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Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

openai.com

21–30 of 441 posts

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#21
If Donald Trump used this OpenAI product to-- who knows-- brainstorm Truth Social content, and his chats were produced to the NYT as well as its consultants and lawyers, who would believe Mr. Trump's content remained secure, confidential and protected from misuse against his wishes?

That's simply a function of the fact it's a controversial news organization running a dragnet on private communications to a technology platform.

"Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law."

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#22
Open AI deservedly getting a beating in this HN comments section but any comments about NYT overreach and what it means in general?

And what if they for example find evidence of X other thing such as:

1. Something useful for a story, maybe they follow up in parallel. Know who to interview and what to ask?

2. A crime.

3. An ongoing crime.

4. Something else they can sue someone else for.

5. Top secret information

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#23
Almost every comment (five) so far is against this: 'An incredibly cynical attempt at spin', 'How dare the New York Times demand access to our vault of everything-we-keep to figure out if we're a bunch of lying asses', etc.

In direct contrast: I fully agree with OpenAI here. We can have a more nuanced opinion than 'piracy to train AI is bad therefore refusing to share chats is bad', which sounds absurd but is genuinely how one of the other comments follows logic.

Privacy is paramount. People _trust_ that their chats are private: they ask sensitive questions, ones to do with intensely personal or private or confidential things. For that to be broken -- for a company to force users to have their private data accessed -- is vile.

The tech community has largely stood against this kind of thing when it's been invasive scanning of private messages, tracking user data, etc. I hope we can collectively be better (I'm using ethical terms for a reason) than the other replies show. We don't have to support OpenAI's actions in order to oppose the NYT's actions.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#24

I wouldn't want to make it out like I think OpenAI is the good guy here. I don't. But conversations people thought they were having with OpenAI in private are now going to be scoured by the New York Times' lawyers. I'm aware of the third party doctrine and that if you put something online it can never be actually private. But I think this also runs counter to people's expectations when they're using the product. In c…

>But conversations people thought they were having with OpenAI in private

...had never been private in the first place.

not only is the data used for refining the models, OpenAI had also shariah policed plenty of people for generating erotica.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#25

I wouldn't want to make it out like I think OpenAI is the good guy here. I don't. But conversations people thought they were having with OpenAI in private are now going to be scoured by the New York Times' lawyers. I'm aware of the third party doctrine and that if you put something online it can never be actually private. But I think this also runs counter to people's expectations when they're using the product. In c…

100% agreed. In the time you wrote this, I also posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45901054

I felt quite some disappointment with the comments I saw on the thread at that time.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#26
So why aren’t they offering for an independent auditor to come into OpenAI and inspect their data (without taking it outside of OpenAI’s systems)?

Probably because they have a lot to hide, a lot to lose, and no interest in fair play.

Theoretically, they could prove their tools aren’t being used to doing anything wrong but practically, we all know they can’t because they are actually in the wrong (in both the moral and, IMO though IANAL, the legal sense). They know it, we know it, the only problem is breaking the ridiculous walled garden that stops the courts from ‘knowing’ it.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#27
post #17

This screams just as genuine as Google saying anything about Privacy. Both companies are clearly wrong here. There is a small part of me that kinda wants openai to loose this, just so maybe it will be a wake up call to people putting in way too personal of information into these services? Am I too hopeful here that people will learn anything... Fundamentally I agree with what they are saying though, just don't find i…

Its clearly propaganda. "Your data belongs to you." I'm sure the ToS says otherwise, as OpenAI likely owns and utilizes this data. Yes, they say they are working on end-to-end encryption (whatever that means when they control one end), but that is just a proposal at this point.

Also their framing of the NYT intent makes me strongly distrust anything they say. Sit down with a third party interviewer who asks challenging questions, and I'll pay attention.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#28
post #7

Cynicism aside, this seems like an attempt to prune back a potentially excessive legal discovery demand by appealing to public opinion. The New York Times is demanding that we turn over 20 million of your private ChatGPT conversations. They claim they might find examples of you using ChatGPT to try to get around their paywall.

Yeah, I'm not sure why everyone feels the need to take a side here. Both of these organizations are ghoulish.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#29

I wouldn't want to make it out like I think OpenAI is the good guy here. I don't. But conversations people thought they were having with OpenAI in private are now going to be scoured by the New York Times' lawyers. I'm aware of the third party doctrine and that if you put something online it can never be actually private. But I think this also runs counter to people's expectations when they're using the product. In c…

I get the feeling, but that's not what this is.

NYTimes has produced credible evidence that OpenAI is simply stealing and republishing their content. The question they have to answer is "to what extent has this happened?"

That's a question they fundamentally cannot answer without these chat logs.

That's what discovery, especially in a copyright case, is about.

Think about it this way. Let's say this were a book store selling illegal copies of books. A very reasonable discovery request would be "Show me your sales logs". The whole log needs to be produced otherwise you can't really trust that this is the real log.

That's what NYTimes lawyers are after. They want the chat logs so they can do their own searches to find NYTimes text within the responses. They can't know how often that's happened and OpenAI has an obvious incentive to simply say "Oh that never happened".

And the reason this evidence is relevant is it will directly feed into how much money NYT and OpenAI will ultimately settle for. If this never happens then the amount will be low. If it happens a lot the amount will be high. And if it goes to trial it will be used in the damages portion assuming NYT wins.

The user has no right to privacy. The same as how any internet service can be (and have been) compelled to produce private messages.

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