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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

#421

Post by N-Krause »

subscribed wrote: post #405
N-Krause wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot compare these examples. There is currently no way to encrypt the user message and have the model on the server read/process the message without it being decrypted first. Mullvad and E2EE Messengers do not need to process the contents of the message on their server. All they do is, passing it to another computer. It could be scrambled binary for all they care. But any AI company _has_ to read the content of…

It's a solved problem. Lumo.

Lumo never promises encryption while processing a conversation on their servers. Chats HAVE to be decrypted at some point on the server or send already decrypted by the client, even when they are stored encrypted.

Read the marketing carefully and you will notice that there is no word about encrypted processing, just storage - and of course that's a solved problem, because it was solved decades ago.

The agent needs the data decrypted, at least for the moment, I know of no model that can process encrypted data. So as long as the model runs on a server, whoever manages that server has access to your messages while they are being processed.

EDIT: Even found an article where they acknowledge this [0]. Even though there seems to exist models/techniques that can produce output from encrypted messages with 'Homomorphic Encryption' [1], it is not practical, as it would takedays to produce an answer and it would consumes huge amounts of processing power.

[0] https://proton.me/blog/lumo-security-model

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption

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

#422

Post by nl »

godelski wrote: post #294
nl wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal does End-to-end encryption, so they (Signal) can never read it. The whole point of ChatGPT conversations is so they can be read by the model on the server. Conversations are kept around because they can be picked up and continued at any point (I use this feature frequently). Additionally you can use conversations in their scheduled notification feature, where the conversation is replayed and updates are sent t…

You could definitely do this E2EE. Models should run in ephemeral containers where data is only processed in RAM. For active conversation a unique and temporary key-pair is generated. Saved chats are encrypted client side and stored encrypted server side. To resume a conversation[0], decrypt client side, establish connection to container, generate new temporary key-pair, and so on. There's more details and nuances bu…

As it happens...

I built E2E encrypted LLMs using secure enclaves, so I know a bit about this space.

The tech works, for small LLMs - the sort of thing you can run on your mobile already. It isn't yet (?) there for LLMs the size of ChatGPT.

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

#423

Post by rpdillon »

stevage wrote: post #414
rpdillon wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I looked for the base of this lawsuit, I was looking for some kind of monetary damage that the New York Times had suffered as a result of open AI's actions, like specific cases where their work has been reproduced or people canceling their subscriptions to the New York Times because of OpenAI's launch. I've done so much reading, and I've still been unable to find anything that articulates this. Do you know of an…

>specific cases where their work has been reproduced Isn't that exactly what they're trying to find by looking through OpenAI customers' conversations?

Indeed. But then that makes me wonder why anyone thinks their hypothesis is particularly strong that this is happening. To make an inappropriate analogy, this is like assuming that somebody's house has weapons, and so you demand to go through every possession in their home to uncover the weapon. My question is, why do you think there are weapons in the house?

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

#424

Post by sroussey »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #40
sroussey wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The user has no right to privacy. The same as how any internet service can be (and have been) compelled to produce private messages. This is nonsense. I’ve personally been involved in these things, and fought to protect user privacy at all levels and never lost.

You've successfully fought a subpoena on the basis of a third party's privacy? More than once? I'd love to hear more.

I was CEO of a small startup called Network54 with about 4 million monthly users. It was a forum hosting service.

The early 2000s were the heyday of lawsuits. People would say something about someone and if that someone was rich they would sue. It happened often.

The attorneys would sue us, the domain registrar, the ISP, everyone.

Often the things said were true. But they would sue to find out who the people were.

People selling Ponzi schemes, CEOs of public companies trying to find what union employees to fire, it was all over the place.

We would fire to quash every time. File to move venues to CA which has anti-slap laws. Depositions in DC. It was very distracting and expensive.

Never lost. Made some people really mad that they didn’t get their way.

Now for criminal things, the opposite, sorry. Two person operation and the FBI walks in your office with a warrant, then yes sir let me see the warrant first. If no warrant, then sorry sir come back with a warrant but we will take this as a notice to soft delete not hard delete content.

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

#425

Post by freejazz »

keeda wrote: post #417
freejazz wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hmm, this is an interesting framing of the lawsuit. First, it's not a "framing" of the lawsuit. A lawsuit is a number of claims made by one party against the other. In the two California cases, there were no decisions made on claims relating to LLM outputs. In the NYT case, there are claims relating to LLM outputs. Yes, it could also be about training. But the discovery pertains to the outputs, which is the issue in…

Oh I'm totally an armchair lawyer, so my ruminations were not grounded in laws or legal precedence :-) I do have some background on the patent side of things, where independent reinvention is also not a defence for infringement, but not so much in copyright, so this was educational. However, has there been any case where the infringment was not only unintentional, but also unexpected? That is, if you look at cases of…

These are interesting questions but they are not legal questions. Intent is not an element of infringement. It is only an element of willful infringement. Therefor it can never be used as a defense against infringement on its own.

>The fact that it reproduced those outputs is undeniable, but how does existing law and jurisprudence apply to an unprecedented case like this where the reproduction was through some magic black box that nobody can decipher?

People love to ponder... but ponder how the law should handle that... "Yes, your honor, our business has a magical black box that violates the law, we're just not sure how! Therefore we can't be liable" -- How does that even make sense? On what principle should that apply here and not elsewhere? Can your magic black box murder? Defame?

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

#426

Post by freejazz »

Aerroon wrote: post #420
freejazz wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Let's say they do find some juicy detail and use it, then what? Nothing. It's not like you can ever fix a privacy violation. Nobody involved would get a serious punishment, like prison time, either. There are no privacy violations. OpenAI already told the court they anonymized it. What they say in court and what they say in the blog is different and so many people here are (unfortunately) falling for it!

There's no such thing. Anonymized data can still be used to identify someone as we've seen on numerous occasions.

Read the ToS next time

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

#427

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #115
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…

NB. There is no order to "collect". The order is to preserve what is already being collected and stored in the ordinary course of business https://ia801404.us.archive.org/31/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.6... https://ia801404.us.archive.org/31/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.6...

Is it possible to install ChatGPT on only one computer ("device")

Is it a requirement that ChatGPT users own multiple computers

Is it a requirement that ChatGPT users use ChatGPT on multiple computers

Is it true that a goal of online advertising services providers is to learn about all of an ad targets' computers and link them to a single identity

Is every software "feature" necessary

Are there "features" in some software that benefit software developers more than software users, e.g., through data colllection, surveilllance and advertising services

Should all software "features" chosen by developers be "opt-out", with default settings chosen by developers not users, or should some be "opt-in"

What if a "feature" chosen by a developer that no user ever requested cannot be implemented as "opt-in". Should users that do not wish to subject themselves to the "feature" use the software

Is ChatGPT chat history a "feature"

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

#428

Post by keeda »

freejazz wrote: post #425
keeda wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I'm totally an armchair lawyer, so my ruminations were not grounded in laws or legal precedence :-) I do have some background on the patent side of things, where independent reinvention is also not a defence for infringement, but not so much in copyright, so this was educational. However, has there been any case where the infringment was not only unintentional, but also unexpected? That is, if you look at cases of…

These are interesting questions but they are not legal questions. Intent is not an element of infringement. It is only an element of willful infringement. Therefor it can never be used as a defense against infringement on its own. >The fact that it reproduced those outputs is undeniable, but how does existing law and jurisprudence apply to an unprecedented case like this where the reproduction was through some magic…

> On what principle should that apply here and not elsewhere? Can your magic black box murder? Defame?

Good questions, and I think relevant to the current point. We're already seeing cases like that pop up with the libel suits or the recent, tragic AI-assisted suicides.

It's very clear that these models were not designed to be "suicide-ideation machines", yet that turned out to be one of the things they do! In these cases the questions are definitely not going to be about whether the AI labs intended these outcomes, but whether they took sufficient precautions to anticipate and prevent such outcomes.

One possible defense for the AI labs could be "these machines have an unprecedented, possibly unlimited, range of capabilities, and we could not reasonably have anticipated this."

A smoking gun would be an email or report outlining just such a threat that they dismissed (which may well exist, given what I hear about these labs' "move fast, break people" approach to safety.) But without that it seems like a reasonable defense.

While that argument may not work for this or other cases, I think it will pop up as these models do more and more unexpected things, and the courts will have to grapple with it eventually.

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

#429

Post by ectospheno »

mmooss wrote: post #131
NoSalt wrote: post #71

Another good reason to stay logged out when asking ChatGPT questions.

It's common and trivial to identify you by other means.

Similar trains of thought:

I can’t fix global warming by myself so I’m going to do nothing.

Politicians don’t listen to my age group so I don’t vote.

I can’t donate to every charity so I won’t donate to any.

Everyone else ignores traffic laws so why should I care?

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

#430

Post by mmooss »

ectospheno wrote: post #429
mmooss wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's common and trivial to identify you by other means.

Similar trains of thought: I can’t fix global warming by myself so I’m going to do nothing. Politicians don’t listen to my age group so I don’t vote. I can’t donate to every charity so I won’t donate to any. Everyone else ignores traffic laws so why should I care?

Those aren't similar. Those are social goods that require people to do them en masse to work, and defeatist attitudes. In this case, logging off isn't a social good and I'm saying it won't do much. There are ways to maintain privacy, just not this one.
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