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"Stealing data" seems pretty strong. Web scraping is legal. If you put text on the public Internet other people can read it or do statistical processing on it.

"Stealing data" seems pretty strong. Web scraping is legal. If you put text on the public Internet other people can read it or do statistical processing on it. What do you mean he was "stealing data"? Was he hacking into somewhere?

canoebuilder 2y ago
In a lot of ways, the statistical processing is a novel form of information retrieval. So the issue is somewhat like if 20 years ago Google was indexing the web, then decided to just rehost all the indexed content on their own servers and monetize the views instead linking to the original source of the content.
- sashank_1509 2y ago
  It’s not anything like rehosting though. Assume I read a bunch of web articles, synthesize that knowledge and then answer a bunch of question on the web. I am performing some form of information retrieval. Do I need to pay the folks who wrote those articles even though they provided it for free on the web? It seems like the only difference between me and ChatGPT is the scale at which ChatGPT operates. ChatGPT can memorize a very large chunk of the web and keep answering millions of questions while I can memorize a small piece of the web and only answer a few questions. And maybe due to that, it requires new rules, new laws and new definitions for the better of society. But it’s nowhere near as clear cut as the Google example you provide.
  - underbiding 2y ago
    I love this argument. "Seems like only difference between me and ChatGPT is absolutely everything". You can't be flippant about scale not being a factor here. It absolutely is a factor. Pretending that ChatGPT is like a person synthesizing knowledge is an absurd legal argument, it is absolutely nothing like a person, its a machine at the end of the day. Scale absolutely matters in debates like this.
    - NeutralCrane 2y ago
      Why?
      - bmacho 2y ago
        Why not? A fast piece of metal is different from a slow piece of metal, from a legal perspective. You can't just say that "this really bad thing that causes a lot of problems is just like this not so bad thing that haven't caused any problem, only more so". Or at least it's not a correct argument. When it is the scale that causes the harm, stating that the harmful thing is the same as the harmless except the scale, is like.. weird.
        sashank_1509 2y ago
        So in your view, when a human does it, he causes a minute of harm so we can ignore it, but chatGPT causes a massive amount of harm, so we need to penalize it. Do you realize how radical your position is? You’re saying a human who reads free work that others put out on the internet, synthesizes that knowledge and then answers someone else’s question is a minute of evil, that we can ignore. This is beyond weird, I don’t think anyone on earth/history would agree with this characterization. If anything, the human is doing a good thing, but when ChatGPT does it at a much larger scale it’s no longer good, it becomes evil? This seems more like thinly veiled logic to disguise anxiety that humans are being replaced by AI.
        bmacho 2y ago
        > So in your view, when a human does it, he causes a minute of harm so we can ignore it, but chatGPT causes a massive amount of harm, so we need to penalize it. Do you realize how radical your position is? Yes, that's my view. No, I don't think that this is radical at all. For some reasons or another, it is indeed quiet uncommon. (Well, not in law, our politicians are perfectly capable of making laws based on the size of danger/harm.) However, I haven't yet met anyone, who was able to defend the opposite position, e.g. slow bullets = fast bullets, drawing someone = photographing someone, memorizing something = recording something, and so on. Can you?
neuroelectron 2y ago
When you use some webpages, it forces you to agree to an EULA that might preclude web scraping. NYTimes is such a webpage which is why they were sued. This is evidence that OpenAI didn't care about the law. Someone with internal communications about this could completely destroy the company!!!
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

canoebuilder 2y ago

In a lot of ways, the statistical processing is a novel form of information retrieval. So the issue is somewhat like if 20 years ago Google was indexing the web, then decided to just rehost all the indexed content on their own servers and monetize the views instead linking to the original source of the content.

sashank_1509 2y ago
It’s not anything like rehosting though. Assume I read a bunch of web articles, synthesize that knowledge and then answer a bunch of question on the web. I am performing some form of information retrieval. Do I need to pay the folks who wrote those articles even though they provided it for free on the web? It seems like the only difference between me and ChatGPT is the scale at which ChatGPT operates. ChatGPT can memorize a very large chunk of the web and keep answering millions of questions while I can memorize a small piece of the web and only answer a few questions. And maybe due to that, it requires new rules, new laws and new definitions for the better of society. But it’s nowhere near as clear cut as the Google example you provide.
- underbiding 2y ago
  I love this argument. "Seems like only difference between me and ChatGPT is absolutely everything". You can't be flippant about scale not being a factor here. It absolutely is a factor. Pretending that ChatGPT is like a person synthesizing knowledge is an absurd legal argument, it is absolutely nothing like a person, its a machine at the end of the day. Scale absolutely matters in debates like this.
  - NeutralCrane 2y ago
    Why?
    - bmacho 2y ago
      Why not? A fast piece of metal is different from a slow piece of metal, from a legal perspective. You can't just say that "this really bad thing that causes a lot of problems is just like this not so bad thing that haven't caused any problem, only more so". Or at least it's not a correct argument. When it is the scale that causes the harm, stating that the harmful thing is the same as the harmless except the scale, is like.. weird.
      - sashank_1509 2y ago
        So in your view, when a human does it, he causes a minute of harm so we can ignore it, but chatGPT causes a massive amount of harm, so we need to penalize it. Do you realize how radical your position is? You’re saying a human who reads free work that others put out on the internet, synthesizes that knowledge and then answers someone else’s question is a minute of evil, that we can ignore. This is beyond weird, I don’t think anyone on earth/history would agree with this characterization. If anything, the human is doing a good thing, but when ChatGPT does it at a much larger scale it’s no longer good, it becomes evil? This seems more like thinly veiled logic to disguise anxiety that humans are being replaced by AI.
        bmacho 2y ago
        > So in your view, when a human does it, he causes a minute of harm so we can ignore it, but chatGPT causes a massive amount of harm, so we need to penalize it. Do you realize how radical your position is? Yes, that's my view. No, I don't think that this is radical at all. For some reasons or another, it is indeed quiet uncommon. (Well, not in law, our politicians are perfectly capable of making laws based on the size of danger/harm.) However, I haven't yet met anyone, who was able to defend the opposite position, e.g. slow bullets = fast bullets, drawing someone = photographing someone, memorizing something = recording something, and so on. Can you?

neuroelectron 2y ago

When you use some webpages, it forces you to agree to an EULA that might preclude web scraping. NYTimes is such a webpage which is why they were sued. This is evidence that OpenAI didn't care about the law. Someone with internal communications about this could completely destroy the company!!!

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]