5 ms·
Not good. These tools (from search engines to AI) are increasingly part of our brains, and we should have confidentiality in using them. I already think too muc
by matthewdgreen 1y ago
Not good. These tools (from search engines to AI) are increasingly part of our brains, and we should have confidentiality in using them. I already think too much about everything I put into ChatGPT, since my default assumption is it will all be made public. Now I also have to consider the possibility that random discussions will be used against me and taken out of context if I'm ever accused of committing a crime. (Like all the weird questions I ask about anonymous communications and encryption!) So everything I do with these tools will be with an eye towards the fact that it's all preserved and I'll have to explain it, which has a huge chilling effect on using the system. Just make it easy for me not to log history.
- hdseggbj 1y agoJust give the ai to user relationship a protection like attorney client privilege. Edit: ai has already passed the bar exam.
- wizzwizz4 1y agoIt only "passes the bar exam" when AI, or some other flawed process, is the examiner. See e.g. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-024-09396-9 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-024-09396-9 for a debunk.
- hdseggbj 1y agoThat's not a debunk. "Calls into question" does not equal "in truth, it failed the exam. "
- hluska 1y agoAttorney-client privilege has limits. For obvious reasons I haven’t read any affidavits associated with the warrant, but it sure sounds like this would fall outside the bounds of attorney-client privilege.
- matthewdgreen 1y agoWith an attorney you have a clear sense of when you pass outside of that privilege. With a friend or colleague you have a social sense of what's going to remain confidential, plus memories aren't perfect. "Preserving, recording and reporting every word" is not the same as any of these things. This cannot be the world we all have to live in going forward; it's not safe or healthy.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jasonfarnon 1y agoSeems natural to extend privilege here. People are using it as a therapist.
- Topfi 1y agoThere are a lot of counterarguments I could bring up, but just of the top, plainly, just because people use LLMs as therapists, lawyers, doctors, deities, doesn't make LLMs such. My personal believes (we should not rely on models for such things at this stage, let's not anthropomorphize, etc.) to one side, let me ask, do you think if I used my friend Steve, who is not a lawyer but sounds very convincingly like one, to advice me on a legal dispute, that should be covered by attorney client privilege? Cause, even given the scenario that LLMs suddenly become perfectly reliable enough to verifiably carry out legal/medical/etc. services to a point where they can actually be accepted into day-to-day practice by actual professionals and the companies are willing to take on the financial risks of any malpractice for using their models in such areas (as part of enterprise offerings for an extra fee of course), that still wouldn't and shouldn't mean that your run-of-the-mill private ChatGPT instance has the same privileges or protections that we afford to e.g. patient data when handled digitally as part of medical practice. At best (again, I dislike anthropomorphizing models, but it is easier to talk about such a scenario this way), a hypothetical ChatGPT that provides 100% accurate legal information would be akin to a private person who just happens to know a lot about the law, but never got accredited and does not have the same responsibilities. Again though, we are far from that hypothetical anyways, "people" using LLMs that way does not change this fact. I know, unfortunately, there are people who are convinced that current day LLMs have already attain Godhood and are merely biding their time and that doesn't become real either, just because they act according to their assumptions. I really struggle to understand, nor do I see any cogent arguments across this comment section why current day LLMs in such a scenario should be treated differently to e.g. a PKM software or cloud hosted diary and afforded the same legal protections (or lack thereof depending on viewpoint, personal stance and your local data privacy laws).
- hdseggbj 1y agoYou'll find these laws privileging certain folks are contoured and controlled by the individuals who have already been granted such privilege to discourage and limit competition. Not because it's good in any way for the client. Protectionism hurts all of society to benefit a few.
- VHRanger 1y ago> Not good. These tools (from search engines to AI) are increasingly part of our brains, and we should have confidentiality in using them. Don't expect that from products with advertising business models
- ChadNauseam 1y agoOpenAI and Anthropic do not have advertising business models
- bigyabai 1y agoIf you're not the customer, you're most likely the product.
- bbor 1y agoI love the saying, but there's something of an exception here. Both companies very openly have singularity business models.
- bigyabai 1y agoBusiness models make money. If your business model is theoretical, we call that "research" instead. Real research is done on prior art. We research things because prior studies tell us that they are feasible, otherwise you are wasting valuable time on a snipe chase. There is no reproducible or substantial evidence that AGI or singularities exist. It is another Big Tech marketing lie, no different from the reneged "don't be evil" or "privacy is a human right" mottos.
- bbor 1y agoThanks for the interesting response! I disagree on a few points, though: If your business model is theoretical, we call that "research" instead. Are/were Uber and Lyft "research" companies, then? Is Reddit a research company? Edison Electric? There is no reproducible or substantial evidence that AGI or singularities exist There is also no substantial evidence that the sun will rise tomorrow, that climate change will continue, or a million other things that are critical to science. Physical science is empirical in that it inherently requires physical experiments, but that is not the only cognitive tool in play by a long shot. Regardless: tell them, not me! I'm just reporting what I'd say is an objective fact: they are planning based on scientific predictions of an intelligence explosion -- at least a soft/cybernetic one if not a scarily-fast/purely-digital one. It is another Big Tech marketing lie I think there's a single fact that counters this common sentiment: there is no way in hell that they'd break ground on the largest private infrastructure projects in human history as a marketing stunt. Companies are woefully-shortsighted these days, but that would be another level of foolishness altogether. They very well may be wrong of course, but I think you're doing yourself a disservice to assume they're lying about it.
- hluska 1y agoSerious question. Why should someone have more privacy in a software system than they do within their home?
- eqvinox 1y agoThey maybe (not taking a stance) shouldn't, but I don't think this argument is as simple as one thinks. Doing surveillance on someone's home generally requires a court order beforehand. And depending on the country (I don't believe this applies to the US), words spoken at home also enjoy extended legal protection, i.e. they can't subpoena a friend you had a discussion with. Now the real question is, do you consider it a conversation or a letter. Any opened¹ letters you have lying around at home can be grabbed with a court-ordered search warrant. But a conversation—you might need the warrant beforehand? It's tricky. (Again, exact legal situation depends on the country.) ¹ Secrecy of correspondence frequently only applies to letters in sealed envelopes. But then you can get another warrant for the correspondence…
- Topfi 1y agoHonest question, why consider the personal home, letters or spoken words at all, considering most countries around the world already have ample and far more applicable laws/precedent for cloud hosted private documents? For the LLM input, that maps 1:1 to documents a person has written and uploaded to cloud storage. And I don't see how generated output could weigh into that at all.
- matthewdgreen 1y agoA simple answer to this is: I use local storage or end-to-end encrypted cloud backup for private stuff, and I don't for work stuff. And I make those decisions on a document-by-document basis, since I have the choice of using both technologies. The question you are asking is: should I approach my daily search tasks with the same degree of thoughtfulness and caution that I do with my document storage choices, and do I have the same options? And the answers I would give are: * As a consumer I don't want to have to think about this. I want to be able to answer some private questions or have conversations with a trusted confidant without those conversations being logged to my identity. * As an OpenAI executive, I would also probably not want my users to have to think about this risk, since a lot of the future value in AI assistants is the knowledge that you can trust them like members of your family. If OpenAI can't provide that, something else will. * As a member of a society, I really do not love the idea that we're using legal standards developed for 1990s email to protect citizens from privacy violations involving technologies that can think and even testify against you.
- tbrownaw 1y ago> These tools (from search engines to AI) are increasingly part of our brains, and we should have confidentiality in using them. But you do, just like you have confidentiality in what you write in your diary.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- throwmeaway222 1y agoI think there is a non-zero chance they had no idea about this guy until OpenAI employees uncovered this, reported it, and additional cell phone data backed up the entire thing.
- matthewdgreen 1y agoWhy do employees need to be involved? It's AI. It is entirely capable of doing the surveillance, monitoring and reporting entirely by itself. If not now, then in the near future.