A social network founded by a former OpenAI employee was caught importing public posts from Mastodon...and ran AI analysis to add tags to them.

Maven, a new social network backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, found itself in a controversy today when it imported a huge amount of posts and profiles from the Fediverse, and then ran AI analysis to alter the content.

  • xavier666@lemm.eeEnglish
    31·
    5 months ago

    Yeah, the general attitude of wild witch-hunts and instant zero-to-11 rage at the slightest mention of it. Doesn’t matter what you’re actually doing with AI, the moment the mob thinks they scent blood the avalanche is rolling.

    This wasn’t always the case. A lot of research on NLP uses scraped social media posts (2010’s). People never had a problem with that (at least the outrage wasn’t visible back then). The problem now is that our content is being used to create an AI product where there is zero consent taken from the end-user.

    Source: My research colleagues used to work on NLP

    • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.businessEnglish
      4·
      5 months ago

      For me, more specifically, the problem is they took my data and made a tool to sell it back to me without paying me for it.

      I have no real issue with current ai stuff, other than you’re effectively taking our stuff and want us to pay you for doing so.

      If they weren’t freeloading on everyone, I suspect you’d have a lot less angry people.

      • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        This. If Maven offered me a stipend for life to have my content used (because they’re not going to remove it in 3 or 6 months, right? once ingested it’s there forever), then I would be far more open to at least discussing their terms.

    • jackalope@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      Consent isn’t legally required if it’s fair use. Whether it’s fair use remains to be ruled on by the courts.