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Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

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

#201

Post by rockskon »

immibis wrote: post #176
NewsaHackO wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, no company has the customers’ best interests in mind. This whole thing is akin to when Apple was refusing to unlock phones for the FBI. Of course, Apple profits by having people think that they take privacy seriously, and they demonstrate it by protecting users’ privacy. Same thing here; OpenAI needs chats to have some expectation of privacy, especially because a large use case of AI is personal advice on thin…

Both OpenAI and NYT are bad. I don't know about NYT's privacy policy, because that's not really the industry they're in, but they did admit to fabricating a story that led to a now 2-year-long war, so.

Which story is this?

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

#202

Post by andrepd »

Aurornis wrote: post #159
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a technical limitation that prevents chat histories from being stored locally on the user's computer instead of being stored on someone else's computer(s) Why do chat histories need to be accessible by OpenAI, its service partners and anyone with the authority to request them from OpenAI If users want this design, as suggested by HN commenters, if users want their chat histories to be accessible to OpenAI, i…

> Is there a technical limitation that prevents chat histories from being stored locally on the user's computer People access ChatGPT through different interfaces: Web, desktop app, their phones, tablets. Therefore the conversations are stored on the servers. It's really not some hidden plot against users to steal their data. It's just how most users expect their apps to work.

Nonsense. It's easy to design an app where the server stores all information in an encrypted form. If OpenAI "cared about privacy" like this PR piece claims, they would do this. They don't because they (obviously) don't care and they (obviously) want the data for their purposes.

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

#203

Post by jrockway »

I've noticed a pattern of companies writing their customers open letters asking them to do their contract negotiations for them. First it was ESPN vs. YouTube (not watching MNF this week was the best 3 hours I've ever saved, sorry advertisers). Now it's OpenAI vs. The New York Times.

Little do they know that I care very little for either party and enjoy seeing both of them squirm. You went to business school, not me. Work it out.

In this case, it's awfully suspicious that OpenAI is worried about The New York Times finding literal passages in their articles that ChatGPT spits out verbatim. If your AI doesn't do that, like you say, then why would it be a problem to check?

Finally, both parties should find a neutral third party. The neutral third party gets the full text of every NYT article and ChatGPT transcript, and finds the matches. NYT doesn't get ChatGPT transcripts. OpenAI doesn't get the full text of every NYT article (even though they have to already have that). Everyone is happy. If OpenAI did something illegal, the court can find out. If they didn't, then they're safe. I think it would be very fair.

(I take the side of neither party. I'm not a huge fan of training language models on content that wasn't licensed for that purpose. And I'm not a huge fan of The NYT's slide to the right as they cheerlead the end of the American experiment.)

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

#204

Post by buellerbueller »

stackedinserter wrote: post #123

WTF with all these comments. Regardless on OpenAI reputation and practices, I don't want NYT or anyone else to see my conversations, I completely agree to OpenAI here.

>I don't want NYT or anyone else to see my conversations

Except for OpenAI, apparently.

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

#205

Post by epistasis »

andrepd wrote: post #202
Aurornis wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a technical limitation that prevents chat histories from being stored locally on the user's computer People access ChatGPT through different interfaces: Web, desktop app, their phones, tablets. Therefore the conversations are stored on the servers. It's really not some hidden plot against users to steal their data. It's just how most users expect their apps to work.

Nonsense. It's easy to design an app where the server stores all information in an encrypted form. If OpenAI "cared about privacy" like this PR piece claims, they would do this. They don't because they (obviously) don't care and they (obviously) want the data for their purposes.

"Easy" does not mean "lowest cost" or "easiest". It's far far far easier to stor conversations as plain text and return them as is, instead of having to encrypt, rotate keys, etc. etc.

That's a tricky system to get right and maintain

(Please do not interpret this as a defense of OpenAI! I just think that we shouldn't trivialize the task of encrypting user data so that it's not visible to the provider).

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

#206

Post by buellerbueller »

greyman wrote: post #42
jcranmer wrote: post #6

"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. We must resist them in the name of user privacy! Signed, the people who have scraped literally everything to incorporate it into the products we make." OpenAI may be trying to paint themselves as the goody-two-shoes here, but they're not.

But that vault can contain conversation between me and chatgpt, which I willingly did, but with the expectation that only openai has access to it. Why should some lawyer working for NYT have access to it? OpenAI is precisely correct, no matter what other motives could be there.

Listen, man, I willingly did that murder, but with the expectation that no one would know about it, except the victim. Why should some lawyer working for the government have access to it?

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

#207

Post by ronsor »

tantalor wrote: post #66
cogman10 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The user has no right to privacy The correct term for this is prima facie right. You do have a right to privacy (arguably) but it is outweighed by the interest of enforcing the rights of others under copyright law. Similarly, liberty is a prima facie right; you can be arrested for committing a crime.

> enforcing the rights of others under copyright law

I certainly do not care about copyright more than my own privacy, and I certainly don't find that interest to be the public's interest, though perhaps it's the interest of legacy corporations and their lobbyists.

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

#208

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #81

"The New York Times is demanding that we turn over 20 million of your private ChatGPT conversations." As might any plaintiff. NYT might be the first of many others and the lawsuits may not be limited to copyright claims Why has OpenAI collected and stored 20 million conversations (including "deleted chats") What is the purpose of OpenAI storing millions of private conversations By contrast the purpose of NYT's reques…

If an analogy to the history of search engines can be made,^1 then we know that log retention policies in the US can change over time. The user has no control over such changes

https://ide.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/w23815.pdf

Companies operating popular www search engines might claim that the need for longer retention is "to provide better service" or some similar reason that focuses on users' interests rather than the company's interests^2

2. Generally, advertising services

This paper attempts to expose such claims as bogus

1. According to some reports OpenAI is sending some queries to Google

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

#209

Post by dghlsakjg »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #182
silveraxe93 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If OpenAI truly didn't keep conversation records for any length of time, they would not be subject to this kind of order. Lots of stateless services get these and are able to defeat them because they never store the user's data. The fact that they store them at all means that they are in scope for a preservation order. It also means that they are in scope for all manner of usage by OpenAI themselves even if a user re…

It seems as if the court has forced OpenAI into collecting logs that they weren't otherwise collecting, or that they were deleting at user request.

So in this case not keeping logs as ordered by the court would be contempt of court.

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

#210

Post by themafia »

jrockway wrote: post #203

I've noticed a pattern of companies writing their customers open letters asking them to do their contract negotiations for them. First it was ESPN vs. YouTube (not watching MNF this week was the best 3 hours I've ever saved, sorry advertisers). Now it's OpenAI vs. The New York Times. Little do they know that I care very little for either party and enjoy seeing both of them squirm. You went to business school, not me.…

> Finally, both parties should find a neutral third party.

That's next to impossible. And if that party fails to be neutral you've just generated a new lawsuit entangled with this one.

The current procedure is each side gets their own expert. The two expert can duke it out and the crucible of the courtroom decides who was more credible.

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