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AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

martinalderson.com

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Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#71

Post by Aurornis »

Retric wrote: post #37
Aurornis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using an LLM on data does not ingest that data into the training corpus. LLMs don’t “learn” from the information they operate on, contrary to what a lot of people assume. None of the mainstream paid services ingest operating data into their training sets. You will find a lot of conspiracy theories claiming that companies are saying one thing but secretly stealing your data, of course.

Companies have already shifting from not using customer data to giving them an option to opt out ex: “How can I control whether my data is used for model training? If you are logged into Copilot with a Microsoft Account or other third-party authentication, you can control whether your conversations are used for training the generative AI models used in Copilot. Opting out will exclude your past, present, and future c…

An enterprise Copilot contract will have already decided this for the organization.

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#72

Post by Aurornis »

nerdponx wrote: post #17
Aurornis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using an LLM on data does not ingest that data into the training corpus. LLMs don’t “learn” from the information they operate on, contrary to what a lot of people assume. None of the mainstream paid services ingest operating data into their training sets. You will find a lot of conspiracy theories claiming that companies are saying one thing but secretly stealing your data, of course.

If they weren't, then why would enterprise level subscriptions include specific terms stating that they don't train on user provided data? There's no reason to believe that they don't, and if they don't now then there's no reason to believe that they won't later whenever it suits them.

> then why would enterprise level subscriptions include specific terms stating that they don't train on user provided data?

What? That’s literally my point: Enterprise agreements aren’t training on the data of their enterprise customers like the parent commenter claimed.

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#74

Post by shermantanktop »

The real question isn’t whether we’ll run out of SaaS customers, it’s whether we’ll run out of new problems that can be solved by the current set of tools. I doubt it, it’d be a historical first in the modern era. But the solutions may move closer to the companies with the problems. More in-house, fewer intermediaries.

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#75

Post by Aurornis »

fzeroracer wrote: post #21
Aurornis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using an LLM on data does not ingest that data into the training corpus. LLMs don’t “learn” from the information they operate on, contrary to what a lot of people assume. None of the mainstream paid services ingest operating data into their training sets. You will find a lot of conspiracy theories claiming that companies are saying one thing but secretly stealing your data, of course.

> You will find a lot of conspiracy theories claiming that companies are saying one thing but secretly stealing your data, of course. It's not really a conspiracy when we have multiple examples of high profile companies doing exactly this. And it keeps happening. Granted I'm unaware of cases of this occuring currently with professional AI services but it's basic security 101 that you should never let anything even ha…

> It's not really a conspiracy when we have multiple examples of high profile companies doing exactly this.

Do you have any citations or sources for this at all?

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#76

Post by Oarch »

findjashua wrote: post #19
Oarch wrote: post #9

Earlier this year I thought that rare proprietary knowledge and IP was a safe haven from AI, since LLMs can only scrub public data. Then it dawned on me how many companies are deeply integrating Copilot into their everyday workflows. It's the perfect Trojan Horse.

providers' ToS explicitly states whether or not any data provided is used for training purposes. the usual that i've seen is that while they retain the right to use the data on free tiers, it's almost never the case for paid tiers

Given the conduct we've seen to date, I'd trust them to follow the letter - but not the spirit - of IP law.

There may very well be clever techniques that don't require directly training on the users' data. Perhaps generating a parallel paraphrased corpus as they serve user queries - one which they CAN train on legally.

The amount of value unlocked by stealing practically ~everyone's lunch makes me not want to put that past anyone who's capable of implementing such a technology.

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#77

Post by Aurornis »

popalchemist wrote: post #69
Aurornis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using an LLM on data does not ingest that data into the training corpus. LLMs don’t “learn” from the information they operate on, contrary to what a lot of people assume. None of the mainstream paid services ingest operating data into their training sets. You will find a lot of conspiracy theories claiming that companies are saying one thing but secretly stealing your data, of course.

Wrong, buddy. Many of the top AI services use human feedback to continuously apply "reinforcement learning" after the initial deployment of a pre-trained model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_learning_from_hu...

RLHF is a training step.

Inference (what happens when you use an LLM as a customer) is separate from training.

Inference and training are separate processes. Using an LLM doesn’t train it. That’s not what RLHF means.

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#78

Post by Aurornis »

lwhi wrote: post #42
Aurornis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using an LLM on data does not ingest that data into the training corpus. LLMs don’t “learn” from the information they operate on, contrary to what a lot of people assume. None of the mainstream paid services ingest operating data into their training sets. You will find a lot of conspiracy theories claiming that companies are saying one thing but secretly stealing your data, of course.

Information about the way we interact with the data (RLHF) can be used to refine agent behaviour. While this isn't used specifically for LLM training, it can involve aggregating insights from customer behaviour.

That’s a training step. It requires explicitly collecting the data and using it in the training process.

Merely using an LLM for inference does not train it on the prompts and data, as many incorrectly assume. There is a surprising lack of understanding of this separation even on technical forums like HN.

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#79

Post by mikert89 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #41

I’m currently working on an in house ERP and inventory system for a specific kind of business. With very few people you can now instead of paying loads of money for some off the shelf solution to your software needs get something completely bespoke to your business. I think AI enables the age of boutique software that works fantastically for businesses, agencies will need to dramatically reduce their price to compete…

Its not that people will build their own saas, its that competitors will pop up at a rapid pace

Re: AI agents are starting to eat SaaS

#80

Post by Aurornis »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #60
TheRoque wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just read the ToS of the LLM products please

This is so naive. The ToS permits paraphrasing of user conversations, by not excluding it, and then training on THAT. You’d never be able to definitively connected paraphrased data to yours, especially if they only train on paraphrased data that covers frequent, as opposed to rare, topics.

Do it have a citation for this?
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