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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

#91

Post by caminante »

oefrha wrote: post #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…

Per the WSJ article last week, I suspect Mercor's playing in a grey area of contracts. It wasn't just voice.[0]

A lot of people were basically wiretapping themselves AND their businesses!

While a lot of Mercor "contractors" claim Mercor over-reached with data gathering via Insightful, it's kind of smart because people are too afraid to complain too much knowing they'll not only lose their primary job, but also open themselves up to uncapped liability for willful misconduct.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mercor-ai-startup-personal-data-...

Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor

#92

Post by BizarroLand »

ffsm8 wrote: post #60
butlike wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have thumb drives that can store petabytes of data We do?

Please provide a link.

You would need 4 and change of these 245tb Kioxias to hold 1 petabyte, and an entire server grade computer to run them.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/kioxia-unvei...

Or 250 of these ~$400 4tb flash drives and an insane number of dongles to connect them all:

https://www.slashgear.com/1847725/largest-usb-thumb-drive-hi...

Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor

#93

Post by dylan604 »

butlike wrote: post #57
ffsm8 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> We have thumb drives that can store petabytes of data We do?

It was a question that you've edited out the punctuation. You're asking the exact same thing as the person you've replied

Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor

#94

Post by Forgeties79 »

dpoloncsak wrote: post #27
Forgeties79 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

Do LLMs require that much more data than the tradional ML approaches we've seen over the years?

That’s not the issue I’m hitting here primarily but yes.

My concern is that I can open up chatGPT and even with a free, “anonymous” account run an assembly line generating tens of thousands of words a day to pump to Twitter that are good enough to prop up multiple fake accounts and cause mayhem.

Now make it thousands of people like me doing it. Now add funding and political orgs. Add company leadership that turns a blind eye so long as it drives engagement. This scale and pipeline wasn’t possible 5 years ago, even if we clearly see the throughline.

I’m not even getting into fake images either. That used to require some know how. There are basically no hurdles and even if most people learn it’s fake, millions likely won’t. If you’re a little lucky, less scrupulous “news” outlets will amplify it for you as well for free.

Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor

#95

Post by Centigonal »

tgv wrote: post #40
eqvinox wrote: post #3

The 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.

Germany resisted Google Street View until 2023, which was something I thought was very impressive.

Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor

#96

Post by zkmon »

Henchman21 wrote: post #69
oefrha wrote: post #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…

Has your identity been stolen? Try our free credit monitoring for a month! Selling the solution to the problem you caused ought to be illegal.

> Selling the solution to the problem you caused ought to be illegal.

Most tech solutions are built on the problems they created. This includes phones, cars, computers, every software upgrade, and almost every electronic gadget. You are forced to use them because the world around you is no longer compatible with the way of life that was before the introduction of these tech.

Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor

#97

Post by saadn92 »

oefrha wrote: post #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…

The irony runs deeper than the free analysis offer. The whole Mercor contractor relationship was this exact pattern: hand over studio-quality voice recordings and ID scans to get paid for data labeling work that didn't require either. "Explicit consent" was buried in the terms, and people clicked through because they needed the paycheck.

Now 40k people have learned that biometrics aren't passwords. You can't rotate your voice.

Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor

#98

Post by brewdad »

deltoidmaximus wrote: post #74
java-man wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HSBC did that. I could never understand that - the exact phrase was in the movie!

Fidelity seemed to sign you up for this when you called them on the phone almost automatically. Ridiculous since it was defeated easily in a hacker movie from the 1990s using a tape recorder.

Much cleaner than keeping a finger on you to bypass the print reader.

Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor

#99

Post by AtNightWeCode »

Where I live there was a common scam to manipulate voice recordings from phone calls. I was very careful back then with phone calls when I ran my own business. Like 15 years ago. Kinda crazy that any service would use voice recognition today as stated.

Re: 4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor

#100

Post by inetknght »

saadn92 wrote: post #97
oefrha wrote: post #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…

The irony runs deeper than the free analysis offer. The whole Mercor contractor relationship was this exact pattern: hand over studio-quality voice recordings and ID scans to get paid for data labeling work that didn't require either. "Explicit consent" was buried in the terms, and people clicked through because they needed the paycheck. Now 40k people have learned that biometrics aren't passwords. You can't rotate y…

> biometrics aren't passwords. You can't rotate your voice.

"My voice is my passport. Verify me."

I have to renew my passport every 10 years or so. How do I do that with my voice? I guess it's time to take some vocal lessons.

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