18 ms·

My belief is that the AI business is all about data collection. The value isn't so much in the quality of the models (that's what enterprise customers and devel

by cferry 4mo ago

My belief is that the AI business is all about data collection. The value isn't so much in the quality of the models (that's what enterprise customers and developers pay to get), but in the amount of data that comes "for free" to whoever hosts the models. And then it's worth whoever buys it thinks it is, like insurers or advertisers.

1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago
"My belief is the AI business is all about data collection." The "business" of so-called "tech" companies is all about data collection https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/05/06/the-worlds-most-valuable-resource-is-no-longer-oil-but-data https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/05/06/the-worlds-most...
- wil421 4mo ago
  It’s because they’re all in bed with the Government who wants the same thing. Think of them as an extension of the NSA/CIA and the byproduct of the data collection is being able to sell Ads to make money.
- protocolture 4mo ago
  If thats the case why dont they just pay me for it directly.
  - samplifier 4mo ago
    Because the concepts of freedom and security are not universal.
  - Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 4mo ago
    My guess: people would ask way more for that kind of information. That's why it's a totally immoral business: making people give away something they would never agree to give for free, if they were truly aware of it.
ndiddy 4mo ago
Yeah I was wondering how long it would take for a browser company to do something like this. It lets them scrape data without having to deal with anti-scraping provisions on websites, since now their training data collection gets spread across the entire Chrome userbase and they're able to offload the work of bypassing the Cloudflare captchas or whatever to their end users.
- _el1s7 4mo ago
  Google doesn't need to that because Google is not affected by any anti-scraping provisions, every website literally begs Google to get scraped.
2ndorderthought 4mo ago
Yes. It is seriously not a coincidence that all of the ai companies are now offense contractors for the department of war. It's also not a coincidence they want to ban vpns, and force people to verify themselves with IDs, biometrics and their phones for all of their activities. Meanwhile... Bots can run free. Surveillance capitalism is so stupid.
basisword 4mo ago
100% and if you have data other model providers can't 'scrape' (e.g. Google access to Chrome user/usage data) you're in a better position to win.
naruhodo 4mo ago
When you use a coding model running on someone else's computer, you're giving an AI company your proprietary source code and associated documentation, and you're giving free training examples to make a future AI model better equipped to eliminate your job. Valuable data indeed.
- account42 4mo ago
  Which is why it is odd to see so many companies jumping on the bandwagon, even those that have always been super protective of their oh so valuable proprietary internal code.
  - duskdozer 4mo ago
    Next quarter thinking
- martin-t 4mo ago
  Exactly. This is what people don't seem to get. LLMs ("AI") are not a tool for us. They are a tool for the owner class and a replacement for us.
orthecreedence 4mo ago
> My belief is that the AI business is all about data collection. In the short term, maybe. That's what you tell investors. In the long term, it's about altering, shaping, and even constructing reality: making a new and canonical truth for humanity where the ruling classes are invisible to us and the machine that tells us our history and bedtime stories and how we feel is in every device we carry, until it is everywhere, and it has always been everywhere, and it will always be everywhere.
martin-t 4mo ago
Up until ~2 weeks ago, I believed that at least opting out of data collection would protect me. I no longer do. Everyone knows that fines paid by companies (instead of the people making the decisions) are considered simply a cost of doing business. A probabilistic tax, if you will. What finally dawned on me is that given they need more and more data to train bigger and bigger models, at some point the value of using my data for training will exceed the cost of getting caught using it without/against my consent. There's no escape unless we change the law.
loremium 4mo ago
We're way past just collecting for a while now. it's more like knowledge extraction at this point. younger generations don't build up knowledge any more, everyone else is slowly losing their knowledge by not using it. Eventually the rug pull comes and knowledge will only be accessible by those who can afford it.

by cferry 4mo ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago

"My belief is the AI business is all about data collection." The "business" of so-called "tech" companies is all about data collection https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/05/06/the-worlds-most-valuable-resource-is-no-longer-oil-but-data https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/05/06/the-worlds-most...

wil421 4mo ago
It’s because they’re all in bed with the Government who wants the same thing. Think of them as an extension of the NSA/CIA and the byproduct of the data collection is being able to sell Ads to make money.
protocolture 4mo ago
If thats the case why dont they just pay me for it directly.
- samplifier 4mo ago
  Because the concepts of freedom and security are not universal.
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 4mo ago
  My guess: people would ask way more for that kind of information. That's why it's a totally immoral business: making people give away something they would never agree to give for free, if they were truly aware of it.

ndiddy 4mo ago

Yeah I was wondering how long it would take for a browser company to do something like this. It lets them scrape data without having to deal with anti-scraping provisions on websites, since now their training data collection gets spread across the entire Chrome userbase and they're able to offload the work of bypassing the Cloudflare captchas or whatever to their end users.

_el1s7 4mo ago
Google doesn't need to that because Google is not affected by any anti-scraping provisions, every website literally begs Google to get scraped.

2ndorderthought 4mo ago

Yes. It is seriously not a coincidence that all of the ai companies are now offense contractors for the department of war. It's also not a coincidence they want to ban vpns, and force people to verify themselves with IDs, biometrics and their phones for all of their activities. Meanwhile... Bots can run free. Surveillance capitalism is so stupid.

basisword 4mo ago

100% and if you have data other model providers can't 'scrape' (e.g. Google access to Chrome user/usage data) you're in a better position to win.

naruhodo 4mo ago

When you use a coding model running on someone else's computer, you're giving an AI company your proprietary source code and associated documentation, and you're giving free training examples to make a future AI model better equipped to eliminate your job. Valuable data indeed.

account42 4mo ago
Which is why it is odd to see so many companies jumping on the bandwagon, even those that have always been super protective of their oh so valuable proprietary internal code.
- duskdozer 4mo ago
  Next quarter thinking
martin-t 4mo ago
Exactly. This is what people don't seem to get. LLMs ("AI") are not a tool for us. They are a tool for the owner class and a replacement for us.

orthecreedence 4mo ago

> My belief is that the AI business is all about data collection. In the short term, maybe. That's what you tell investors. In the long term, it's about altering, shaping, and even constructing reality: making a new and canonical truth for humanity where the ruling classes are invisible to us and the machine that tells us our history and bedtime stories and how we feel is in every device we carry, until it is everywhere, and it has always been everywhere, and it will always be everywhere.

martin-t 4mo ago

Up until ~2 weeks ago, I believed that at least opting out of data collection would protect me. I no longer do. Everyone knows that fines paid by companies (instead of the people making the decisions) are considered simply a cost of doing business. A probabilistic tax, if you will. What finally dawned on me is that given they need more and more data to train bigger and bigger models, at some point the value of using my data for training will exceed the cost of getting caught using it without/against my consent. There's no escape unless we change the law.

loremium 4mo ago

We're way past just collecting for a while now. it's more like knowledge extraction at this point. younger generations don't build up knowledge any more, everyone else is slowly losing their knowledge by not using it. Eventually the rug pull comes and knowledge will only be accessible by those who can afford it.