[dvt]

> At some point, the entire tech industry saw ChatGPT and fell into a collective psychosis and decided that this, this is the next big thing, and that we must pull out the stops to ensure the prophecy is fulfilled of generative AI/LLMs becoming the next big thing.

This is extremely disingenuous, ChatGPT was the fastest-growing consumer product for a reason. Part hype, part usefulness, part novelty. The main problem I have with AI haters (just like AI lovers) is that they can't just be balanced about their takes. It's not that hard to criticize the AI hypetrain without a strawman.

> I'm sure copyrighted material was already being fed into LLMs at this point (I mean, you also had people willingly feeding it in, like the example I gave above) but once the techbros caught on and wanted to accelerate this, suddenly EVERYTHING public facing was fair game to training their models.

This is also just extremely disingenous. For full disclosure, I'm technically a stakeholder here, as I wrote two books which made it into training sets (and part of two class actions), but this cat is way out of the bag. Unless you really want to start splitting hairs about "ingesting" vs "processing" vs "training" vs "transforming," Google and Yahoo and even DDG have been using copyrighted data for a quarter century, if not longer. Folks were bringing this up decades ago, especially record labels that were suing google for copy-pasting lyrics to their main search pages; were you complaining then, too? Because some people were.

> All because investors demanded it, and companies didn't want to be caught with their pants down if these inflated claims of it being the next big thing proved to be true. This is where the hate for me really started, because a lot of these companies forced AI upon you, with no means to opt out. FOMO is a hell of a drug on a corporate scale, ho-ly.

Corporate FOMO is pretty run of the mill, this shouldn't be surprising in the least. I must've done like half a dozen "blockchain hackathons" or "VR demos" back when those technologies were all the rage. I don't really see how it's that big of a big deal, other than being mildly annoying.

> You'll notice a trend here: Consent is just gone. It does not exist when AI enters the room in 90% of cases. Companies just foist it on you and tell you to shut up and like it, or leave.

Consent was gone when Google, Yahoo, etc. started indexing the entire internet. It was doubly gone when Facebook sold PII data to advertisers. It was triply gone when Experian got hacked and the SSN of every taxpayer in the USA was leaked (and no one went to jail lol). Let's stop being dramatic. It just betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how data collection works.

> Good luck avoiding AI if we buy up all the components for you to build your own computers and devices! Submit everything to the cloud, it's now the only affordable option, suckers!

Blog author and hobbyist photographer discovers free markets.

I don't mean to be dismissive, but this kind of take is boring, uninspired, and (ironically) could've just been written by ChatGPT. Come up with an interesting point or thought-provoking counter-argument and maybe people will take you seriously.

[daveidol]

Yeah I saw the headline and was interested to read a well-reasoned macro perspective on how and why attitudes have shifted towards AI, misconceptions, predictions on the future, etc.

Instead I got another one-sided unhinged rant that looks straight out of a typical Reddit post.

[happytoexplain]

>The main problem I have with AI haters (just like AI lovers) is that they can't just be balanced about their takes.

Come on. The author's take, while maybe not flawless, is far more balanced than the equivalent AI-hype-man take. All of your criticisms are not charitable.

[spacechild1]

IMO the author absolutely nails it. Yes, it might not be the most nuanced take, but they express what many of us are thinking.

> Google and Yahoo and even DDG have been using copyrighted data for a quarter century, if not longer.

Your argument boils down to: companies haven't respected copyright or user consent for a long time, so why should we now care?

The answer is: it was wrong back then and it is still wrong now, but on a completely different scale! We have reached a tipping point where many people are (rightfully) furious.

> Consent was gone when Google, Yahoo, etc. started indexing the entire internet.

People do not have a problem with Google indexing the web because they want their websites to be found. That's the entire purpose of putting stuff out on the internet. AI is now doing the opposite: traffic is directed to chatbots and platforms are flooded with AI slop.

As you said, people were already complaining when Google started to show their own summaries, preventing users from visiting the original sources. People have been complaining about Facebook drowning the frontpage with clickbait. But this time it is so much worse.

Sure, LLMs can be useful, but on the other hand the potential for abuse is humongous. People are already seeing the negative consequences and they are rightfully angry.

> Come up with an interesting point or thought-provoking counter-argument and maybe people will take you seriously.

I do think that the author made a good point by bringing up the issue of consent. We are now in a situation where I can't post anything online without AI companies possibly scraping the content and feeding it into their models without any attribution or permission. And there is no way of opting out. Don't you see a problem with that? Why should we not care?

[dvt]

> Your argument boils down to: companies haven't respected copyright or user consent for a long time, so why should we now care?

This is not a very charitable take. My argument is: that cat is out of the bag, so what do we do next? Do you have a plan? Ranting about consent or privacy or copyright won't somehow untrain these models. At least the math people put out the pretty sensible Leiden Declaration[1].

> Don't you see a problem with that? Why should we not care?

This is a lot like saying "do you not see a problem with nuclear weapons? They can wipe out humanity!"—I mean, yeah, sure I do, but ranting about the technology won't somehow put that cat back in the bag, either.

[1] https://leidendeclaration.ai/

[spacechild1]

> My argument is: that cat is out of the bag, so what do we do next?

I did not see this argument in your first post at all. Instead you tried to dismiss the author's complaints, arguing that none of their complaints are new. (Which is true in a sense, but it ignores the most important point: that of scale)

> I mean, yeah, sure I do, but ranting about the technology won't somehow put that cat back in the bag, either.

Fair enough, the author did not propose any concrete solutions. However, their analysis is still correct. The first step towards change is to acknowledge that we have a problem. Your first reply did not seem to do that, on the contrary, it seemed to downplay the authors concerns. Maybe that was not your intention, but that's how I read it.

I certainly agree that we need to find solutions. Yes, the cat is out of the bag, but with proper legal frameworks and regulations we can keep it from pissing all over the living room.

[civet_java]

> Ranting about consent or privacy or copyright won't somehow untrain these models.

On the other hand pointed, organised, public dissatisfaction and upheaval could lead to legislation requiring companies caught in the act of theft to fork over their profits to the state to be used for public good. Think about it :)