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Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

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Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#131

Post by mistrial9 »

starbugs wrote: post #119
itsoktocry wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shareholders can and have sued corporate boards/execs for not acting in their best interest. Translating "best interest" to "maximize profits" is the stretch though. The shareholders define what is their best interest. Shareholders aren't faceless demons. They are you and me.

Come on. You know who the "shareholders" are that the parent commenter talks about. They are board members and people with a huge amount of shares, not "normal" people who hold 5 shares in their retirement portfolio. The main interest of a shareholder is return on investment. And that's fine. The problem is that if you don't have enough competing entities in a market, these shareholders of the few companies that stil…

no this is insufficiently informed.. company bylaws can vary quite a lot about voting rights. Your typical SiliValley cut-n-paste corp less so..

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#132

Post by pixl97 »

boredumb wrote: post #94

Honest question I have. I've worked in advertising and the laws around PII are interesting. In California there are the CCPA laws that require them to allow a form to submit and have my PII removed after 90? days. What happens if these people train a model on a cali residents PII, having a request come in, 3 months later someone asks it about you and it spits out the PII that was "removed"? I'm assuming it's a matter…

Why are you assuming they have your PII in it in the first place and that the identifying part would not be stripped?

If the personal part is gone, I'm not sure you have any claim.

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#133

Post by sumtechguy »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #103
nologic01 wrote: post #73

The regulatory architecture of "big tech" is an unmitigated disaster. You can't have two entities effectively control every touching point with the digital domain for a major fraction of the planet. There is absolutely no reason to trust that they will not abuse this position in opaque and impossible to trace ways. These are trillion-dollar powered for-profit entities, with armies of lawyers and lobbyists that can in…

I blame the tech companies but I also blame the people who created all this stuff -- programmers, tech startups, and computer science. Those people created a system that is too easy to use as an ultra-efficient wealth concentrator, and now tech companies are the result.

The regulatory environment also played a big role in this. If you read the original telecommunications act (title I). It is wildly heavy handed on privacy. The TL:DR basically you can pipe this voice data around but you may not use it and if an gov official wants it, get a warrant (even if it is a rubber stamp one). Title II broke most of that to make the internet grow. Well it succeeded doing that wildly. But now the companies are doing what is basically 'natural' for them to do. Consume what they can see. This sort of thing has happened before with telegrams, mail, and plain old telephone. Companies have seized up Title II to make this happen. For example your cell phone is not a phone. It is an internet device and covered under tittle II not I.

Also we as users are somewhat to blame as we wanted 'free stuff'. We traded away our freedoms for tweets and facebook posts.

There is no 'one entity' to blame here. We all share it quite equally.

I have been saying this for many years now. But most of these companies are heading right into a Title III being written just for exactly what they are doing. They better get their act together or no one is going to like the outcome.

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#134

Post by newswasboring »

starbugs wrote: post #119
itsoktocry wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shareholders can and have sued corporate boards/execs for not acting in their best interest. Translating "best interest" to "maximize profits" is the stretch though. The shareholders define what is their best interest. Shareholders aren't faceless demons. They are you and me.

Come on. You know who the "shareholders" are that the parent commenter talks about. They are board members and people with a huge amount of shares, not "normal" people who hold 5 shares in their retirement portfolio. The main interest of a shareholder is return on investment. And that's fine. The problem is that if you don't have enough competing entities in a market, these shareholders of the few companies that stil…

> The main interest of a shareholder is return on investment. And that's fine.

No, it's not fine. Legally, maybe, but not morally fine. I don't understand how everyone is ok with this system which seems to be selecting for the worst humans.

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#135

Post by justinclift »

nologic01 wrote: post #79
justinclift wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are legally obliged to do for their shareholders Isn't that an "old wives tale" that doesn't have any basis in reality?

Alas it does. Think, e.g. about the backlash against asset managers for pursuing sustainability agendas. Closer to the topic, think also about the "furore" and supposed panic at Google that they are not capitalizing (literally) on their AI leadership.

> pursuing sustainability agendas

My impression is that the "sustainability agendas" these asset managers were pursuing turned out to be er... mostly bullshit.

Along the lines of companies "green washing" stuff that was not in fact green. Also stuff marketed as "socially progressive" as a sales tactic.

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#136

Post by edgyquant »

5636588 wrote: post #81
dna_polymerase wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what these types of contracts show is that companies at Microsoft's level don't give a sh*t about national or over-regional regulation. They will use your data, and while you're busy reading 100s of pages of mumbo-jumbo they already have their models about you in place and sell access to it on a PPC basis. And this is especially true with GDPR. Google's revenues are still growing, the advertising companies ar…

Defeatism and cynicism are simply excuses for complacency. If you think companies like Microsoft are exploiting your data, don't just whine about it; take action. Your passivity won't stop them; stricter regulations and public pressure will. Just the other day, Microsoft decided to decouple Teams from the Office Suite in an attempt to preempt a potential antitrust penalty from the European Union. It's just one exampl…

The only reason Europe has successfully enacted such laws and pushed back against big tech is because it isn’t dominated by European companies. The US has no economic incentive to do the same.

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#137

Post by waynesonfire »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #103
nologic01 wrote: post #73

The regulatory architecture of "big tech" is an unmitigated disaster. You can't have two entities effectively control every touching point with the digital domain for a major fraction of the planet. There is absolutely no reason to trust that they will not abuse this position in opaque and impossible to trace ways. These are trillion-dollar powered for-profit entities, with armies of lawyers and lobbyists that can in…

I blame the tech companies but I also blame the people who created all this stuff -- programmers, tech startups, and computer science. Those people created a system that is too easy to use as an ultra-efficient wealth concentrator, and now tech companies are the result.

I came to say something similar. I think it's important to add that there is a slew of non-technical staff, sales / product managers that foam at the mouth at opportunities to exploit these monopolist ideas. They then hire technical staff to execute. Their entire compensation package depends on this virus like growth.

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#138

Post by Delphiza »

There is a difference between personal data and personally identifiable data. In many ways it is unavoidable to use personal data. Predictive text uses personal data (they 'learn' from everyone) - is the sentence and paragraph personal? Search engines record what you have typed in - do you classify your search query as 'personal'? I can copy paste the first comment from this thread - is it personal data. I may be flat out wrong, and shouldn't type anything into a web page ever.

Those four lawyers and three privacy experts didn't seem to come to a conclusion on what personal data is. Does big tech feed data created by people into 'AI' tools? Yes. Does little tech? Yes.

I'm okay to join Mozilla with my pitchfork if I know what it is about. I would like to have people that are clear about how they are looking after my interests, rather than just getting the mob riled up. Use of data, any data, is subject to an agreement. Go on and read the 'legal' that you have agreed to using Hacker News - they have a whole section on how they use personal information. Do we get our pitchforks out for HN, or are they cool?

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#139

Post by la64710 »

Delphiza wrote: post #138

There is a difference between personal data and personally identifiable data. In many ways it is unavoidable to use personal data. Predictive text uses personal data (they 'learn' from everyone) - is the sentence and paragraph personal? Search engines record what you have typed in - do you classify your search query as 'personal'? I can copy paste the first comment from this thread - is it personal data. I may be fla…

It’s Microsoft that for years tried to kill Linux and still sharpens the knife.

Re: Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?

#140

Post by teddyh »

executesorder66 wrote: post #104

Where are all the assholes who say things like: "I'm loving the new Microsoft", "Microsoft is not the evil company it was back in the 90's", etc. I'd love you hear how you justify this.

Lately, they tend to gather in threads about Github.
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