Live data from Hacker News

Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

foundation.mozilla.org

71–80 of 164 posts

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#71
post #25

For reference, here is the text of Microsoft's upcoming Services Agreement: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/servicesagreement/upcoming.a... And here is their summary of what has changed: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/servicesagreement/upcoming-u...

It still contains the sentence “to improve Microsoft products and services, you grant to Microsoft a worldwide and royalty-free intellectual property license to use Your Content.” The only explicit limitation is asserted with respect to targeted advertising: “We do not use what you say in email, chat, video calls or voice mail, or your documents, photos or other personal files, to target advertising to you.”

The Summary of Changes doesn’t mention any changes to the Privacy Statement, which in turn doesn’t seem to exclude training AI models on user data.

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#72

Would Microsoft really risk training data by government administration? It generates billions in revenue from government accounts and the vast industry supporting government that is compelled to use Microsoft products.

I’m sure they have different ToS for government contracts, like they do for enterprise customers.

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#73
The regulatory architecture of "big tech" is an unmitigated disaster.

You can't have two entities effectively control every touching point with the digital domain for a major fraction of the planet.

There is absolutely no reason to trust that they will not abuse this position in opaque and impossible to trace ways. These are trillion-dollar powered for-profit entities, with armies of lawyers and lobbyists that can intimidate medium sized countries. They will exploit every weakness of incompetent, confused and captured regulatory/political systems. Because that's what they are legally obliged to do for their shareholders. And these shareholders care zilch if this duopolistic - fingers in all honeypots - design undermines our entire digital future. They just want some tech "winners" in their portfolios.

The longer nothing serious is done the harder it becomes to do anything.

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#74
If it does not specifically exclude that use, then you can be assured that eventually that data will be used in training if it’s useful. If not now, then eventually. That goes for every company warehousing data on the planet.

This should be everyone’s base assumption, and should be basically accurate unless laws are put in place, but even then jurisdictional bypass may make them irrelevant for historical data and will only weakly protect new data.

Welcome to the new oil.

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#76
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The true failure is government. Mozilla shouldn’t have to lead this. The prosecutor should be the regulator.

America reaps what America sows.

Wouldn’t have too much of an issue with this if it was confined to America, but unfortunately it’s not.

So basically “the rest of us suffer what America sows”

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#77
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Past a certain number of millions of dollars, a team of lawyer is effectively a legal red team who is tasked with finding bypasses (and will find them) around the restrictions in place.

Maybe governments should hire actual red teams to look for those loopholes.

Or pass the rules that state that if there is no expectation that a layman could understand it, you can't enforce a contract against them.

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#78

The regulatory architecture of "big tech" is an unmitigated disaster. You can't have two entities effectively control every touching point with the digital domain for a major fraction of the planet. There is absolutely no reason to trust that they will not abuse this position in opaque and impossible to trace ways. These are trillion-dollar powered for-profit entities, with armies of lawyers and lobbyists that can in…

> they are legally obliged to do for their shareholders

Isn't that an "old wives tale" that doesn't have any basis in reality?

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#79

The regulatory architecture of "big tech" is an unmitigated disaster. You can't have two entities effectively control every touching point with the digital domain for a major fraction of the planet. There is absolutely no reason to trust that they will not abuse this position in opaque and impossible to trace ways. These are trillion-dollar powered for-profit entities, with armies of lawyers and lobbyists that can in…

> they are legally obliged to do for their shareholders Isn't that an "old wives tale" that doesn't have any basis in reality?

Alas it does. Think, e.g. about the backlash against asset managers for pursuing sustainability agendas.

Closer to the topic, think also about the "furore" and supposed panic at Google that they are not capitalizing (literally) on their AI leadership.

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#80
This is the most Kafkaesque thread i've ever seen on Hacker News.

Microsoft definitly uses analytics if that counts as personal data - https://www.microsoft.com/insidetrack/blog/microsoft-uses-an...

Is Microsoft reading your Gmail account, Word documents or Porn activities and feeding them to OpenAI? Not according to terms and conditions https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/cognitive-services/o...

Is Microsoft generally doing generally unknown uknowns. Yes.

Post reply on HN