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AI haters? I don't hate AI I just don't want things I've created being used to enrich multi-billion dollar companies for free. These companies are behaving poor

AI haters? I don't hate AI I just don't want things I've created being used to enrich multi-billion dollar companies for free. These companies are behaving poorly and they should expect this kind of push back.

someone_eu 2y ago
It is not even just the copyright issue. The article completely misses the point that AI scrapers are not a "future threat of AI domination". They already do damage by DDOSing site's networking infrastructure and inflicting very real costs to a site hoster. Even when the data is completely free, like in case of Wikipedia or OpenstreetMaps, scraping it is unethical and should be illegal. Most of the open data resources have procedures, which allow downloading of the data in the archived form, without need for scraping. They are built with sharing in mind. So the arguments the article tries to use (what if it is for public good?) has no sense. 1) it is not 2) there are many ways to fetch the open data properly and respectfully.
senko 2y ago
Is this because they are multi-billion dollar companies, or because they behave poorly, or because you haven't been properly compensated for your contribution to the content on the internet? It is very likely that voting, or voting with your wallet, or probably any kind of activism, would have more impact than withdrawing from the (online) public life.
- BitterCritter 2y ago
  I’m very confused as to what my $23.45 wallet has to do with what billion dollar Ai companies do.
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
  > because they are multi-billion dollar companies, or because they behave poorly Both for me. They should be spanked for their behavior and lack of respect. I don’t want compensation though because I write open-source applications, but I want them to respect the license (which they don’t obviously). Also I don’t understand why you feel anybody is withdrawing from the internet. It’s only a tarpit and I’m sure most of those who react don’t have ChatGPT subscriptions.
- nemomarx 2y ago
  what voting with your wallet are you envisioning? I already don't pay for any ai services or touch any models. but Increasingly services that used to be helpful for me are throwing them in - YouTube premium has some sort of ai summarize things, etc. how do I signal that I don't want companies scraping content there?
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  You pose this as though there isn't a long and proud history of the Internet reacting with (sometimes unhinged) hostility to bad actors that goes ALLLLLL the way back to the BBS era. One of the first persons that tried to scam users out of money by asking for help with his tuition was doxxed by his own ISP after the aforementioned ISP got so much hatemail it crashed their servers when his message was posted to every message board by a script which caused prolific BBS users to download it possibly several hundred times, paying for the privilege of each message.
- klabb3 2y ago
  > because you haven't been properly compensated for your contribution to the content on the internet Copyright is - like it or not - the way we regulate commercial intellectual "property". I can see different IP doctrines, and I don't necessarily defend the current one. It's not derived from real property rights, but rather in ensuring economic incentives for people to make stuff that otherwise wouldn't have been made, such as pharmaceuticals and hollywood movies, to simulate property rights. It's an imperfect solution which is there to ensure economic incentives and balance, and most importantly, it's the one we got. But then, multi-billion dollar corporations feed your copyright protected (you thought) works straight into their supply chain, wouldn't you be pissed? It's no a small part either, but their models would be extremely nerfed without copyrighted data. Forget AI, forget tech, just look at it from a purely economic ecosystem perspective. Crying "fair use" during a highway robbery probably don't sit right with many, I hope.
- smt88 2y ago
  I live in the US, and I didn't have an option to vote against Big Tech. Both parties were deeply sycophantic toward that industry.
- BizarreByte 2y ago
  > or because you haven't been properly compensated for your contribution to the content on the internet? This comes across as snark, but I will assume you are well meaning. I have put code, guides, and videos on the internet for other people to consume for free in the hope that those people find that stuff useful. I did not put stuff on the internet for it to be hoovered up and frankly stolen by massive AI companies to enrich themselves. If they are going to use my things in their commercial product than yes, they should be compensating me for that. > Is this because they are multi-billion dollar companies, or because they behave poorly It's also both of these. > It is very likely that voting, or voting with your wallet, or probably any kind of activism, would have more impact than withdrawing from the (online) public life. The only true control I have is withdrawing. I don't give these companies money, I don't live in a country that can meaningfully legislate against them, and I would consider withdrawing a form of activism. I refuse to support these AI companies in any way (as long as they continue to be bad actors) and I have taken down all Youtube videos I've created, my personal website, and I have moved all my code to a self hosted, private Git service in order to deny them my work.
doublerabbit 2y ago
I hate people who call ML, AI. It's a glorified librarian at best
- grajaganDev 2y ago
  AI is the broader concept. ML is an application of AI.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    Token prediction is now the unified concept, although perhaps to be replaced by direct sequence prediction. Token prediction is both ML and AI.
  - doublerabbit 2y ago
    Yes, one could say ML could be an application for AI but it's still not Artificial Intelligence. As an engine is an application for a car, you don't call an engine a car. ML is programmed information, and theres nothing artificial about that. What is AI about it? Show me something AI from ML. All algorithms are defined, all tokens are defined. All guardrails are defined. All of it has been programmed by humans that which isn't artificial. If it was AI then it would generate itself for itself.
    - grajaganDev 2y ago
      I am offering the generally accepted definitions of these terms as some HN readers might not be familiar with them. If you don't think that ML is AI, I am fine with that.
      - doublerabbit 2y ago
        Cool. I hate the term of calling AI because its an excuse to throw out a flawed pretentious innovation where by it can be flogged as a product to sucker those who don't know better. "Cloud Servers" anyone? Glorified dedicated servers.
    - 2y ago
trod1234 2y ago
Well its soft propaganda, what do you expect, they want to force a false dichotomy to shape public perception. It is immaterial that these AI companies ignore contractual obligations (TOS), and are in fact performing attacks on said sites (DDOS is an attack). In the last 3 months, there have been 4 or 5 small project that I regularly frequent where their sites that have been knocked offline as a result of this type of bad behavior, where they definitely are not following the robots.txt. The article is just bad shilled journalism.
lowlevel 2y ago
Yeah, I think the title of this post and the article are a little tilted… we have every right to say no or not cooperate with something we don’t believe in.
rsynnott 2y ago
> I don't hate AI I just don't want things I've created being used to enrich multi-billion dollar companies for free. I mean I think in the minds of AI evangelists (particularly of the quasi-religious "LLMs will bring forth a benevolent god-like superintelligence" variety), those are essentially the same thing. (Yeah, it's ridiculous characterisation, but given the source it shouldn't be _surprising_ characterisation.)

someone_eu 2y ago

It is not even just the copyright issue. The article completely misses the point that AI scrapers are not a "future threat of AI domination". They already do damage by DDOSing site's networking infrastructure and inflicting very real costs to a site hoster. Even when the data is completely free, like in case of Wikipedia or OpenstreetMaps, scraping it is unethical and should be illegal. Most of the open data resources have procedures, which allow downloading of the data in the archived form, without need for scraping. They are built with sharing in mind. So the arguments the article tries to use (what if it is for public good?) has no sense. 1) it is not 2) there are many ways to fetch the open data properly and respectfully.

senko 2y ago

Is this because they are multi-billion dollar companies, or because they behave poorly, or because you haven't been properly compensated for your contribution to the content on the internet? It is very likely that voting, or voting with your wallet, or probably any kind of activism, would have more impact than withdrawing from the (online) public life.

BitterCritter 2y ago
I’m very confused as to what my $23.45 wallet has to do with what billion dollar Ai companies do.
JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
> because they are multi-billion dollar companies, or because they behave poorly Both for me. They should be spanked for their behavior and lack of respect. I don’t want compensation though because I write open-source applications, but I want them to respect the license (which they don’t obviously). Also I don’t understand why you feel anybody is withdrawing from the internet. It’s only a tarpit and I’m sure most of those who react don’t have ChatGPT subscriptions.
nemomarx 2y ago
what voting with your wallet are you envisioning? I already don't pay for any ai services or touch any models. but Increasingly services that used to be helpful for me are throwing them in - YouTube premium has some sort of ai summarize things, etc. how do I signal that I don't want companies scraping content there?
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
You pose this as though there isn't a long and proud history of the Internet reacting with (sometimes unhinged) hostility to bad actors that goes ALLLLLL the way back to the BBS era. One of the first persons that tried to scam users out of money by asking for help with his tuition was doxxed by his own ISP after the aforementioned ISP got so much hatemail it crashed their servers when his message was posted to every message board by a script which caused prolific BBS users to download it possibly several hundred times, paying for the privilege of each message.
klabb3 2y ago
> because you haven't been properly compensated for your contribution to the content on the internet Copyright is - like it or not - the way we regulate commercial intellectual "property". I can see different IP doctrines, and I don't necessarily defend the current one. It's not derived from real property rights, but rather in ensuring economic incentives for people to make stuff that otherwise wouldn't have been made, such as pharmaceuticals and hollywood movies, to simulate property rights. It's an imperfect solution which is there to ensure economic incentives and balance, and most importantly, it's the one we got. But then, multi-billion dollar corporations feed your copyright protected (you thought) works straight into their supply chain, wouldn't you be pissed? It's no a small part either, but their models would be extremely nerfed without copyrighted data. Forget AI, forget tech, just look at it from a purely economic ecosystem perspective. Crying "fair use" during a highway robbery probably don't sit right with many, I hope.
smt88 2y ago
I live in the US, and I didn't have an option to vote against Big Tech. Both parties were deeply sycophantic toward that industry.
BizarreByte 2y ago
> or because you haven't been properly compensated for your contribution to the content on the internet? This comes across as snark, but I will assume you are well meaning. I have put code, guides, and videos on the internet for other people to consume for free in the hope that those people find that stuff useful. I did not put stuff on the internet for it to be hoovered up and frankly stolen by massive AI companies to enrich themselves. If they are going to use my things in their commercial product than yes, they should be compensating me for that. > Is this because they are multi-billion dollar companies, or because they behave poorly It's also both of these. > It is very likely that voting, or voting with your wallet, or probably any kind of activism, would have more impact than withdrawing from the (online) public life. The only true control I have is withdrawing. I don't give these companies money, I don't live in a country that can meaningfully legislate against them, and I would consider withdrawing a form of activism. I refuse to support these AI companies in any way (as long as they continue to be bad actors) and I have taken down all Youtube videos I've created, my personal website, and I have moved all my code to a self hosted, private Git service in order to deny them my work.

doublerabbit 2y ago

I hate people who call ML, AI. It's a glorified librarian at best

grajaganDev 2y ago
AI is the broader concept. ML is an application of AI.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  Token prediction is now the unified concept, although perhaps to be replaced by direct sequence prediction. Token prediction is both ML and AI.
- doublerabbit 2y ago
  Yes, one could say ML could be an application for AI but it's still not Artificial Intelligence. As an engine is an application for a car, you don't call an engine a car. ML is programmed information, and theres nothing artificial about that. What is AI about it? Show me something AI from ML. All algorithms are defined, all tokens are defined. All guardrails are defined. All of it has been programmed by humans that which isn't artificial. If it was AI then it would generate itself for itself.
  - grajaganDev 2y ago
    I am offering the generally accepted definitions of these terms as some HN readers might not be familiar with them. If you don't think that ML is AI, I am fine with that.
    - doublerabbit 2y ago
      Cool. I hate the term of calling AI because its an excuse to throw out a flawed pretentious innovation where by it can be flogged as a product to sucker those who don't know better. "Cloud Servers" anyone? Glorified dedicated servers.
  - 2y ago

trod1234 2y ago

Well its soft propaganda, what do you expect, they want to force a false dichotomy to shape public perception. It is immaterial that these AI companies ignore contractual obligations (TOS), and are in fact performing attacks on said sites (DDOS is an attack). In the last 3 months, there have been 4 or 5 small project that I regularly frequent where their sites that have been knocked offline as a result of this type of bad behavior, where they definitely are not following the robots.txt. The article is just bad shilled journalism.

lowlevel 2y ago

Yeah, I think the title of this post and the article are a little tilted… we have every right to say no or not cooperate with something we don’t believe in.

rsynnott 2y ago

> I don't hate AI I just don't want things I've created being used to enrich multi-billion dollar companies for free. I mean I think in the minds of AI evangelists (particularly of the quasi-religious "LLMs will bring forth a benevolent god-like superintelligence" variety), those are essentially the same thing. (Yeah, it's ridiculous characterisation, but given the source it shouldn't be _surprising_ characterisation.)