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Italian privacy regulator bans ChatGPT

politico.eu

481–490 of 709 posts

Re: Italian privacy regulator bans ChatGPT

#481

This does not surprise me at all. I worked in Italy for 2 years and in Germany for 4 years. A sense of `US/CIA/NSA-phobia` is strong among many companies and is often used to justify not using US datacenters, cloud-services and SaaS tools. I have to admit I do not fully understand it, but I am inclined to think it is mostly a bias and not driven by actual risk assessments. Having conducted risk assessments and threat…

It is well documented that the CIA heavily influenced elections in Italy after ww2, especially in 1948 when they supported the Christian Democrats in opposition to communism. It’s not the Cold War anymore, but I’m sure this part of their history is a factor.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Italian_general_electio...

Re: Italian privacy regulator bans ChatGPT

#482

This does not surprise me at all. I worked in Italy for 2 years and in Germany for 4 years. A sense of `US/CIA/NSA-phobia` is strong among many companies and is often used to justify not using US datacenters, cloud-services and SaaS tools. I have to admit I do not fully understand it, but I am inclined to think it is mostly a bias and not driven by actual risk assessments. Having conducted risk assessments and threat…

The phobia sounds like a feature, not a bug. But could you explain more of what you mean by, > Having conducted risk assessments and threat analysis myself for various companies with a global presence, I was most intrigued by this phenomenon in the EU as it was mostly not driven by technical accuracy.

A risk assessment and threat analysis typically requires a definition of who the adversary is and what the risk of using any service is in regard to that adversary.

Reasons I heard for a lot of companies to not use GCP/AWS/Github simply were: It is a US company, it will be very easy for CIA to retrieve that data (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act) or poison the service, let's use XYZ local provider.

And the ironic thing is that these local providers had either a terrible reliability record or poor security posture so a mildly competent mediocre hacker would be able to compromise the data which is being defended against CIA. Not once in tens of engagements I came across a calculated measure of defending against nation-state vs run-of-the-mill malware.

Re: Italian privacy regulator bans ChatGPT

#483
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore actually does drug tests on random Singaporeans returning from holidays to enforce exactly that.

Singapore has to be one of the worst places to live. I don't care how 'nice' their society might seem, their overstep is too steep by far. "Custom officers can subject travellers to a drug screening test at the point of entry to Singapore. If you test positive for drugs, you can be arrested and prosecuted, even if the drugs were consumed prior to your arrival in the country." That's insanity.

Most of Singapore is opt-in - people moved there for exactly reasons you don’t like.

There are billions of people who would love to live there.

Re: Italian privacy regulator bans ChatGPT

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a docker image one can spin up cheaply and not connect to dubious vpn provisers?

PiHole is local. You can docker it but you have some.. issues depending on configuration. AdGuard is a pihole like SaaS (that seems pretty good, it's the sort of thing I'd get for my mom).

Would this work? I assumed that ISP blocking would still block even when I use a Pihole.

Re: Italian privacy regulator bans ChatGPT

#485
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point is GPT is way more dangerous? I guess I can be nonchalant about this topic. For me personally I cannot imagine something worse than either books or anything you can already access on the internet. To me it is not an assault rifle as you say, but I understand that's just an opinion.

Books are under control, children can not enter a library and get Adult books. The internet in general can have filters and many Parents activate personal firewalls for this purpose. Even Google has safeSearch that filters results for explicit adult or violent content. ChatGpt right now does not have these "parental controls". yes you can bypass most of them but you need to know technical details. they can not be byp…

> Books are under control, children can not enter a library and get Adult books.

What kind of dystopian library do you go to? Kids can get what they like where I am.

Re: Italian privacy regulator bans ChatGPT

#486

i've seen a lot of buzz around such tools in the italian Linkedin space, it was either praised as the ultimate tool to automate jobs or feared it would leave unemployed a lot of office workers. i understand both sides and can confidently say that this ban was made for the latter concern; the italian job space revolves so much around bullshit employment practices (unpaid internships, long term employment for useless t…

> since my mother couldn't keep her mouth shut, somehow this information got leaked to the family tax consultant, resulting in a police search of my office, and a mandatory visit to a police station almost an hour away. this kind of stuff happens regularly.

Why ? is it illegal to do taxes online in italy?

Re: Italian privacy regulator bans ChatGPT

#487
this alongside the ban on lab grown meat[0] and the recent proposed ban to use english words in government documents[1] is just proof on how antiquated and backward looking the government is. so glad i left almost 10 years ago.

[EDIT] the privacy regulator is independent from the government but elected by the parliament every 7 years. nevertheless this is a testament on how in general, regardless of political party, the situation is at the moment and for the foreseeable future

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65110744 [1] https://www.open.online/2023/03/31/rampelli-fdi-parole-stran...

Re: Italian privacy regulator bans ChatGPT

#488

This does not surprise me at all. I worked in Italy for 2 years and in Germany for 4 years. A sense of `US/CIA/NSA-phobia` is strong among many companies and is often used to justify not using US datacenters, cloud-services and SaaS tools. I have to admit I do not fully understand it, but I am inclined to think it is mostly a bias and not driven by actual risk assessments. Having conducted risk assessments and threat…

Phobia is defined as an irrational fear. Before PRISM, you could argue the fear was indeed irrational (although the writings were on the wall), but now? Of course, for a company that's a numbers game. For private citizens or the general public, especially in countries with a history like Germany or Italy, it's not.

I think it boiled down mostly to fear of being compromised by the CIA/NSA vs fear of being compromised by a mildly competent attacker while using an insecure "Made in EU" provider. Practically speaking: the first one winning against the latter is really of no use.

Re: Italian privacy regulator bans ChatGPT

#489
post #435

While this is obviously a dumb move, there are 2 upsides for Italy: - Italy, like the rest of south europe is hobbled by an army of bureaucrats doing busywork and their jobs are the first to be threatened by an AI speaking fluent Italian. So it helps them to keep unemployment from getting even higher - It's an opportunity for an Italian company to create a model and grow in this window of opportunity. Italy has great…

>It's an opportunity for an Italian company to create a model and grow in this window of opportunity. Italy has great engineers

nobody is going to invest a dime in a country where regulators and government are against anything that is "new". it's just not a place for new business or tech overall. it's a very hostile environment to be operating in

Re: Italian privacy regulator bans ChatGPT

#490
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are the same, why hasn't Google been banned in Italy all these years? There must be something fundamentally different between the two, and I'm not sure what it is.

A rather fundamental difference is that Google is relatively GDPR compliant because it deletes PII within 30 days. OpenAI has this data be baked into the model and if it turns out to surface out from there, it's unclear how they would delete it.

They wouldn't be able to. This conflict will explode because an unstoppable force (EU bureaucrazy) will meet an unmovable object (the GPT weights, where you cannot just surgically remove individual facts.)

If I could short LLMs in Europe, I would go all in.

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