7 ms·

I'm actually perfectly fine if StackOverflow wants to sell an answer I made to help train AI. For me, the purpose of providing an answer is to help save others

I'm actually perfectly fine if StackOverflow wants to sell an answer I made to help train AI. For me, the purpose of providing an answer is to help save others (and my future self) time, and I don't really mind if someone uses that in a private product - especially if it helps tools like ChatGPT which provide an insane amount of value given the low monthly price.

uberman 2y ago
The price to get an answer from stack overflow is usually free as most questions have already been asked and answered. You dont even need an account.
- wrsh07 2y ago
  They do serve ads, we should probably stop pretending "funded by ads" is the same as free. Your attention isn't free.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    Suppose I walk up to a tent at a festival that has a big sign that says "FREE BEER", and I ask a person there for a beer. They hand me a beer, and I go on my way. Was the beer free? I think was free. Now, suppose I walk up to a Budweiser-branded tent at a Budweiser festival that has a big sign with a Budweiser logo on it that says "FREE BEER", and I ask a person there who is wearing a Budweiser polo shirt, a Budweiser lanyard, and a Budweiser hat for a beer. They hand me a beer in a Budweiser-branded cup, and I go on my way. Was the beer free? I think that both of these beers were free.
    - aspenmayer 2y ago
      Unironically, folks are being triggered by trigger warnings now.[1] Imagine how “free” the beer in your hypothetical scenario is to an alcoholic struggling to stay sober. Capitalism commoditizes even protest against it and repackages it as a product or service. None of this is to assign blame to good faith actors in a so-called free market, nor is it to abdicate responsibility on behalf of so-called free agents. Just a counterpoint. [1] https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/what-do-trigger-warnings-actually https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/what-do-trigger-warnings-actua...
    - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
      Now suppose you walk up to a tent that offers you free beer, but before they give it you, you have to burn 2% of your phone's battery watching an ad from them. Then they hand you the beer and you go on your way. Was the beer free?
      - jl6 2y ago
        And they also put a tag on your ankle identifying you as someone who likes beer, so that beer salesmen can come knock on your door tonight.
        ssl-3 2y ago
        We've somehow gone from this: > They do serve ads [...] Your attention isn't free. to something like this: > They tag my ankle to mark me as a person who enjoys beer, and make me watch an ad until 2% of my phone's battery is depleted, and then they come to my home and knock on my door at night to sell me beer. ...which... I mean, huh? Stack Overflow is invading your body, restricting your personal liberty, and visiting your home? Really? That's a fucking thing now?
        aspenmayer 2y ago
        I think they were extending the original point you were responding to, and remixing your own mixed metaphor of free beer. In the attention economy, advertising has a cost that is borne by the advertiser and the consumer, up to and including loss of property rights in the case of content relicensure and trespass upon devices leading to excess battery usage, as well as loss of privacy due to geotargeted ads.
        ssl-3 2y ago
        >I think they were extending the original point you were responding to, and remixing your own mixed metaphor of free beer. Perhaps. But having been to many festival environments, I can definitely imagine a tent offering "free beer" that is actually approximately free -- both with, and without a slathering of advertising. (Actually, I don't really have to imagine it -- I've been there and have had that free beer.) I can't imagine them coming to my house and knocking on my door at night to sell me more of it, though. That's absurd. >In the attention economy, advertising has a cost that is borne by the advertiser and the consumer, up to and including loss of property rights in the case of content relicensure and trespass upon devices leading to excess battery usage, as well as loss of privacy due to geotargeted ads. Well, sure. When viewed on a long-enough timeline, it becomes abundantly clear that nothing is actually free, comrade. I can produce my own beer on a hypothetical plot of land that nobody owns, and that nobody else wants to use, and I can give someone one of these beers. For "free." But it still has a cost. (And this, too, is an absurd reduction.)
    - wrsh07 2y ago
      My question is "how valuable is your time?" I think at a festival it's a little tricky to value (if it pulled you away from seeing your favorite band play a song, maybe this cost you the equivalent of $X, where that's what you would pay to see them perform that song. If no bands were playing, you walk over while chatting with friends - the same thing you'd be doing if there were no free beer tent - it was free) When I'm on stack overflow my time is valuable. I'm programming which can pay me something like $50-300/hour (maybe more?) How expensive is the 1 second I spend reading an ad? Let's call it $50/3600. Is that expensive? By my most conservative estimate it's over 1¢. Should we round that down to free given that I've spent hours/many page loads on stack overflow? I guess that's up to you.
      - ssl-3 2y ago
        I mean, we can play that game if you want. Let's suppose that if we look hard enough, that every opportunity has a cost. "Oh, a free concert downtown on Saturday? And you can pick me up at 2? Yeah, I do really like that band, and I sure would like to go -- that's pretty exciting, thanks for the invite! But instead of making plans with you right now, I'd rather tell you about all of the ways I could be using my time on that Saturday afternoon instead. No, no. It's not that I don't want to go. I just want to really drive home the idea that there's an opportunity cost to attending, so it can't really be free -- it can't be a free show for you, or for me, or for anyone else that goes. It's important to me that you realize that this "free concert" is anything but free. Listen, I don't know what you mean by "dead-ass loser." I'm just being a realist here! Oh, so now you're saying that you're not going to pick me up on Saturday? Some friend you are! I haven't even fully amortized this yet!"
        wrsh07 2y ago
        I think we're maybe gleefully posting past each other, but the point I'm trying to hit is that business models matter. Stack overflow provides a service. It's a good service. They host a great q&a platform for developers and myriad other category enthusiasts. However, they have a business model. They are categorically different than eg Wikipedia. It's important to understand that. This business model matters because it tells you what economic forces will lead them to do. When business models break down at public companies they commit acts of desperation. On an ad run site that will mean more ads, more invasive ads, etc. As you're forced to sit through 30s unskippable ads on YouTube I hope you think "I'm so glad this is free"
croes 2y ago
Maybe a low price for you but not for everybody.
- wrsh07 2y ago
  ChatGPT serves 3.5 for free. You can run llama locally for free. Lmsys is free.
  - croes 2y ago
    You think that will stay this way? It will either become paywalled or full of ads.
    - wrsh07 2y ago
      I listed 3 things that are free. Personally, I don't think ChatGPT will start running ads in the next ten years. However, let's assume that it does. Lmsys is for research, I suspect if it runs ads it will be like godbolt (a small ad from a relevant sponsor). Llama 2 and 3 can always be run locally without ads. I make no claims about future versions.
theteapot 2y ago
Good for you. I'm not. I contributed answers to StackOverflow because I use answers other have contributed to StackOverflow, not to ChatGPT, not for ChatGPT to monetize. I don't use ChatGPT and probably never will.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- sp332 2y ago
  But the content you posted to SO was already permissively licensed. Other people can copy it, and make derivative works, and even charge money for them, as long as they cite your SO handle as the author. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/347758/creative-commons-licensing-ui-and-data-updates https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/347758/creative-com...
  - gtirloni 2y ago
    ChatGPT is not citing anything. It can't possibly do that reliably with LLM weights alone.
    - nox101 2y ago
      (1) The announcement (https://stackoverflow.co/company/press/archive/openai-partnership https://stackoverflow.co/company/press/archive/openai-partne...) says things will be attributed in both the 2nd and 3rd paragraph (2) It's only likely to attribute if it quotes verbatim... Just like a human. when I tell someone I learned that Array.map's second parameter passed to the callback is an index to the value just pass, I don't add "And learned this on Stack Overflow from user gtriloni". It's just knowledge that I learned. The only time I'd attribute is if copied a snippet of code or a paragraph to quote in a blog post. For me at least, that almost never happens. It take the knowledge I learned and apply it to my own code. It's rare if ever there is a something on S.O. so useful that I copy it verbatim.
      - anileated 2y ago
random_cynic 2y ago
ChatGPT provides far more value than StackOverflow currently. It's not just trained on SO answers but all of the manuals/help pages, Github issues and forum posts. In addition you can continue a conversation. No rigid format or gatekeeping like stackoverflow. I don't see a real use case for Stackoverflow now. If I want to ask humans, Discord/IRC channels are far better option.
- eVeechu7 2y ago
  It can't reliably cite its source for an answer.
  - random_cynic 2y ago
    Hardly matters for Stackoverflow like questions if the provided solutions work/solve the problem you're having. Which for me happens majority of the time (with GPT-4 not the free version).
    - paulryanrogers 2y ago
      If you copy-paste solutions from SO then please at least cite your sources and their license (CC-BY-SA).
      - lannisterstark 2y ago
        You might not want to hear this but no one does this. Should they? probably. But most people don't use Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V in the first place for SO answers.
        muxator 2y ago
        Just a single data point, but when I copy & paste a snippet from Stack Overflow, I always add a comment "// source: https://stack https://stack overflow.com/questions/xxx#yyy". I both find it respectful of who wrote the answer in the first place and useful for future users of the code: the Stack Overflow answer often provides context and explanation for what would otherwise be an obscure piece of code. Pretty darn useful if you ask me: those who want to have more information can follow the link, casual readers can skip it, and the whole process if fair to the author.
dorkwood 2y ago
What if someone took your answers, put them in a book, claimed they wrote everything themselves, and then sold the book for money?
- LouisSayers 2y ago
  Well if the book was doing well, I might clone it and sell a few copies myself Let's be real, SO is a troubleshooting site. It's not our personal collection of code or project sources. I don't expect to be paid when someone asks me for directions, and I'm sure lonely planet didn't source their guides 100% organically either.
- webdood90 2y ago
  What if I read your answers, claimed I learned everything myself, and sold my skills to a company for money?
  - dorkwood 2y ago
    That would be ok.
- nox101 2y ago
  Then they'd likely get sued because the license for the answers are CC-BY-SA, putting them in a book, claiming they wrote everything themselves, and selling them are all against the license. On the other hand, if they read my answers and they wrote a book about what they learned (not copied). There'd be no issues
- JimDabell 2y ago
  That would be a very different scenario. Learning isn’t copying, but that is.
JimDabell 2y ago
> I'm actually perfectly fine if StackOverflow wants to sell an answer I made to help train AI. I’m not. This was a collaborative effort to make the lives of programmers easier, and the data was always meant to be a public good. OpenAI – and, more importantly – all the other LLMs with pockets that aren’t as deep – should be able to just download the database and train on it for free. I don’t care about any license. I don’t care about attribution. Learning isn’t copying, so copyright is irrelevant. I contributed about a thousand answers to Stack Overflow, all with the understanding that anybody can download and use them for free, not so they can be locked up by Stack Overflow. What concerns me with deals like this is that it’s altering the cultural norm to expand copyright to cover not just copying, but use. Deals like this being made by OpenAI makes it more likely to cause pushback at the social and legal level when other LLMs are trained without these deals in place. It’s akin to – and can possibly result in – regulatory capture, making it difficult for new startups to compete with OpenAI.
- jessriedel 2y ago
  > the data was always meant to be a public good. The words are a copyleft-able public good. Concepts, facts, and ideas are not; anyone can use them for anything, including making money. If you're actually worried about specific wording or other creative choices being unjustly used improperly by an LLM, then by all means that should be enforced. But those examples are just very rare, because the LLMs are very good at extracting facts from prose.
popcorncowboy 2y ago
Your position lays bare the new and industry-destroying economic problem introduced by opaque-data-source LLMs. The economic value provided by the originator is captured fully and completely behind rentier models. Beware the ease and convenience of all that "insane value". This way lies digital serfdom.
juleiie 2y ago
I would be fine with it if the ‚AI’ in question was free and bonus if open source. However it is a product of a next monolithic behemoth company that earns money on it and I suspect has nefarious motives to make profit. That’s the whole key thing for me that makes me feel scammed. That and not asking for permission. Future true AI would be potentially bigger than nuclear fission with all the consequences. Handling this in a petty capitalistic way makes me think the outcome will be close to fallout games that were supposed to be only an exaggeration. Those companies must stop behaving like thieves. In fact it is a literal theft.
squigglydonut 2y ago
You're being taken advantage of for a subscription product. It's one this to give to a community, but it's wrong for an enterprise to come in and capitalize on the value of it. It's the equivalent of going into an animal sanctuary, slaughtering all the animal, and selling their pelts.

uberman 2y ago

The price to get an answer from stack overflow is usually free as most questions have already been asked and answered. You dont even need an account.

wrsh07 2y ago
They do serve ads, we should probably stop pretending "funded by ads" is the same as free. Your attention isn't free.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  Suppose I walk up to a tent at a festival that has a big sign that says "FREE BEER", and I ask a person there for a beer. They hand me a beer, and I go on my way. Was the beer free? I think was free. Now, suppose I walk up to a Budweiser-branded tent at a Budweiser festival that has a big sign with a Budweiser logo on it that says "FREE BEER", and I ask a person there who is wearing a Budweiser polo shirt, a Budweiser lanyard, and a Budweiser hat for a beer. They hand me a beer in a Budweiser-branded cup, and I go on my way. Was the beer free? I think that both of these beers were free.
  - aspenmayer 2y ago
    Unironically, folks are being triggered by trigger warnings now.[1] Imagine how “free” the beer in your hypothetical scenario is to an alcoholic struggling to stay sober. Capitalism commoditizes even protest against it and repackages it as a product or service. None of this is to assign blame to good faith actors in a so-called free market, nor is it to abdicate responsibility on behalf of so-called free agents. Just a counterpoint. [1] https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/what-do-trigger-warnings-actually https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/what-do-trigger-warnings-actua...
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    Now suppose you walk up to a tent that offers you free beer, but before they give it you, you have to burn 2% of your phone's battery watching an ad from them. Then they hand you the beer and you go on your way. Was the beer free?
    - jl6 2y ago
      And they also put a tag on your ankle identifying you as someone who likes beer, so that beer salesmen can come knock on your door tonight.
      - ssl-3 2y ago
        We've somehow gone from this: > They do serve ads [...] Your attention isn't free. to something like this: > They tag my ankle to mark me as a person who enjoys beer, and make me watch an ad until 2% of my phone's battery is depleted, and then they come to my home and knock on my door at night to sell me beer. ...which... I mean, huh? Stack Overflow is invading your body, restricting your personal liberty, and visiting your home? Really? That's a fucking thing now?
        aspenmayer 2y ago
        I think they were extending the original point you were responding to, and remixing your own mixed metaphor of free beer. In the attention economy, advertising has a cost that is borne by the advertiser and the consumer, up to and including loss of property rights in the case of content relicensure and trespass upon devices leading to excess battery usage, as well as loss of privacy due to geotargeted ads.
        ssl-3 2y ago
        >I think they were extending the original point you were responding to, and remixing your own mixed metaphor of free beer. Perhaps. But having been to many festival environments, I can definitely imagine a tent offering "free beer" that is actually approximately free -- both with, and without a slathering of advertising. (Actually, I don't really have to imagine it -- I've been there and have had that free beer.) I can't imagine them coming to my house and knocking on my door at night to sell me more of it, though. That's absurd. >In the attention economy, advertising has a cost that is borne by the advertiser and the consumer, up to and including loss of property rights in the case of content relicensure and trespass upon devices leading to excess battery usage, as well as loss of privacy due to geotargeted ads. Well, sure. When viewed on a long-enough timeline, it becomes abundantly clear that nothing is actually free, comrade. I can produce my own beer on a hypothetical plot of land that nobody owns, and that nobody else wants to use, and I can give someone one of these beers. For "free." But it still has a cost. (And this, too, is an absurd reduction.)
  - wrsh07 2y ago
    My question is "how valuable is your time?" I think at a festival it's a little tricky to value (if it pulled you away from seeing your favorite band play a song, maybe this cost you the equivalent of $X, where that's what you would pay to see them perform that song. If no bands were playing, you walk over while chatting with friends - the same thing you'd be doing if there were no free beer tent - it was free) When I'm on stack overflow my time is valuable. I'm programming which can pay me something like $50-300/hour (maybe more?) How expensive is the 1 second I spend reading an ad? Let's call it $50/3600. Is that expensive? By my most conservative estimate it's over 1¢. Should we round that down to free given that I've spent hours/many page loads on stack overflow? I guess that's up to you.
    - ssl-3 2y ago
      I mean, we can play that game if you want. Let's suppose that if we look hard enough, that every opportunity has a cost. "Oh, a free concert downtown on Saturday? And you can pick me up at 2? Yeah, I do really like that band, and I sure would like to go -- that's pretty exciting, thanks for the invite! But instead of making plans with you right now, I'd rather tell you about all of the ways I could be using my time on that Saturday afternoon instead. No, no. It's not that I don't want to go. I just want to really drive home the idea that there's an opportunity cost to attending, so it can't really be free -- it can't be a free show for you, or for me, or for anyone else that goes. It's important to me that you realize that this "free concert" is anything but free. Listen, I don't know what you mean by "dead-ass loser." I'm just being a realist here! Oh, so now you're saying that you're not going to pick me up on Saturday? Some friend you are! I haven't even fully amortized this yet!"
      - wrsh07 2y ago
        I think we're maybe gleefully posting past each other, but the point I'm trying to hit is that business models matter. Stack overflow provides a service. It's a good service. They host a great q&a platform for developers and myriad other category enthusiasts. However, they have a business model. They are categorically different than eg Wikipedia. It's important to understand that. This business model matters because it tells you what economic forces will lead them to do. When business models break down at public companies they commit acts of desperation. On an ad run site that will mean more ads, more invasive ads, etc. As you're forced to sit through 30s unskippable ads on YouTube I hope you think "I'm so glad this is free"

croes 2y ago

Maybe a low price for you but not for everybody.

wrsh07 2y ago
ChatGPT serves 3.5 for free. You can run llama locally for free. Lmsys is free.
- croes 2y ago
  You think that will stay this way? It will either become paywalled or full of ads.
  - wrsh07 2y ago
    I listed 3 things that are free. Personally, I don't think ChatGPT will start running ads in the next ten years. However, let's assume that it does. Lmsys is for research, I suspect if it runs ads it will be like godbolt (a small ad from a relevant sponsor). Llama 2 and 3 can always be run locally without ads. I make no claims about future versions.

theteapot 2y ago

Good for you. I'm not. I contributed answers to StackOverflow because I use answers other have contributed to StackOverflow, not to ChatGPT, not for ChatGPT to monetize. I don't use ChatGPT and probably never will.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sp332 2y ago
But the content you posted to SO was already permissively licensed. Other people can copy it, and make derivative works, and even charge money for them, as long as they cite your SO handle as the author. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/347758/creative-commons-licensing-ui-and-data-updates https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/347758/creative-com...
- gtirloni 2y ago
  ChatGPT is not citing anything. It can't possibly do that reliably with LLM weights alone.
  - nox101 2y ago
    (1) The announcement (https://stackoverflow.co/company/press/archive/openai-partnership https://stackoverflow.co/company/press/archive/openai-partne...) says things will be attributed in both the 2nd and 3rd paragraph (2) It's only likely to attribute if it quotes verbatim... Just like a human. when I tell someone I learned that Array.map's second parameter passed to the callback is an index to the value just pass, I don't add "And learned this on Stack Overflow from user gtriloni". It's just knowledge that I learned. The only time I'd attribute is if copied a snippet of code or a paragraph to quote in a blog post. For me at least, that almost never happens. It take the knowledge I learned and apply it to my own code. It's rare if ever there is a something on S.O. so useful that I copy it verbatim.
    - anileated 2y ago

random_cynic 2y ago

ChatGPT provides far more value than StackOverflow currently. It's not just trained on SO answers but all of the manuals/help pages, Github issues and forum posts. In addition you can continue a conversation. No rigid format or gatekeeping like stackoverflow. I don't see a real use case for Stackoverflow now. If I want to ask humans, Discord/IRC channels are far better option.

eVeechu7 2y ago
It can't reliably cite its source for an answer.
- random_cynic 2y ago
  Hardly matters for Stackoverflow like questions if the provided solutions work/solve the problem you're having. Which for me happens majority of the time (with GPT-4 not the free version).
  - paulryanrogers 2y ago
    If you copy-paste solutions from SO then please at least cite your sources and their license (CC-BY-SA).
    - lannisterstark 2y ago
      You might not want to hear this but no one does this. Should they? probably. But most people don't use Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V in the first place for SO answers.
      - muxator 2y ago
        Just a single data point, but when I copy & paste a snippet from Stack Overflow, I always add a comment "// source: https://stack https://stack overflow.com/questions/xxx#yyy". I both find it respectful of who wrote the answer in the first place and useful for future users of the code: the Stack Overflow answer often provides context and explanation for what would otherwise be an obscure piece of code. Pretty darn useful if you ask me: those who want to have more information can follow the link, casual readers can skip it, and the whole process if fair to the author.

dorkwood 2y ago

What if someone took your answers, put them in a book, claimed they wrote everything themselves, and then sold the book for money?

LouisSayers 2y ago
Well if the book was doing well, I might clone it and sell a few copies myself Let's be real, SO is a troubleshooting site. It's not our personal collection of code or project sources. I don't expect to be paid when someone asks me for directions, and I'm sure lonely planet didn't source their guides 100% organically either.
webdood90 2y ago
What if I read your answers, claimed I learned everything myself, and sold my skills to a company for money?
- dorkwood 2y ago
  That would be ok.
nox101 2y ago
Then they'd likely get sued because the license for the answers are CC-BY-SA, putting them in a book, claiming they wrote everything themselves, and selling them are all against the license. On the other hand, if they read my answers and they wrote a book about what they learned (not copied). There'd be no issues
JimDabell 2y ago
That would be a very different scenario. Learning isn’t copying, but that is.

JimDabell 2y ago

> I'm actually perfectly fine if StackOverflow wants to sell an answer I made to help train AI. I’m not. This was a collaborative effort to make the lives of programmers easier, and the data was always meant to be a public good. OpenAI – and, more importantly – all the other LLMs with pockets that aren’t as deep – should be able to just download the database and train on it for free. I don’t care about any license. I don’t care about attribution. Learning isn’t copying, so copyright is irrelevant. I contributed about a thousand answers to Stack Overflow, all with the understanding that anybody can download and use them for free, not so they can be locked up by Stack Overflow. What concerns me with deals like this is that it’s altering the cultural norm to expand copyright to cover not just copying, but use. Deals like this being made by OpenAI makes it more likely to cause pushback at the social and legal level when other LLMs are trained without these deals in place. It’s akin to – and can possibly result in – regulatory capture, making it difficult for new startups to compete with OpenAI.

jessriedel 2y ago
> the data was always meant to be a public good. The words are a copyleft-able public good. Concepts, facts, and ideas are not; anyone can use them for anything, including making money. If you're actually worried about specific wording or other creative choices being unjustly used improperly by an LLM, then by all means that should be enforced. But those examples are just very rare, because the LLMs are very good at extracting facts from prose.

popcorncowboy 2y ago

Your position lays bare the new and industry-destroying economic problem introduced by opaque-data-source LLMs. The economic value provided by the originator is captured fully and completely behind rentier models. Beware the ease and convenience of all that "insane value". This way lies digital serfdom.

juleiie 2y ago

I would be fine with it if the ‚AI’ in question was free and bonus if open source. However it is a product of a next monolithic behemoth company that earns money on it and I suspect has nefarious motives to make profit. That’s the whole key thing for me that makes me feel scammed. That and not asking for permission. Future true AI would be potentially bigger than nuclear fission with all the consequences. Handling this in a petty capitalistic way makes me think the outcome will be close to fallout games that were supposed to be only an exaggeration. Those companies must stop behaving like thieves. In fact it is a literal theft.

squigglydonut 2y ago

You're being taken advantage of for a subscription product. It's one this to give to a community, but it's wrong for an enterprise to come in and capitalize on the value of it. It's the equivalent of going into an animal sanctuary, slaughtering all the animal, and selling their pelts.