4 ms·

The current situation with the way big tech plays fast and loose with other people's data, I don't suppose the siloed nature of geological data is going to get

The current situation with the way big tech plays fast and loose with other people's data, I don't suppose the siloed nature of geological data is going to get better any time soon. Perhaps creating secure private clouds for scientists, away from AI scrapers etc that scientists can access, with associated counter-surveillance, is the way forward. I'm a GIS guy working on cloud native tech, but with a focus on privacy. I have a local-first Mac native product nearing beta. I'm thinking a lot about what data sharing options can be at the moment.

geokon 9mo ago
i dont see what the problem is. AI is mostly irrelevant. okay they scrape your data.. but then what? If the data isn't offically published and doesnt have a DOI, anything built on that wont be accepted Some people scrape charts in publications to extract data. This has been done for a while. Maybe AI could automate this step. Thatd be useful
- willtemperley 9mo ago
  I understand that publications are the currency of academics but they're largely irrelevant in business. Geological data are valuable and if an oil exploration company finds a nice dataset they can scrape, they're not going to publish it. From a pure business perspective, AI is largely about copyright circumvention. The laws are lagging and people are making serious money from data theft.
  - geokon 9mo ago
    Am I understanding it correctly. So internally if a company is using a competitor's stolen data directly, then if anyone finds out they're in legal trouble. But if they train a model and then use the model, then they're in the clear?
    - willtemperley 9mo ago
      Yes I think there's evidence for that. Looking at recent precedents, even if the data are illegally downloaded, big tech has been getting away with using copyrighted data, for example: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/big-tech-wins-in-copyright-cases-come-with-strings-attached https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/big-tech-wins-in-c...
    - fc417fc802 9mo ago
      No. Maybe. It depends. If the other party can prove you broke into their system then you've got a problem. If you redistribute something that's copyrighted you've got a problem. Merely possessing something isn't a problem in and of itself ... probably? Unless the other party can demonstrate damages at least.
  - fc417fc802 9mo ago
    Aren't you describing trade secrets? I don't see how AI makes that any better or worse. If your competitor gets his hands on your proprietary dataset you're sunk regardless of AI, right? I don't see how copyright enters into it. I doubt that "oh hey I published this very valuable and proprietary dataset online but it's copyright me so pretty please don't use it to make money" was ever going to get you anywhere to begin with.

geokon 9mo ago

i dont see what the problem is. AI is mostly irrelevant. okay they scrape your data.. but then what? If the data isn't offically published and doesnt have a DOI, anything built on that wont be accepted Some people scrape charts in publications to extract data. This has been done for a while. Maybe AI could automate this step. Thatd be useful

willtemperley 9mo ago
I understand that publications are the currency of academics but they're largely irrelevant in business. Geological data are valuable and if an oil exploration company finds a nice dataset they can scrape, they're not going to publish it. From a pure business perspective, AI is largely about copyright circumvention. The laws are lagging and people are making serious money from data theft.
- geokon 9mo ago
  Am I understanding it correctly. So internally if a company is using a competitor's stolen data directly, then if anyone finds out they're in legal trouble. But if they train a model and then use the model, then they're in the clear?
  - willtemperley 9mo ago
    Yes I think there's evidence for that. Looking at recent precedents, even if the data are illegally downloaded, big tech has been getting away with using copyrighted data, for example: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/big-tech-wins-in-copyright-cases-come-with-strings-attached https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/big-tech-wins-in-c...
  - fc417fc802 9mo ago
    No. Maybe. It depends. If the other party can prove you broke into their system then you've got a problem. If you redistribute something that's copyrighted you've got a problem. Merely possessing something isn't a problem in and of itself ... probably? Unless the other party can demonstrate damages at least.
- fc417fc802 9mo ago
  Aren't you describing trade secrets? I don't see how AI makes that any better or worse. If your competitor gets his hands on your proprietary dataset you're sunk regardless of AI, right? I don't see how copyright enters into it. I doubt that "oh hey I published this very valuable and proprietary dataset online but it's copyright me so pretty please don't use it to make money" was ever going to get you anywhere to begin with.