3 ms·

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

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.

3 ms·

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

by willtemperley 9mo ago

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.