentally, in hindsight" letting OpenAI/others have free, open, unlimited access to their content?

bloppe 3y ago
Basically none of the training material for GPT was used under an "unlimited" license. There are very important legal limitations. GPT just doesn't care much about them.
aurareturn 3y ago
No, I can't. It's just an observation with no personal opinion.

up2isomorphism 3y ago

"They" also include the people working there. Why someone work with full time writing articles should give the work for free just let someone to train it and make money out of it as a consequence?

tucnak 3y ago
>Why someone work with full time writing articles should give the work for free They are not giving it out "for free", in fact they're being paid by their employer to write these articles. Moreover, the writers themselves stand noth' to gain from their past writings financially as they don't belong to the ownership structure of the business.
- bloppe 3y ago
  > the writers themselves stand noth' to gain from their past writings financially as they don't belong to the ownership structure of the business. This is a dumb argument. We're not just talking about ancient articles. We're talking about new content, including content that is yet to be written.
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  Their ability to make money in the future is directly tied to their employers' ability to make money with their content. This is a closed financial loop. If OpenAI or any other AI company wants in, they should pay a licensing fee or get the laws changed, not just assume that they can take what they want and pretend like there are no negative consequences for the creator or the rights-holder.
  - malwrar 3y ago
    In this limited example, are there such consequences? Are people dropping NYT subscriptions because they trust chatgpt to inform them of current events? I don’t buy it.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    No one is pretending there are no "there are no negative consequences for the creator or the rights-holder". Of course there are. But this is a story of rights-holders, who've already outgrown their usefulness, wanting to tap themselves into money stream they are not entitled to. ChatGPT isn't competing with NYT on a core competency. No one uses LLMs for original news reporting. They're obviously incapable of doing that, by virtue of not being there on the scene or able to independently research a topic, maintain relationships with sources, etc. What ChatGPT can do is quote/reproduce some parts of past articles, and reason from them. Or at least produce new text that's somewhat related to the old text. The threat to NYT is this: ChatGPT is much better bullshitter than they are, so it reduces NYT to its core competency: providing original information. Which is all it should be doing in the first place. But instead, NYT wants to not only keep the bullshitting part of its revenue, but also take a cut or destroy the much greater and much more useful part of where this all feeds a general-purpose language model.
amadvance 3y ago
> Why someone work with full time writing articles should give the work for free OpenSource developers did that ;)
- KETHERCORTEX 3y ago
  When open source developers do that, they also include an explicit licensing information that lists cases when the usage is allowed and restricted. So even if the code is open source and licensed under GPL, its usage in a closed source product like ChatGPT is not allowed.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    GPL code usage in closed source ChatGPT is allowed "for internal use"; it just would not be allowed to distribute binaries of ChatGPT that are closed source without making source available; also a GPL3 license violation to allow online access to a ChatGPT program that used GPL3 code without making source available.
- up2isomorphism 3y ago
  So Just because some people give out something for free at certain time, all the other people should do the same all the time? Not to mention most open source comes with a well-defined term not just exploited from free by a closed service making money for another company. Earnestly I found ";)" deeply troublesome.
ReptileMan 3y ago
With the ways NYTimes has degraded since 2010 even if people there are working for free, they're still being overpaid. The only adequate section there is the food.
johngladtj 3y ago
You understand that news aren't copyrightable right? You're fighting a scarecrow that doesn't exist...

mvdtnz 3y ago

NYT do not "have" content, they create content. It's their raison d'etre.

aurareturn 3y ago
They have content that LLMs want to use in training - millions of historical articles.
- esperent 3y ago
  They created that content. It's an important distinction to make as compared to Reddit or Facebook where the users created the content.
  - midasuni 3y ago
    The journalists created the content for the NYT, the users created it for Facebook. Both received something in return for their effort, and the content ended up being owned by NYT/facebook
    - esperent 3y ago
      The journalists were paid to assign ownership of their work to the NYT corporation, with a clear and well understood contract of work that they signed, either in real ink or with an equivalent electronic signature, as consenting adults. Can you say the same for user created content on Reddit, Twitter, or Facebook? A user agreement that nobody reads doesn't have anything like the same legal basis as a signed contract. Not to mention that a large percentage of users are not adults.