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

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

#111

Post by nvm0n2 »

dspillett wrote: post #51
nvm0n2 wrote: 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…

I do use MS services. I still don't understand why I should care unless the AI starts simply repeating my private data in response to questions.

Now you could argue, what if I have documents with secret ideas or valuable IP that I don't want the AI to helpfully explain to others? That's definitely a valid concern! But for consumer uses, if it learns to draw better hands by looking at my holiday photos or whatever, then I don't see the problem.

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

#112

Post by j16sdiz »

boredumb wrote: post #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…

> What happens if these people train a model on a cali residents PII..

They would just deny it. Or claims impossible to recover from the trained model.

I know no CA laws, but lots of similar privacy law, when asked to be "removed", allow exception for aggregated data.

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

#114

Post by Silhouette »

dspillett wrote: post #46
Silhouette wrote: post #28

This has been my objection to Microsoft's maze-like privacy policies for a long time. I once asked - on another forum and before the recent "AI" coding assistants were widely available - whether Microsoft's privacy policy allowed them to upload and do things with your own code if you used VS Code with telemetry enabled. At the time I was downvoted to invisibility and told I was being silly. But not one person showed…

> But not one person showed me anywhere in Microsoft's terms or privacy policy wording that limited These policies don't exist to tell you what they are limiting themselves to. These documents exist as a defence to use against you (because you agreed to the policy by continuing to use their services) if you try to stop them doing something. Unless for some reason there is commercial or legal advantage in saying “we w…

Fortunately since I'm in the UK the legal position is rather more enlightened. The default is that any processing of personal data is not allowed and they have to justify it and explain their justification.

Of course even if they flagrantly ignore the rules and carry on while treating any fines as a cost of doing business - which is hardly unusual in GDPR world for certain big tech companies - there is only so much you can do as one individual and you still need the regulators to step in and enforce the rules with meaningful sanctions.

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

#115

Post by itsoktocry »

nologic01 wrote: post #98
reaperducer wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Would you be surprised to learn that there are shareholder groups that use their equity claims to pursue environmental, DEI or other goals that benefit society?

>Not all shareholders are greedy. But overwhelmingly they are.

Not even close. The vast majority of shareholders own stock through ETFs and pay no attention to the finances (or politics) of the companies they own.

The fiduciary rule is to prevent executives from running the company in their interest, as opposed to the interests of the silent shareholders who actually own the company.

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

#116

Post by sbszllr »

boredumb wrote: post #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…

I don’t know CCPA laws that well, but I do the EU ones. As it stands “the right to erasure / to be forgotten” is extremely vague on this, and there doesn’t seem to be a wide precedent. In general the law is applicable to raw data records and not to aggregate data/metrics, neither to models. However, models in this context refers to one particular ruling w.r.t. to insurance or credit scoring industry (don’t remember exactly which one).

I want to point out that the model doesn’t need to “spit out” removed data. It can be a classifier, or regression model, and not a generative model, and ideally, it would not be trained on your data.

Worth noting that from the technical standpoint, it’s difficult too. Say, a model costs X-large amount of dollars. Normally, I would retrain it e.g. every 6 months. But now I have erasure requests coming in on a regular basis —- retraining often to comply with those is too expensive. There’s a line of research on “machine unlearning” on how to do it efficiently but it’s quite underwhelming so far.

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

#117

Post by nologic01 »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #107
nologic01 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, an…

I would definitely not be against such a coalition :-).

I think we already effectively have (more loosely defined than your idea) a global community that is based on various open source efforts. Open source is vitally important (and not much appreciated in the usual ossified power centers) phenomenon as it proves that in many critical nodes of information technology: desktop and mobile OS, desktop apps, browsers, social media, and all sorts of libraries etc you can perfectly well have alternatives that are more in line with societal objectives.

But we have now enough of a track record to know the open source mode cannot scale to provide the backbone that everyone deserves. What is missing is the regulatory framework that will induce (and if needed, force) commercial initiatives to be interoperable, ring fenced, small enough to fear and respect clients and users, the opposite of the too-big-to-fail conglomerates, in short: we need companies that are good digital citizens.

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

#118

Post by swexbe »

itsoktocry wrote: post #115
nologic01 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

> An activist shareholder is a shareholder who uses an equity stake in a corporation to put pressure on its management Would you be surprised to learn that there are shareholder groups that use their equity claims to pursue environmental, DEI or other goals that benefit society? > Not all shareholders are greedy. But overwhelmingly they are. Not even close. The vast majority of shareholders own stock through ETFs and…

>Not even close. The vast majority of shareholders own stock through ETFs and pay no attention to the finances (or politics) of the companies they own.

Right, but many would sell their ETFs and buy others if they suddenly started to deliver below market returns.

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

#119

Post by starbugs »

itsoktocry wrote: post #110
terminous wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Come on. You know who the "shareholders" are that the parent commenter talks about. They are board members and people with a huge amount of shares, not "normal" people who hold 5 shares in their retirement portfolio.

The main interest of a shareholder is return on investment. And that's fine. The problem is that if you don't have enough competing entities in a market, these shareholders of the few companies that still exist hold disproportionate power that can and will be misused to make any attempt at new, reasonable competition infeasible.

It's really not that hard to understand.

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

#120

Post by vouaobrasil »

nologic01 wrote: post #117
vouaobrasil wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, an…

I would definitely not be against such a coalition :-). I think we already effectively have (more loosely defined than your idea) a global community that is based on various open source efforts. Open source is vitally important (and not much appreciated in the usual ossified power centers) phenomenon as it proves that in many critical nodes of information technology: desktop and mobile OS, desktop apps, browsers, soc…

Yes, you are right. I agree. Open source is a HUGE benefit and an excellent way to counteract corporations from holding all the resources. In my own professional workflow I use a lot of it, and I also try to give back by contributing tutorials to using it and recommending it as well. I think the world would be a lot worse off without the open-source world.
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