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by aguaviva 662 days ago
What a senseless, selfish, petty thing to attempt.

I would apply those adjectives to the companies (or researchers out for accolades and citations) who attempt to build their systems based on the non-consensual data extraction in the first place.

To not only deprive systems ultimately benefitting humanity ...

By and large, these systems are built to finance the lush early retirements of the founders, investors and high-level ICs of these companies -- not to benefit humanity. Whether they even benefit humanity as a side effect is very much open to question.

If these companies won't pay, or even condescend to ask permission for access - fuck 'em.

1 comments

No one needs consent to learn from public information. If an AI can look at your drawing and code, then later draw a correct elbow and make the right API call for someone, they have benefitted without taking anything away from you. To try to stop this process because you think you deserve royalties and consent every time someone uses a fact they learned from you would be absurdly entitled.
If an AI can look at your drawing and code, then later draw a correct elbow and make the right API call for someone, they have benefitted without taking anything away from you.

This is like saying if a publishing company takes excerpts from your work, and builds products from it -- without your permission, and of course without paying you royalties of any kind -- they have benefitted without taking anything away from you.

The tech companies call this "learning" of course, but that's just subterfuge.