It more looks like the purpose of such company was to steal such data.
Look at their privacy policies. It absolutely is. They are harvesting video, voice, and much more.
4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor
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Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Data hoarding predates LLMs. There where other machine learning methods which also needed data for training.
“Before LLM’s there was_____” I see this whenever an LLM’s impact is assessed. We know. The issue is scale and the ability for smaller and smaller groups (down to individuals) to execute at scale. Fake news always existed. Now one dude in India can flood multiple sock puppet media accounts with right wing content/images (actual example) at a scale previously unimaginable.
> Now one dude in India can flood multiple sock puppet media accounts with right wing content/images (actual example) at a scale previously unimaginable.
I have the faintest possible hope that such things are going to be the death knell of social media. Yeah a lot of credulous idiots are happily giving AI thirst traps their money for stroking their confirmation bias, but that's just who's left at this point. It feels like every social media app I use is gradually bleeding users who aren't hopelessly addicted to the dopamine treadmill, because what's left is just plain unappealing to them, which selects for the people who are most vulnerable to AI shit, which is far from ideal, but also means those platforms are comprised ever more of that vulnerable population and nobody else. And the problem with all these businesses going through that is without a diverse, growing audience, you just become InfoWars, slinging the same slop to the same people every day, and every ounce of said slop is great for what's left of your audience, but absolute garbage for getting anyone new in it. And it just goes on that way until you sputter out and die (or harass the wrong group of parents I guess).
I wish all social media sites a very haha die in a fire.
Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Until thumb drives became large enough to fit most datasets it stopped becoming Big Data. Just normal data.
We have thumb drives that can store petabytes of data? Or did you mean the "big data" crowd which thought 500GB was noteworthy? I don't think anyone took those serious, neither in 2010s nor now. That was always "small" data
Most companies using term "big data" had datasets in TB region. One company I had a gig at had full Hadoop cluster setup and their whole dataset was 40GB. Their marketing had all the big data adjacent keywords over the brochures for clients.
Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor
#44> If you were a Mercor contractor and you believe your voice may already be in circulation, ORAVYS will analyze the first three suspect samples free of charge.
Awesome, if you're a victim of an AI company having your voice, you can help yourself by sending another AI company your voice!
> Audio is never used to train commercial models without explicit consent
I'm sure Mercor has explicit consent as well, legal teams are reasonably good at legally covering their asses with license terms.
Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor
#45not to be conspiratorial but stolen? or given away...
Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor
#46The only data that cannot be stolen or leaked is data that doesn't exist. Hard lesson for both users and companies. Germans (because of course) have a word for this: "Datensparsamkeit". Being frugal with your data.
Data can never be stolen, because it is not a physical thing. Data can be copied, and it can be erased - sometimes both happens at the same time. Data can be lost, that is when its last existing copy was erased.
pedantic and true. What was stolen was not data, but future revenue based on exclusive access to that data.
Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor
#47The only data that cannot be stolen or leaked is data that doesn't exist. Hard lesson for both users and companies. Germans (because of course) have a word for this: "Datensparsamkeit". Being frugal with your data.
> Germans (because of course) I don't know if it's the reason you imply. In the 70s, there were big debates in Germany about privacy and data storage. They spoke of one's data shadow (Datenschatten). I suspect this word comes from that tradition. The reason the word exists would then be the reflection (Verwaltigung) on WW2.
Love it, also love how Datenschatten can also imply that it disappears when someone shines light on it
Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor
#48You could have seen this coming a mile away. So far I have gotten away with never uploading my ID and/or interacting with one of those companies (though one idiot working for some VC thought it was ok to sign a document on my behalf by uploading my signature!!, never mind a bit of fraud) but it is getting harder and harder. Banks and in some cases even governments forcing you to send data to these operators is a very…
Why is the ID a hidden secret that can be used for anything regarding security in the first place?
Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor
#49The only data that cannot be stolen or leaked is data that doesn't exist. Hard lesson for both users and companies. Germans (because of course) have a word for this: "Datensparsamkeit". Being frugal with your data.
Data can never be stolen, because it is not a physical thing. Data can be copied, and it can be erased - sometimes both happens at the same time. Data can be lost, that is when its last existing copy was erased.
The use of "steal" for non-physical things pre-dates the use of "data" in the modern sense [1]. Policing language incorrectly is not reasonable.
[0] https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view....
Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor
#50The only data that cannot be stolen or leaked is data that doesn't exist. Hard lesson for both users and companies. Germans (because of course) have a word for this: "Datensparsamkeit". Being frugal with your data.
> Germans (because of course) I don't know if it's the reason you imply. In the 70s, there were big debates in Germany about privacy and data storage. They spoke of one's data shadow (Datenschatten). I suspect this word comes from that tradition. The reason the word exists would then be the reflection (Verwaltigung) on WW2.
The Stasi would be the obvious cultural context.
In the US of course the government buys this sort of information legally from corporations.