Live data from Hacker News

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

foundation.mozilla.org

91–100 of 164 posts

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

#91
post #12

How does M$'s legal team accomplish such a feat? Are there layers of linguistic abstraction built up such that only a sufficiently large team (Microsoft, grand jury) has the bandwidth to extract any meaning? Red herrings with gotchas hidden in seemingly innocuous places? Do they just talk in circles and never give an exact answer?

How does M$'s legal team accomplish such a feat?

Who's going to stop them?

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

#92
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Summ…

Training a Microsoft AI could quite literally be considered ‘improving Microsoft products and services’.

Exactly.

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

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Isn't that an "old wives tale" that doesn't have any basis in reality? You are correct. Nobody has ever been able to point to a law requiring companies to maximize profits for shareholders at all costs. In fact, there are thousands and thousands of companies that exist with a primary purpose of doing things other than making money for their shareholders. Any "legal" obligation to "maximize shareholder value" started…

Exactly.

Having a fiduciary duty to act in shareholder's interests (a very common sense rule) is a long way from "maximizing shareholder profits at all costs", even if those sometimes align.

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

#94
Honest question I have. I've worked in advertising and the laws around PII are interesting. In California there are the CCPA laws that require them to allow a form to submit and have my PII removed after 90? days.

What happens if these people train a model on a cali residents PII, having a request come in, 3 months later someone asks it about you and it spits out the PII that was "removed"? I'm assuming it's a matter of this going to court to be decided but I'd be curious if any californian legal nerds have some reasons why no one has started trying to target these things for settlements if nothing else?

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

#95
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the only mention of AI using content. So it can be read in a few ways: 1. They will sometimes use the data for training their RLHF stuff, to "prevent harmful use" of the services. 2. The clause is exhaustive and therefore they won't use it for training, as otherwise that'd be mentioned, and are just going to log stuff for the usual monitoring purposes. This is a storm in a teacup. I don't even know why I shoul…

> I don't even know why I should care. If MS crawl some web pages I've written and AI gets slightly smarter by reading them Crawling public web pages is a separate issue⁰ – by putting something online you aren't explicitly agreeing to any of MS's policies, at least in the eyes of the law. This is the same for anyone crawling public content not just MS. This privacy policy covers all the content you might use MS apps…

> If you don't use any MS products or services, and no products/services you do use are backed by MS's services, then you don't need to care personally.

I beg to differ, wouldn't they be more inclined to care in case their data was being used in a product they do not interact with, rather than the one they do use - and in some way benefit from it?

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

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he meant that instead of each company creating their own ToS, the government should set the standard or limitations on what a company can do. > Laws trump Terms of service/agreements and contracts of any kind. Web is not regulated by the government.

"The government"? Which one? Some governments do regulate certain aspects of the web directly. All companies have to do is abide the local rules set by regulations, if such exist. And some very much do. Maybe not in your jurisdiction? I think you two have things backwards

> All companies have to do is abide the local rules set by regulations

The point being that there are not enough regulations.

One feature that I wish exist is the option to completely erase your account on a particular website along with the data they have collected from you (there can a waiting time of few months before they erase it from their servers). This feature can only be bought out by government regulation because most websites don't have the incentive.

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

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Isn't that an "old wives tale" that doesn't have any basis in reality? You are correct. Nobody has ever been able to point to a law requiring companies to maximize profits for shareholders at all costs. In fact, there are thousands and thousands of companies that exist with a primary purpose of doing things other than making money for their shareholders. Any "legal" obligation to "maximize shareholder value" started…

"An activist shareholder is a shareholder who uses an equity stake in a corporation to put pressure on its management"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activist_shareholder

I am not excusing greed. I am just saying that if shareholders are focused on financial gain the corporate management is obliged to deliver. Not all shareholders are greedy. But overwhelmingly they are.

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

#99

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?

For US companies registered in Delaware (which is most of them), the doctrine of shareholders primacy holds. Shareholders can and have sued corporate boards/execs for not acting in their best interest. It goes back to the 1910s when Henry Ford very loudly and explicitly announced he was cutting shareholder dividends to pay workers the famous $5/day wage (double what any other factory workers were paid), and minority shareholders sued and won.

Of course it is debated and different in different jurisdictions, as it is common law and not a specific statute. But ambiguity in law means execs lean towards the safe decision. Shareholders can go a long way with a legal threat that never sees trial.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

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

#100

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…

> 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.

I don't think the need to exploit opportunities is exclusive to major corporations. We see this behavior and power grabs even in petty quarrels in small amateur organizations such as small businesses and homeowner associations. The tools change but the human traits that drive this behavior is always there. There is no toggle that turns on this behavior when assets surpass a certain level.

> Because that's what they are legally obliged to do for their shareholders.

I don't think they are "legally obliged" to anyone, or even "obliged" at all. Their leadership is driven to exploit the tools at their reach to meet their goals, and that's precisely what they do.

Post reply on HN