9 ms·

> For any model that will be used broadly across all of our customers, we do not build or train these models in such a way that they could learn, memorise, or b

by zmmmmm 2y ago

> For any model that will be used broadly across all of our customers, we do not build or train these models in such a way that they could learn, memorise, or be able to reproduce some part of Customer Data This feels so full of subtle qualifiers and weasel words that it generates far more distrust than trust. It only refers to models used "broadly across all" customers - so if it's (a) not used "broadly" or (b) only used for some subset of customers, the whole statement doesn't apply. Which actually sounds really bad because the logical implication is that data CAN leak outside those circumstances. They need to reword this. Whoever wrote it is a liability.

mayank 2y ago
> They need to reword this. Whoever wrote it is a liability Sounds like it’s been written specifically to avoid liability.
- MingFengLiu 2y ago
  I'm sure it was lawyers. It's always lawyers.
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
    Yes, lawyers do tend to have a part to play in writing things that present a legally binding commitment being made by an organisation. Developers really can’t throw stones from their glass houses here. How many of you have a pre-canned spiel explaining why the complexities of whichever codebase you spend your days on are ACTUALLY necessary, and are certainly NOT the result of over-engineering? Thought so.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      > How many of you have a pre-canned spiel explaining why the complexities of whichever codebase you spend your days on are ACTUALLY necessary, and are certainly NOT the result of over-engineering? Thought so. Hm, now you mention it, I don't think I've ever seen this specific example. Not that we don't have jargon that's bordering on cant, leading to our words being easily mis-comprehended by outsiders: https://i.imgur.com/SL88Z6g.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/SL88Z6g.jpeg Canned cliches are also the only thing I get whenever I try to find out why anyone likes the VIPER design pattern — and that's despite being totally convinced that (one of) the people I was talking to, had genuinely and sincerely considered my confusion and had actually experimented with a different approach to see if my point was valid.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - re-return 2y ago
    Sure lawyers wrote it but I'd bet a lot there's a product or business person standing behind the lawyer saying - "we want to do this but don't be so obvious about it because we don't want to scare users away". And so lawyers would love to be very upfront about what is happening because that's the best way to avoid liability. However, that conflicts with what the business wants, and because the lawyer will still refuse to write anything that's patently inaccurate, you end up with a weasel word salad that is ambiguous and unhelpful.
Nition 2y ago
- Create a Slack account for your 95-year-old grandpa - Exclude that one account from using the models, he's never going to use Slack anyway - Now you can learn, memorise, or reproduce all the Customer Data you like
dheera 2y ago
Seems like time to start some slack workspaces and fill them with garbage. Maybe from Uncyclopedia (https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Main_Page https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Main_Page)
- hsaliak 2y ago
  The Riders of the Lost Kek dataset is an excellent candidate https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.07487 https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.07487
chefandy 2y ago
Nah. Whoever decided to create the reality their counsel is dancing around with this disclaimer is the actual problem, though it's mostly a problem for us, rather than them.
- FuckButtons 2y ago
  It’s a problem for them if it looses customer trust / customers.
  - hackernewds 2y ago
    if they lose enough, they will "sorry we got caught" if they don't, they will not do anything
  - chefandy 2y ago
    If it impacted their business significantly, it would restore some of the faith I've lost in humanity recently. Frankly, I'm not holding my breath.
afc 2y ago
Especially when a few paragraphs below they say: > If you want to exclude your Customer Data from helping train Slack global models, you can opt out. So Customer Data is not used to train models "used broadly across all of our customers [in such a way that ...]", but... it is used to help train global models. Uh.
- hackernewds 2y ago
  Why are these kinda things opt-out? And need to be discovered.. We're literally discussing switching to Teams at my company (1500 employees)
  - Shadowmist 2y ago
    You’d be better off just not having chat than switching to Teams.
    - metadat 2y ago
      But the business will suffer by most likely being less successful due to less cohesive communication.. it's "The Ick" either way.
      - andy_ppp 2y ago
        The idea that Slack makes companies work better needs some proof behind it, I’d say the amount of extra distraction is a net negative… but as with a lot of things in software and startups nobody researches anything and everyone writes long essays about how they feel things are.
        metadat 2y ago
        Good point, could be that it reduces friction too far in some instances. However, in general less communication doesn't seem better for the bottom line.
        unkulunkulu 2y ago
j45 2y ago
I'm imagining a corporate slack, with information discussed in channels or private chats that exists nowhere else on the internet.. gets rolled into a model. Then, someone asks a very specific question.. conversationally.. about such a very specific scenario.. Seems plausible confidential data would get out, even if it wasn't attributed to the client. Not that it’s possible to ask an llm how a specific or random company in an industry might design something…
- hackernewds 2y ago
  exactly. a fun game to see why it is so hard to prevent this https://gandalf.lakera.ai/ https://gandalf.lakera.ai/
  - rbalebako 2y ago
    Gandalf is a great tool for bringing awareness to AI hacking, but Lakera also trains on the prompts you provide when you play the game. See the bottom of that page. "Disclaimer: we may use the fully anonymized input to Gandalf to improve Gandalf and for Lakera AI's products and services. "
  - j45 2y ago
    Sometimes the obvious questions are met with a lot of silence. I don't think I can be the only one who has had a conversation with GPT about something obscure they might know but there isn't much about online, and it either can't find anything... or finds it, and more.
__loam 2y ago
If you trained on customer data your service contains custom data.
IanCal 2y ago
The problem is this also covers very reasonable use cases. Use sampling across messages for spam detection, predicting customer retention, etc - pretty standard. Then there's cases where you could have models more like llms that can output data from the training set but you're running them for that customer.
JCM9 2y ago
Whatever lawyer wrote that should be fired. This poorly written nonsense makes it look like Slack is trying to look shady and subversive. Even if well intended this is a PR blunder.
throwaway4aday 2y ago
I think it's as clear as it can be, they go into much more detail and provide examples in their bullet points, here are some highlights: Our model learns from previous suggestions and whether or not a user joins the channel we recommend. We protect privacy while doing so by separating our model from Customer Data. We use external models (not trained on Slack messages) to evaluate topic similarity, outputting numerical scores. Our global model only makes recommendations based on these numerical scores and non-Customer Data. We do this based on historical search results and previous engagements without learning from the underlying text of the search query, result, or proxy. Simply put, our model can't reconstruct the search query or result. Instead, it learns from team-specific, contextual information like the number of times a message has been clicked in a search or an overlap in the number of words in the query and recommended message. These suggestions are local and sourced from common public message phrases in the user’s workspace. Our algorithm that picks from potential suggestions is trained globally on previously suggested and accepted completions. We protect data privacy by using rules to score the similarity between the typed text and suggestion in various ways, including only using the numerical scores and counts of past interactions in the algorithm. To do this while protecting Customer Data, we might use an etrnal model (not trained on Slack messages) to classify the sentiment of the message. Our model would then suggest an emoji only considering the frequency with which a particular emoji has been associated with messages of that sentiment in that workspace.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hyping9 2y ago
> They need to reword this. Whoever wrote it is a liability. Wow you're so right. This multi-billion dollar company should be so thankful for your comment. I can't believe they did not consult their in-house lawyers before publishing this post! Can you believe those idiots? Luckily you are here to save the day with your superior knowledge and wisdom.

by zmmmmm 2y ago

mayank 2y ago

> They need to reword this. Whoever wrote it is a liability Sounds like it’s been written specifically to avoid liability.

MingFengLiu 2y ago
I'm sure it was lawyers. It's always lawyers.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
  Yes, lawyers do tend to have a part to play in writing things that present a legally binding commitment being made by an organisation. Developers really can’t throw stones from their glass houses here. How many of you have a pre-canned spiel explaining why the complexities of whichever codebase you spend your days on are ACTUALLY necessary, and are certainly NOT the result of over-engineering? Thought so.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > How many of you have a pre-canned spiel explaining why the complexities of whichever codebase you spend your days on are ACTUALLY necessary, and are certainly NOT the result of over-engineering? Thought so. Hm, now you mention it, I don't think I've ever seen this specific example. Not that we don't have jargon that's bordering on cant, leading to our words being easily mis-comprehended by outsiders: https://i.imgur.com/SL88Z6g.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/SL88Z6g.jpeg Canned cliches are also the only thing I get whenever I try to find out why anyone likes the VIPER design pattern — and that's despite being totally convinced that (one of) the people I was talking to, had genuinely and sincerely considered my confusion and had actually experimented with a different approach to see if my point was valid.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- re-return 2y ago
  Sure lawyers wrote it but I'd bet a lot there's a product or business person standing behind the lawyer saying - "we want to do this but don't be so obvious about it because we don't want to scare users away". And so lawyers would love to be very upfront about what is happening because that's the best way to avoid liability. However, that conflicts with what the business wants, and because the lawyer will still refuse to write anything that's patently inaccurate, you end up with a weasel word salad that is ambiguous and unhelpful.

Nition 2y ago

- Create a Slack account for your 95-year-old grandpa - Exclude that one account from using the models, he's never going to use Slack anyway - Now you can learn, memorise, or reproduce all the Customer Data you like

dheera 2y ago

Seems like time to start some slack workspaces and fill them with garbage. Maybe from Uncyclopedia (https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Main_Page https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Main_Page)

hsaliak 2y ago
The Riders of the Lost Kek dataset is an excellent candidate https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.07487 https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.07487

chefandy 2y ago

Nah. Whoever decided to create the reality their counsel is dancing around with this disclaimer is the actual problem, though it's mostly a problem for us, rather than them.

FuckButtons 2y ago
It’s a problem for them if it looses customer trust / customers.
- hackernewds 2y ago
  if they lose enough, they will "sorry we got caught" if they don't, they will not do anything
- chefandy 2y ago
  If it impacted their business significantly, it would restore some of the faith I've lost in humanity recently. Frankly, I'm not holding my breath.

afc 2y ago

Especially when a few paragraphs below they say: > If you want to exclude your Customer Data from helping train Slack global models, you can opt out. So Customer Data is not used to train models "used broadly across all of our customers [in such a way that ...]", but... it is used to help train global models. Uh.

hackernewds 2y ago
Why are these kinda things opt-out? And need to be discovered.. We're literally discussing switching to Teams at my company (1500 employees)
- Shadowmist 2y ago
  You’d be better off just not having chat than switching to Teams.
  - metadat 2y ago
    But the business will suffer by most likely being less successful due to less cohesive communication.. it's "The Ick" either way.
    - andy_ppp 2y ago
      The idea that Slack makes companies work better needs some proof behind it, I’d say the amount of extra distraction is a net negative… but as with a lot of things in software and startups nobody researches anything and everyone writes long essays about how they feel things are.
      - metadat 2y ago
        Good point, could be that it reduces friction too far in some instances. However, in general less communication doesn't seem better for the bottom line.
      - unkulunkulu 2y ago

j45 2y ago

I'm imagining a corporate slack, with information discussed in channels or private chats that exists nowhere else on the internet.. gets rolled into a model. Then, someone asks a very specific question.. conversationally.. about such a very specific scenario.. Seems plausible confidential data would get out, even if it wasn't attributed to the client. Not that it’s possible to ask an llm how a specific or random company in an industry might design something…

hackernewds 2y ago
exactly. a fun game to see why it is so hard to prevent this https://gandalf.lakera.ai/ https://gandalf.lakera.ai/
- rbalebako 2y ago
  Gandalf is a great tool for bringing awareness to AI hacking, but Lakera also trains on the prompts you provide when you play the game. See the bottom of that page. "Disclaimer: we may use the fully anonymized input to Gandalf to improve Gandalf and for Lakera AI's products and services. "
- j45 2y ago
  Sometimes the obvious questions are met with a lot of silence. I don't think I can be the only one who has had a conversation with GPT about something obscure they might know but there isn't much about online, and it either can't find anything... or finds it, and more.

__loam 2y ago

If you trained on customer data your service contains custom data.

IanCal 2y ago

The problem is this also covers very reasonable use cases. Use sampling across messages for spam detection, predicting customer retention, etc - pretty standard. Then there's cases where you could have models more like llms that can output data from the training set but you're running them for that customer.

JCM9 2y ago

Whatever lawyer wrote that should be fired. This poorly written nonsense makes it look like Slack is trying to look shady and subversive. Even if well intended this is a PR blunder.

throwaway4aday 2y ago

I think it's as clear as it can be, they go into much more detail and provide examples in their bullet points, here are some highlights: Our model learns from previous suggestions and whether or not a user joins the channel we recommend. We protect privacy while doing so by separating our model from Customer Data. We use external models (not trained on Slack messages) to evaluate topic similarity, outputting numerical scores. Our global model only makes recommendations based on these numerical scores and non-Customer Data. We do this based on historical search results and previous engagements without learning from the underlying text of the search query, result, or proxy. Simply put, our model can't reconstruct the search query or result. Instead, it learns from team-specific, contextual information like the number of times a message has been clicked in a search or an overlap in the number of words in the query and recommended message. These suggestions are local and sourced from common public message phrases in the user’s workspace. Our algorithm that picks from potential suggestions is trained globally on previously suggested and accepted completions. We protect data privacy by using rules to score the similarity between the typed text and suggestion in various ways, including only using the numerical scores and counts of past interactions in the algorithm. To do this while protecting Customer Data, we might use an etrnal model (not trained on Slack messages) to classify the sentiment of the message. Our model would then suggest an emoji only considering the frequency with which a particular emoji has been associated with messages of that sentiment in that workspace.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

hyping9 2y ago

> They need to reword this. Whoever wrote it is a liability. Wow you're so right. This multi-billion dollar company should be so thankful for your comment. I can't believe they did not consult their in-house lawyers before publishing this post! Can you believe those idiots? Luckily you are here to save the day with your superior knowledge and wisdom.