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Stack Overflow Will Charge AI Giants for Training Data

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Re: Stack Overflow Will Charge AI Giants for Training Data

#11

Post by CharlesW »

disntthinkthis wrote: post #7
CharlesW wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You agree that any and all content, including without limitation any and all text, graphics, logos, tools, photographs, images, illustrations, software or source code, audio and video, animations, and product feedback (collectively, “Content”) that you provide to the public Network (collectively, “Subscriber Content”), is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Overflow on a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclus…

Except that Stack Overflow’s CEO, in this very article, says that it’s a violation of the Creative Commons license to train an LLM on their answers. So what he’s actually proposing is very unclear. > When AI companies sell their models to customers, they “are unable to attribute each and every one of the community members whose questions and answers were used to train the model, thereby breaching the Creative Commons…

> Except that Stack Overflow’s CEO, in this very article, says that it’s a violation of the Creative Commons license to train an LLM on their answers.

Yes, because it's a license violation — "If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original". That includes derived data products, like AI models, built using the content.

Re: Stack Overflow Will Charge AI Giants for Training Data

#13

Post by klyrs »

ALittleLight wrote: post #8

I understand the business motivation, especially because this is likely existential for SO, but it feels perverse to take information that people gave to help others and try to paywall it.

Yes and no. My first thought was "... and, what, pay royalties to the contributors?" But the thing that the ML community has been doing is wholesale IP laundering and somebody needs to hold them to task for that.

Re: Stack Overflow Will Charge AI Giants for Training Data

#14

Post by disntthinkthis »

CharlesW wrote: post #11
disntthinkthis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Stack Overflow’s CEO, in this very article, says that it’s a violation of the Creative Commons license to train an LLM on their answers. So what he’s actually proposing is very unclear. > When AI companies sell their models to customers, they “are unable to attribute each and every one of the community members whose questions and answers were used to train the model, thereby breaching the Creative Commons…

> Except that Stack Overflow’s CEO, in this very article, says that it’s a violation of the Creative Commons license to train an LLM on their answers. Yes, because it's a license violation — "If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original". That includes derived data products, like AI models, built using the content.

…yet in the same article he’s talking about selling the data to LLM developers.

It’s hard to make sense of.

Re: Stack Overflow Will Charge AI Giants for Training Data

#15

Post by mindcrime »

So the "AI Giants" that have already trained models using SO / Reddit data will have a perpetual advantage over any newcomers trying to come up. So yeah, totally not a fan of this position from SO / Reddit. Anybody trying to democratize access to foundation models, who isn't (Google|OpenAI|Meta|Microsoft) is now going to find the on-ramp even steeper than ever. As if it wasn't bad enough just paying for compute time.

OTOH, I get why Reddit, SO, etc. would take this position. And I have some sympathy for them in that regard. But the idea of locking in the centralization of powerful AI models is, to me, a bigger problem than Reddit or SO optimizing their profit margin by a percentage point or two.

Re: Stack Overflow Will Charge AI Giants for Training Data

#17

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

noobermin wrote: post #9

This is how it should be. You should not get to train on other people's data for free. It sucks it has to be SO who puts the foot down but at least this is in the right direction. This way, the balance of power is more in content creators' hands, and this avoids the "death of original content creation" people keep complaining about. If you a) have to pay for your training data or b) have to generate your own data, th…

i don't think SO is going to compensate its contributors who actually provided the answers though

Re: Stack Overflow Will Charge AI Giants for Training Data

#18

Post by noobermin »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #17
noobermin wrote: post #9

This is how it should be. You should not get to train on other people's data for free. It sucks it has to be SO who puts the foot down but at least this is in the right direction. This way, the balance of power is more in content creators' hands, and this avoids the "death of original content creation" people keep complaining about. If you a) have to pay for your training data or b) have to generate your own data, th…

i don't think SO is going to compensate its contributors who actually provided the answers though

Yes, that's the "unfortunate part" but it's a wasted opportunity the artists raging against AI haven't figured out this is a way to get what they want.

Re: Stack Overflow Will Charge AI Giants for Training Data

#19

Post by ChatGTP »

ALittleLight wrote: post #8

I understand the business motivation, especially because this is likely existential for SO, but it feels perverse to take information that people gave to help others and try to paywall it.

Isn’t this exactly what Open AI did ? Took SO’s data and put it behind a paywall, called it “AI”, it’s brilliant.

Re: Stack Overflow Will Charge AI Giants for Training Data

#20

Post by Paul-Craft »

noobermin wrote: post #18
8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't think SO is going to compensate its contributors who actually provided the answers though

Yes, that's the "unfortunate part" but it's a wasted opportunity the artists raging against AI haven't figured out this is a way to get what they want.

I don't think that's what "artists raging against AI" want at all.
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