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

foundation.mozilla.org

101–110 of 164 posts

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

#101
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then in my opinion a court should step in and declare it void so that Microsoft isn't allowed to use any private data until they get their act together. I hear what you're driving at, but "a court" cannot be both prosecutor and judge at the same time. This page is about that, possibly starting a civil suit to have a judge look at this and act accordingly.

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

What is a state prosecutor going to prosecute microsoft on? Vague T&C? As great as it may sound having the state going around proactively enforcing T&C of every product is not going to be effective or fair.

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

#102
post #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 a…

> I don't think the need to exploit opportunities is exclusive to major corporations

we are not talking about small, medium or large corporations. we are talking about two entities that effectively control the entire fabric of digital society and the economy. and from which there is increasingly no opt-out. there was never so much concentration. never.

> Their leadership is driven to exploit the tools at their reach to meet their goals

Corporate management gets approved their remuneration from shareholders. If they don't deliver they get the boot.

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

#103

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…

I blame the tech companies but I also blame the people who created all this stuff -- programmers, tech startups, and computer science. Those people created a system that is too easy to use as an ultra-efficient wealth concentrator, and now tech companies are the result.

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

#105

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…

[deleted]

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

#106

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…

I blame the tech companies but I also blame the people who created all this stuff -- programmers, tech startups, and computer science. Those people created a system that is too easy to use as an ultra-efficient wealth concentrator, and now tech companies are the result.

we are all cogs in the machine. maybe decades ago the stance of individuals could have made a difference but nowadays its clear that it no longer does. there is a collectively created monster that can only be tamed by something of equivalent and greater collective power: radical government regulation. The EU is doing its part. The US isnt.

imho nothing was learned from the previous Microsoft monopoly era. Information technology is not just any business sector. It is the canvas on which everything else plays out. It needs to be regulated in a way that people can go with online life, politics, business etc. without this Damocles sword permanently hanging above us.

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

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame the tech companies but I also blame the people who created all this stuff -- programmers, tech startups, and computer science. Those people created a system that is too easy to use as an ultra-efficient wealth concentrator, and now tech companies are the result.

we are all cogs in the machine. maybe decades ago the stance of individuals could have made a difference but nowadays its clear that it no longer does. there is a collectively created monster that can only be tamed by something of equivalent and greater collective power: radical government regulation. The EU is doing its part. The US isnt. imho nothing was learned from the previous Microsoft monopoly era. Information…

I think personal action can still make a difference. What if we were to develop a coalition of people that believed in that, sort of like a union for a healthy society?

The coalition would have a common set of standards and ethics, which would include the development of more community-based standards for technology. With such a coalition, we could create our own technology not in the hands of technology companies, and we could be more responsible in the development and use of technology. Then the entire coalition could stop using Google for example...and crush the life out of them.

If such a coalition had ten million people in it, it might work if many of them are technologically capable. Ten million seems like a lot but it's only 1 person getting 2 new people to join, who in turn each get 2 new people to join, etc... 24 times.

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

#108
post #18

Samsung's ToS, > The Sites may allow you to share things like comments, photos, messages, or documents with us or with other users. When you share content, you continue to own the intellectual property rights to your content and you are free to share the content with anyone else wherever you want. However, to use your content on our Sites, you need to grant us a license for any content that you create or upload using…

The problem is that in order to do anything even slightly meaningful like displaying profile pictures you need to grant the right to store and process. Since it is hard to keep track of distributed data at scale and some data being quoted by other users you need these rights indefinitely. The problem is of course the generalization of data in conjunction with generalized rights gives away de-facto everything. On the other hand narrower general terms risk creating liabilities for companies.

I don‘t think building rules based on low level technical functions for a portfolio of high level applications is feasible. Honest actors in their natural interest to self protect have created a legal framework which allows bad behavior by bad actors (or their future bad selves).

Not sure how a future framework could look like but the evolution of RBAC may give some clues. Data probably needs to be labeled. Processing needs to be tied to intent. Acknowledging that rules for larger datasets must exist and need to differ by size.

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

#109
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?

What is M$?

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

#110

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?

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 can and have sued corporate boards/execs for not acting in their best interest.

Translating "best interest" to "maximize profits" is the stretch though. The shareholders define what is their best interest. Shareholders aren't faceless demons. They are you and me.

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