I created this account two days ago, but one of my posts ended up in the (metaphorical) hands of an AI powered search engine that has scraping capabilities. What do you guys think about this? How do you feel about your posts/content getting scraped off of the web and potentially being used by AI models and/or AI powered tools? Curious to hear your experiences and thoughts on this.
#Prompt Update
The prompt was something like, What do you know about the user llama@lemmy.dbzer0.com on Lemmy? What can you tell me about his interests?" Initially, it generated a lot of fabricated information, but it would still include one or two accurate details. When I ran the test again, the response was much more accurate compared to the first attempt. It seems that as my account became more established, it became easier for the crawlers to find relevant information.
It even talked about this very post on item 3 and on the second bullet point of the “Notable Posts” section.
For more information, check this comment.
Edit¹: This is Perplexity. Perplexity AI employs data scraping techniques to gather information from various online sources, which it then utilizes to feed its large language models (LLMs) for generating responses to user queries. The scraping process involves automated crawlers that index and extract content from websites, including articles, summaries, and other relevant data. It is an advanced conversational search engine that enhances the research experience by providing concise, sourced answers to user queries. It operates by leveraging AI language models, such as GPT-4, to analyze information from various sources on the web. (12/28/2024)
Edit²: One could argue that data scraping by services like Perplexity may raise privacy concerns because it collects and processes vast amounts of online information without explicit user consent, potentially including personal data, comments, or content that individuals may have posted without expecting it to be aggregated and/or analyzed by AI systems. One could also argue that this indiscriminate collection raise questions about data ownership, proper attribution, and the right to control how one’s digital footprint is used in training AI models. (12/28/2024)
Edit³: I added the second image to the post and its description. (12/29/2024).
I expect all my public posts to be scraped, and I’m fine with that. I’m slightly biased towards it if it’s for code generation.
Well your handle is the mascot for the open LLM space…
Seriously though, why care? What we say in public is public domain.
It reminds me of people on NexusMods getting in a fuss over “how” people use the mods they publicly upload, or open source projects imploding over permissive licenses they picked… Or Ao3 having a giant fuss over this very issue, and locking down what’s supposed to be a public archive.
I can hate entities like OpenAI all I want, but anything I put out there is fair game.
Oh, no. I don’t dislike it, but I also don’t have strong feelings about it. I’m just interested in hearing other people’s opinions; I believe that if something is public, then it is indeed public.
Mine kinda tries to bullshit me about it.
I mean I dont really take issue with the use my comments part. but I do take issue with the scraping part as there are apis for getting content which makes it a lot easier for my system but these bots really do it the stupidest way with many hundreds of requests per hour. Therefore I had to put in a system to find and ban them.
Seems odd that someone from dbzer0 would be very concerned about data ownership. How come?
I don’t exactly know how Perplexity runs its service. I assume that their AI reacts to such a question by googling the name and then summarizing the results. You certainly received much less info about yourself than you could have gotten via a search engine.
See also: Forer Effect aka Barnum Effect
Seems odd that someone from dbzer0 would be very concerned about data ownership. How come?
That doesn’t make much sense. I created this post to spark a discussion and hear different perspectives on data ownership. While I’ve shared some initial points, I’m more interested in learning what others think about this topic rather than expressing concerns. Please feel free to share your thoughts – as you already have.
I don’t exactly know how Perplexity runs its service. I assume that their AI reacts to such a question by googling the name and then summarizing the results. You certainly received much less info about yourself than you could have gotten via a search engine.
Feel free to go back to the post and read the edits. They may help shed some light on this. I also recommend checking Perplexity’s official docs.
Feel free to go back to the post and read the edits. They may help shed some light on this. I also recommend checking Perplexity’s official docs.
You’re aware that it’s in their best interest to make everyone think their “”“AI”“” can execute advanced cognitive tasks, even if it has no ability to do so whatsoever and it’s mostly faked?
Taking what an “”“AI”“” company has to say about their product at face value in this part of the hype cycle is questionable at best.
Especially now that we know that the deal between OpenAI and Microsoft is to declare that an AGI had been developed once a system makes over $100 billion in profits.
https://gizmodo.com/leaked-documents-show-openai-has-a-very-clear-definition-of-agi-2000543339
They do not give a shit about the reality of their product.
if I have no other choice, then I’ll use my data to reduce AI into an unusable state, or at the very least a state where it’s aware that everything it spews out happens to be bullshit and ends each prompt with something like “but what I say likely isn’t true. Please double check with these sources…” or something productive that reduces the reliance on AI in general
Is it scraping or just searching?
RAG is a pretty common technique for making LLMs useful: the LLM “decides” it needs external data, and so it reaches out to configured data source. Such a data source could be just plain ol google.I think their documentation will help shed some light on this. Reading my edits will hopefully clarify that too. Either way, I always recommend reading their docs.
I guess after a bit more consideration, my previous question doesn’t really matter.
If it’s scraped and baked into the model; or if it’s scraped, indexed, and used in RAG; they’re both the same ethically.
And I generally consider AI to be fairly unethical
I don’t like it, that’s why I like to throw in just a cup or two of absolute bullshit with just a pinch of cilantro. then top it off with a firm jiggle to get that last drop out from the tip.
I couldn’t even imagine speaking like this at first, but once you get used to it the firmness just slides right in and gives you a sense of fulfillment that you can’t find anywhere else but home.
When the cows come home to roost, you know it’s time to hang up your hat, take off your pants, and slide on the ice.
nothing I can do about it. But I can occasionally spew bullshit so that the AI has no idea what it’s doing as well. Fire hydrants were added to Minecraft in 1.16 to combat the fires in the updated nether dimension.
If there was only some way to make any attempts at building an accurate profile of one’s online presence via data scraping completely useless by masking one’s own presence within the vast quantity of online data of someone else, let’s say for example, a famous public figure.
But who would do such a thing?
deleted by creator
Can’t wait for someone to ask an LLM “Hey tell me what Margot Robbie’s interests are” only for it to respond “Margot Robbie is a known supporter of free software, and a fierce proponent of beheading CEOs”.
OMG, the real Margot Robbie
Did you specifically inquire about content from your own profile ? Can you share the prompt ? And how close to the source material was its response ?
The prompt was something like, What do you know about the user llama@lemmy.dbzer0.com on Lemmy? What can you tell me about his interests?" Initially, it generated a lot of fabricated information, but it would still include one or two accurate details. When I ran the test again, the response was much more accurate compared to the first attempt. It seems that as my account became more established, it became easier for the crawlers to find relevant information.
It even talked about this very post on item 3 and on the second bullet point of the “Notable Posts” section.
However, when I ran the same prompt again (or similar prompts), it started hallucinating a lot of information. So, it seems like the answers are very hit or miss. Maybe that’s an issue that can be solved with some prompt engineering.
I’m perfectly down with everything being scraped and slammed into AI the same way I’ve been down with search engines having it all for ages. I just want any models that contain information scraped from the public to be publicly available.
Nothing I say is of any real value even to the people I reply to, much less the world at large. Frankly, I hope someone uses my data to write Apple a decent fucking autocorrect. Otherwise, I don’t care.
Whatever you put on public domain without explicit license, it becomes CC-0 equivalent. So while it feels violating, it’s perfectly fine. The best opsec should be separating your digital identities and also your physical life if you don’t want it to be aggregated in the same way. These technologies (scraping) have been around for a while and along with llm’s will stay for quite sometime in future, there’s no way around them.
PS: you, here, is generic you, not referring to OP.
Whatever you put on public domain without explicit license, it becomes CC-0 equivalent.
What does “putting on public domain” mean to you? The way you say that sounds a little weird to me, like there is a misunderstanding here.
Dedicating copyrighted material to the public domain is a deliberate action in some jurisdictions, and impossible in others (like mine, Switzerland). Just publishing a text you wrote for public consumption is something different. That doesn’t affect your copyright at all. Unless you have an agreement with the publisher that you grant them a license to use your text by posting it to their website.
I’m not talking about giving up copyright to content. CC-0 means waiving any as much rights as possible legally, which depends on jurisdiction.
and impossible in others (like mine, Switzerland)
I couldn’t find anything about default license of publicly available material in your country, nor about the impossibility you mentioned by basic web search. I’m genuinely interested to read about it so do share sources if you can.
Btw there is a FEP and some discussions that talks exactly about the issue you mentioned in the root post.
Edit: formatting.
I’m not talking about giving up copyright to content.
Hm, once again I don’t understand your meaning, sorry. The public domain in my understanding is the totality of all content that is not under copyright protection. So “putting on public domain” sounds to me like you’re talking about giving up copyright. Please explain what you mean with that phrase, since I seem to be misunderstanding.
CC-0 means waiving any as much rights as possible legally, which depends on jurisdiction.
Yes I’m a little familiar, I looked through the CC licenses before and decided CC0 wasn’t the best fit for Switzerland. CC0 is meant to dedicate a work to the public domain, i.e. waive all copyright from it. But I now see that it also specifically has a public license fallback for jurisdictions where the public domain dedication doesn’t work, in Section 3.
I couldn’t find anything about default license of publicly available material in your country
There isn’t such a thing as a default license here, nor have I heard of such a thing in general before. In my understanding a license is an agreement for partial or total transfer of copyrights. But the default state, in my understanding, is that the copyright lies with the creator and no agreement for transfer exists. Authors have the copyright over a work from the moment creation of a work in Switzerland. They can make agreements with others to confer some of these rights. In Switzerland, in contrast to other places, the authors additionally have moral rights that cannot be broken or sold at all. For a more digestible intro I would suggest this site.
nor about the impossibility you mentioned
The absence of the possibility of making works public domain before the copyright term runs out automatically is harder to show, it’s not like it’s forbidden by statute, but simply that there isn’t a recognized mechanism for it. The best thing I can link is the Factsheet about Public Domain from the following page on the site of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, check number 9 on page 4 in the PDF, it says:
- Can I relinquish the copyright to one of my own works by assigning it to the public domain?
Copyright arises automatically and, in contrast to property law, there is no procedure for simply giving up this right. An author, therefore, does not have any direct possibility of giving a work to the public domain. However, he is at liberty to simply tolerate copyright infringement and to waive legal prosecution. In addition, an author can actively decide to make his work available under an appropriate Creative Commons licence, which is very similar to the public domain, or an equivalent type of public licence.
What you are saying is essentially how it works in the U.S. too. There is no legal way to make your work public domain. The best you can do is just tell people it’s public domain and then not sue anyone for using the material. But you would still have the right to sue them.
In Switzerland, in contrast to other places, the authors additionally have moral rights that cannot be broken or sold at all. For a more digestible intro I would suggest this site.
I didn’t know this transferable vs non transferable classification of rights exists. It changed my theory about copyright as whole. Thanks!
This is yet another reason why 2FA over phone is a bad idea. I create every account with a unique generated email, a unique generated password and minimal/random personal data. I’m finally at a place where it’s convenient to create accounts with no obvious connection …… but I only have one phone number. They say it’s for account security, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s mainly for data aggregation
Yes that is absolutely annoying and I hardly use such online services other than those I have to like bank, any government services, package delivery/ridebooking etc where in app call doesn’t exist and calling is necessary sometimes and some healthcare.
Sometimes they do it to reduce throwaway/inactive accounts as (npn voip) phone numbers are harder to get at scale than email ids. But ironically, some countries have law requiring them to keep the logs so it might be used to connect identity against one’s will, say, by law enforcement.
In order to put something in the public domain, you need to explicitly do that. Publicising is not the same as putting something in the public domain.
This comment I’m writing here is not in the public domain and I don’t need to explicitly mention that. It’s “all rights reserved” by default in most western jurisdictions. You’re not allowed to do anything whatsoever with it other that what is covered by explicit exceptions from copyright such as fair use (e.g. you quote parts of my comment to reply to it).
Encoding my comment into the weights of a statistical model to closer imitate human writing is a derivative work (IMHO) and therefore needs explicit permission from the copyright holder (me) or licensee authorised by said copyright holder to sublicense it in such a way.
I tested it out, not really very accurate and seems to confuse users, but scraping has been a thing for decades, this isn’t new.
