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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?

#141

Post by flangola7 »

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.

They're not faceless but they are demons.

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

#142

Post by Delphiza »

la64710 wrote: post #139
Delphiza wrote: post #138

There is a difference between personal data and personally identifiable data. In many ways it is unavoidable to use personal data. Predictive text uses personal data (they 'learn' from everyone) - is the sentence and paragraph personal? Search engines record what you have typed in - do you classify your search query as 'personal'? I can copy paste the first comment from this thread - is it personal data. I may be fla…

It’s Microsoft that for years tried to kill Linux and still sharpens the knife.

So it's just a grudge against Microsoft then? That's not something I'll sign up for, thanks. You either believe in the concepts of not using personal data - for everyone - or you're selling something.

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

#143

Post by wredue »

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.

lol. Shareholders are absolutely not “you and me”.

Your couple Tesla shares doesn’t make you a “shareholder” as being discussed here. The shareholders that sue boards are shareholders who, if they sold, would disrupt share price notably.

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

#144

Post by nologic01 »

justinclift wrote: post #135
nologic01 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> pursuing sustainability agendas My impression is that the "sustainability agendas" these asset managers were pursuing turned out to be er... mostly bullshit. Along the lines of companies "green washing" stuff that was not in fact green. Also stuff marketed as "socially progressive" as a sales tactic.

It just goes to show that if you want real change you need to get really serious about it. As in: change the regulatory and legal framework. Self-regulation doesn't work. You just get an army of consultants, rating agencies and other intermediaries providing "assurance" for-profit, never biting the hand that feeds them.

PS. For the record and while tangential to the digital monopoly discussion, it is still a good thing that we got the ESG and greenwashing debacle. Just a few years ago nobody but the perennial "tree huggers" was even talking about sustainability. Now it is a much more broad based discussion although obviously it has not landed anywhere yet. I wish people would also take regulation of the digital sphere more seriously as it is the backbone on which we will solve all these other problems.

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

#145

Post by datavirtue »

mminer237 wrote: post #127
nologic01 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you ever seen a shareholder that doesnt like a monopoly, winner-takes-all investment? this is the wet dream of investors. ensuring the system does not degenerate is the job of regulators.

I think the point is that shareholders' preference isn't the legal standard. The board can make moves the shareholders absolutely hate and which lose money in the short-term, but as long as the board reasonably thinks it's in the shareholders best interest, they can't do anything about it legally. (Other than vote out the board over time.) Of course, regulation is needed to stop a bad board.

You can setup a company where the board is static and very dysfunctional. Lived it. Company grows and grows and you can't get rid of the founder who has clearly reached the "Peter Principle" stage. Very painful to be an investor or employee at a place like that.

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

#146

Post by mistrial9 »

newswasboring wrote: post #134
starbugs wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stil…

> The main interest of a shareholder is return on investment. And that's fine. No, it's not fine. Legally, maybe, but not morally fine. I don't understand how everyone is ok with this system which seems to be selecting for the worst humans.

because the previous system involved swords and later canons

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

#147

Post by no-reply »

happymellon wrote: post #77
nottheengineer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the the 10th amendment, would be a better template to start with.

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

#149

Post by ahupp »

Which of these things is "training AI"?

  * an abuse detection system is trained on user behavior and data to flag bad actors for human review
  * When I perform a web search the ranking function is trained all user behavior
  * The email composer will suggest completions based on my own typing history
  * a public chat interface to an LLM is trained on my private emails
"training AI" is an implementation detail that probably doesn't belong in a privacy policy most of the time. Would be nice if Mozilla was more explicit about the behavior they are concerned with.

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

#150

Post by rebolek »

dudus wrote: post #11

While we are talking about it... can we make ToS ilegal? Why do we have to abide by rules while browsing the web? Why do businesses fear litigation so much, they hire lawyers to write and maintain a huge document nobody can ever read or understand? This is failure from governments that can't set basic rules for human interaction. All this

Why do we have to abide by rules while going around in the world?

I'm not in favour of abusive ToS, but your argument isn't the best one that can be made against it.

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