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You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

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Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#71

Post by vouaobrasil »

zamadatix wrote: post #32
vouaobrasil wrote: post #9

> For the time being, though, avoiding A.I. is up to you. If it were as easy as posting a message of objection on Instagram, many of us would already be seeing a lot less of it. It's true that it is quite hard, but there are ways to reduce it for sure. Here is what I have done: 1. I've deleted accounts for websites that promote AI. I have already deleted LinkedIn, Github, Medium, and a few others. 2. I have stopped s…

A commendable effort (those are some serious sacrifices/actions - no videos!?) but it's a bit at odds with posting about it here which puts into question how much reduction in AI content specifically is occurring vs how much reduction in general consumption (which isn't necessarily a bad thing though). I.e. Y Combinator invests in hundreds of AI companies, >25% of the front page posts are regularly about AI, it was a…

> your thoughts on how much you think these actions have really changed your consumption ratio vs your overall consumption?

Well, in terms of overall consumption, I also write and talk extensively about the dangers of AI using these examples so I think they might help my audience

> And how have you come to any certainty in the measurement of e.g. whether an article you're about to click on has AI images or text

The idea is to build a web of trust. Often, I ask. If I am uncertain, I don't read. Also, I help run a small magazine and we ask all authors to submit a statement that says they did not use AI. Of course, we have to trust people but what are you going to do?

I also work for a magazine where all of us dislike AI and we don't use generative AI for any of our articles. I know my coworkers well so I trust them too.

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#72

Post by vouaobrasil »

makeitdouble wrote: post #55
vouaobrasil wrote: post #9

> For the time being, though, avoiding A.I. is up to you. If it were as easy as posting a message of objection on Instagram, many of us would already be seeing a lot less of it. It's true that it is quite hard, but there are ways to reduce it for sure. Here is what I have done: 1. I've deleted accounts for websites that promote AI. I have already deleted LinkedIn, Github, Medium, and a few others. 2. I have stopped s…

> I have already deleted [...] Github Given that Gitlab and GitBucket are also integrating AI, is getting out of these two platforms even a realistic choice for 99% of devs working for a regular company ? On the other hand, convincing your CTO to get your organization out of any major code management platform feels like a pretty exciting chalenge to tackle.

It's not really a realistic choice I guess but since Git is very distributed it's not an impossible one. Luckily for me, I'm really the only one who codes in my own small organization so I don't have to use Github.

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#73

Post by vouaobrasil »

chrisjj wrote: post #29
vouaobrasil wrote: post #9

> For the time being, though, avoiding A.I. is up to you. If it were as easy as posting a message of objection on Instagram, many of us would already be seeing a lot less of it. It's true that it is quite hard, but there are ways to reduce it for sure. Here is what I have done: 1. I've deleted accounts for websites that promote AI. I have already deleted LinkedIn, Github, Medium, and a few others. 2. I have stopped s…

> 4. I do not click or read any articles with AI-generated images or text. How can you possibly know the articles you read have no AI-generated images or text?

> How can you possibly know the articles you read have no AI-generated images or text?

I use a web of trust. I have a network of known writers who don't use AI. I avoid others...I mean, most articles on the internet are relatively useless anyway and just for entertainment so I don't really "need" those in my day to day life.

The ones in my web of trust are enough for me,

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#74

Post by em-bee »

_heimdall wrote: post #65
moron4hire wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thanks, don't want to put my kids through my childhood

Assuming you were homeschooled and it went poorly for you, was your takeaway that it could never be done well? What did you find that makes homeschooling always worse than trusting the local, likely poorly paid and appreciated, state educators?

What did you find that makes homeschooling always worse

we all live by the experience of our childhood. it is pervasive, and influences us in ways that we can't escape. i don't know what the parent commented experienced. but most likely they have not experienced bad regular schools, nor seen well working homeschooling. so their own homeschooling experience probably is all they have to go on.

i struggle as a parent because i missed a lot of important experiences from my childhood. as a result i am unable to replicate them. even if i get told by others what i should be doing, it feels unnatural and uncomfortable because i have not experienced that myself. for all i can tell, my kids childhood is better than my own, but i am repeating many of the mistakes of my parents because i simply don't know any better.

homeschooling may go the same way. if the parent had a bad experience homeschooling, they may just be unable to translate that into a better experience for their kids even if they believe or know that a better experience is possible.

trusting the local, likely poorly paid and appreciated, state educators?

my experience in a US highschool led me to conclude that the poor pay self selects for more motivated teachers. all the teachers i had there were excellent and i had the best time there out of all my schooling. that's an anecdote of course, and there are many counter examples, but equally you could ask the reverse question. what did you find that you believe that government schooling is necessarily a bad experience?

homeschooling is not for everyone. during covid, my ability to engage the kids into learning activities was an abysmal failure. so despite believing that great homeschooling is possible and not having experienced bad homeschooling myself, i'll never be doing it with my kids.

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#75

Post by chrisjj »

debugnik wrote: post #37
chrisjj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4. I do not click or read any articles with AI-generated images or text. How can you possibly know the articles you read have no AI-generated images or text?

So what if his criteria has false negatives? AI or not, ignoring noticeable slop will be a net positive.

> So what if his criteria has false negatives?

Then he unjustly undermines the livelyhood of human authors.

The AIs will applaud him.

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#76

Post by em-bee »

moron4hire wrote: post #33
ryandv wrote: post #8

This is just the practice of invasive data harvesting taken to its natural conclusion, which any tech savvy user or computer geek brought up in the pre-postmodern social media era of the Internet (before Facebook) could have seen coming decades in advance. The only winning move here is not to play, accepting the unfortunate consequence that you will need to "limit the reach of your profile just to avoid participating…

It's not possible to not play. Even if I chose to avoid social media, my kids' school insists everyone interest with their teachers through some crappy branded app. Read the TOS. Didn't like what I saw. Told them I didn't want to install an app on my phone. Asked nicely if there was some way I could participate without it. They acted like I beat my kids.

exactly this. i have written about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41529783

some people just do not understand that there are interactions that are forced on us and that refusing to participate is only to our own disadvantage.

even if they allow you to participate without installing that app, you will always be second class. people will forget to copy you on messages, or not see messages you sent. and they will have a grudge because you make them do extra work. they will leave you out on things that are optional, or not vote for you when electing a parent representative. they will reject you for not being a team player.

the irony is that as a software developer i would not hesitate to create such an app. surely my app is better than the alternatives. and the TOS of my app is fine. oh wait, my boss changed the TOS without asking me. ooops.

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#77

Post by OvbiousError »

csallen wrote: post #56
rpgwaiter wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s many good reasons, but for me it’s that I don’t want companies profiting off of my posts that have no intention of profit sharing. When I make a Youtube video and companies run ads on it, I get a piece of that pie (assuming I meet the requirements, etc.). That same video fed into Gemini so google can charge for AI video generation? I get nothing, Google makes bank. As a user I can pay for YouTube premium and…

> I don’t want companies profiting off of my posts I despise this attitude. It's so entitled. Our history of forever extending copyrights and protecting "intellectual property" has run amok, to the point where the average person thinks their scribbles, utterings, and ideas are valuable enough on their own to be worthy of a pay day. It's the culture of " My cut, my cut, my cut!" Someone else profiting is not a tragedy…

OP is not saying they want money. They say they don't want companies profiting from their work. The two are unrelated here.

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#78

Post by shprd »

gruez wrote: post #50
rpgwaiter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would happily pay a reasonable monthly subscription to this site or similar. No problem paying for a service that treats users with respect. Also using this site has taught me all sorts of things that likely made me some money indirectly. It seems mutually beneficial without selling my data or paying for HN. That said, if YC made a deal with some tech company to give them the firehose of data to train AI, I’d proba…

Right, but are you objecting to AI training because companies are benefiting while you're being uncompensated, or think AI training is fundamentally bad? Your previous comment suggests it's the former, but by the same logic you shouldn't comment online either, because that also benefits the company and is uncompensated.

Users are here because they want to, they chose to participate in this community. You can stop using HN at any minute and Ycombinator will not chase you.

But AI companies on the other hand took the internet hostage. They stole any creative work, code, art, and literally any data they could their hands on with no regard to license or consent from users. No one actively opted-in to let AI companies have their personal data, they just silently grapped everything they could. Maybe there's some obscure website where you shared something private and lost access to the account or the website even went down? Congrats, it's now revived in OpenAI dataset where you've absolutely no control or details about how it's being used, not even a way to request and pursue legal action because the training data is a "secret".

It's not about compensation, it's that fact you have no option or say even if you don't use their services.

You can't escape or opt-out, unless you go off the grid, and even then they still retain your old data and use it as they see fit.

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#79

Post by JohnFen »

joe_the_user wrote: post #14
ryandv wrote: post #8

This is just the practice of invasive data harvesting taken to its natural conclusion, which any tech savvy user or computer geek brought up in the pre-postmodern social media era of the Internet (before Facebook) could have seen coming decades in advance. The only winning move here is not to play, accepting the unfortunate consequence that you will need to "limit the reach of your profile just to avoid participating…

I'm not sure why having an LLM use my output in particular is problematic - I'm pretty sure OpenAI trained GPT-3+ on every single bit of data they could find, so they probably included a bunch of stuff I've written here already (though it is minuscule fraction of their vast corpus of course). Losing anonymity is something I'd be much more worried about overall (not that it's entirely separate I don't think it's the s…

> I'm not sure why having an LLM use my output in particular is problematic

For me, the problem is almost entirely that doing so requires me to have a great deal of trust in entities that I consider untrustworthy.

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#80

Post by [deleted] »

Barrin92 wrote: post #25
doctorpangloss wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to make any forecast about "spaces" "prone to AI slop," whatever that means, besides social networks that you personally do not like, in aggregate or individually. TikTok and Meta apps are definitely growing faster, in relative or absolute terms, than the New Yorker and the New York Times audiences are, paid or unpaid. If you compare aggregate social media to aggregate news and magazines, the latter is shrinking…

> If you compare aggregate social media to aggregate news and magazines, the latter is shrinking This isn't even factually correct, the New York Times has done well, and grown over the last decade. In particular their move in the early 2010s towards paywalled premium subscription content, away from advertising, which was lambasted at the time, was in hindsight a very smart move. Yes, in the aggregate premium offering…

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