this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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[–] Iunnrais@lemm.ee 162 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Just let anyone scrape it all for any reason. It’s science. Let it be free.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 week ago (3 children)

The OP tweet seems to be leaning pretty hard on the "AI bad" sentiment. If LLMs make academic knowledge more accessible to people that's a good thing for the same reason what Aaron Swartz was doing was a good thing.

[–] Ashelyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

On the whole, maybe LLMs do make these subjects more accessible in a way that's a net-positive, but there are a lot of monied interests that make positive, transparent design choices unlikely. The companies that create and tweak these generalized models want to make a return in the long run. Consequently, they have deliberately made their products speak in authoritative, neutral tones to make them seem more correct, unbiased and trustworthy to people.

The problem is that LLMs 'hallucinate' details as an unavoidable consequence of their design. People can tell untruths as well, but if a person lies or misspeaks about a scientific study, they can be called out on it. An LLM cannot be held accountable in the same way, as it's essentially a complex statistical prediction algorithm. Non-savvy users can easily be fed misinfo straight from the tap, and bad actors can easily generate correct-sounding misinformation to deliberately try and sway others.

ChatGPT completely fabricating authors, titles, and even (fake) links to studies is a known problem. Far too often, unsuspecting users take its output at face value and believe it to be correct because it sounds correct. This is bad, and part of the issue is marketing these models as though they're intelligent. They're very good at generating plausible responses, but this should never be construed as them being good at generating correct ones.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Ok, but I would say that these concerns are all small potatoes compared to the potential for the general public gaining the ability to query a system with synthesized expert knowledge obtained from scraping all academically relevant documents. If you're wondering about something and don't know what you don't know, or have any idea where to start looking to learn what you want to know, a LLM is an incredible resource even with caveats and limitations.

Of course, it would be better if it could also directly reference and provide the copyrighted/paywalled sources it draws its information from at runtime, in the interest of verifiably accurate information. Fortunately, local models are becoming increasingly powerful and lower barrier of entry to work with, so the legal barriers to such a thing existing might not be able to stop it for long in practice.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The phrase "synthesised expert knowledge" is the problem here, because apparently you don't understand that this machine has no meaningful ability to synthesise anything. It has zero fidelity.

You're not exposing people to expert knowledge, you're exposing them to expert-sounding words that cannot be made accurate. Sometimes they're right by accident, but that is not the same thing as accuracy.

You confused what the LLM is doing for synthesis, which is something loads of people will do, and this will just lend more undue credibility to its bullshit.

[–] veniasilente@lemm.ee 5 points 1 week ago

Ok, but I would say that these concerns are all small potatoes compared to the potential for the general public gaining the ability to query a system with synthesized expert knowledge obtained from scraping all academically relevant documents.

If any of that was actually true, yeah. But it's not, it can't be, and it won't be.

As with all world-changing technology, "the general public" will never truly obtain its power, not until it has been well squeezed by the elites for gains. Not only that, "the general public" obtaining this power would be devastating on the simple physical principle that this kind of technology depends on ruining the ecology. And this whole "synthethized expert knowledge".... man, that's three words that mean absolutely nothing when chained together because it's all illusion: it's not actual knowledge, it's not expert, and it's not even synthetized, at best it's emulated. It's all a tangle of lies and make-believes sold on bulk with zero accountability.

But sure, nice dream. I want a Lamborghini, too.

[–] Ashelyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

People developing local models generally have to know what they're doing on some level, and I'd hope they understand what their model is and isn't appropriate for by the time they have it up and running.

Don't get me wrong, I think LLMs can be useful in some scenarios, and can be a worthwhile jumping off point for someone who doesn't know where to start. My concern is with the cultural issues and expectations/hype surrounding "AI". With how the tech is marketed, it's pretty clear that the end goal is for someone to use the product as a virtual assistant endpoint for as much information (and interaction) as it's possible to shoehorn through.

Addendum: local models can help with this issue, as they're on one's own hardware, but still need to be deployed and used with reasonable expectations: that it is a fallible aggregation tool, not to be taken as an authority in any way, shape, or form.

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[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago

i agree, my problem is that it wont

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago

Except it won’t. And AI we’ll be pay to play

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Aint jstor a private enterprise?

[–] Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de 59 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's a US "non-profit". One that demands 19$ per article which they merely provide as aggregator, they don't own shit.

Utterly absurd.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 30 points 1 week ago

Non profit here merely means they are exemot from US income taxes so they are grifting even hardrr on us.

MIT is grifting in a similar but bigger manner.

[–] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 12 points 1 week ago

Which means they're adding profit margin to the otherwise zero marginal cost of said information good.

[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 63 points 1 week ago

To paraphrase Nixon:

"When you're a company, it's not illegal."

To paraphrase Trump:

"When you're a company, they just let you do it."

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 60 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Yes.. but it was MIT that pushed the feds to prosecute.

Never forge to name the proper perp.

Disgusting. And we subsidize their existence 🤡

[–] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Ortiz

Ortiz said "Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars. It is equally harmful to the victim whether you sell what you have stolen or give it away."

So that was some bullshit, huh ?

[–] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 13 points 1 week ago

MIT releases financials and endowment figures for 2024:

The Institute’s pooled investments returned 8.9 percent last year; endowment stands at $24.6 billion

[–] doctortran@lemm.ee 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because he literally broke into a server room and installed hardware to harvest this data.

There's no world where any organization, for profit or otherwise, would tolerate that. Even your local library would call the damn cops if you tried that.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Disgusting bootlicker spotted. For context:

After state prosecutors dropped their charges, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment adding nine more felony counts, which increased Swartz's maximum criminal exposure to 50 years of imprisonment and $1 million in fines.

[–] FanBlade@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

You call the other person a name

You don’t respond to anything they say directly

You do it twice in the same thread

You call something context without providing context

[–] PanArab@lemm.ee 38 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Who writes the laws? There's your answer.

I'm curious why https://www.falconfinance.ae/ cares about this though.

The hell they are selling? https://www.falconfinance.ae/falcon-securities/

[–] TheOakTree@lemm.ee 18 points 1 week ago

I did some digging. It's a parody finance website that makes it seem like you can invest in falcons and make a blockchain (flockchain) with them. Dig a little further, go to the linked forum, and you'll see it's just a community of people shitposting (mostly).

[–] doctortran@lemm.ee 37 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Can we be honest about this, please?

Aaron Swartz went into a secure networking closet and left a computer there to covertly pull data from the server over many days without permission from anyone, which is absolutely not the same thing as scraping public data from the internet.

He was a hero that didn't deserve what happened, but it's patently dishonest to ignore that he was effectively breaking and entering, plus installing a data harvesting device in the server room, which any organization in the world would rightfully identity as hostile behavior. Even your local library would call the cops if you tried to do that.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 13 points 1 week ago

After state prosecutors dropped their charges, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment adding nine more felony counts, which increased Swartz's maximum criminal exposure to 50 years of imprisonment and $1 million in fines.

Another bootlicker spotted.

[–] veniasilente@lemm.ee 6 points 1 week ago

Why don't you speak what you truly believe instead of copy-pasting the same gaslighting everywhere? We already made you, anyway.

[–] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago

Wao, it's not often we get to see someone posting a comment so full of shit while making sure to obscure many facts to see if it sticks.

"Can we be honest"? Apparently you cannot.

[–] rasakaf679@lemmy.ml 37 points 1 week ago
[–] Facebones@reddthat.com 31 points 1 week ago (2 children)

All is legal in the eyes of capital.

[–] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 week ago

The real golden rule

[–] wickedrando@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)
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[–] crmsnbleyd@sopuli.xyz 23 points 1 week ago

Anything the rich and powerful do retroactively becomes okay

[–] electricprism@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 week ago

Remember what you learned in school: Working as a team to solve a test or problem is unacceptable!!! Unless you are a company town.

[–] umami_wasbi@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 week ago (4 children)
[–] Albbi@lemmy.ca 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] CHKMRK@programming.dev 13 points 1 week ago

Never really was

[–] dan@upvote.au 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

A recent report estimates that they won't be profitable until 2029: https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-profit-funding-ai-microsoft-chatgpt-revenue-2024-10

A lot can happen between now and then that would cause their expenses to grow even more, for example if they need to start licensing the content they use for training.

[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

On the other hand some breakthrough in either hardware or software could make AI models significantly cheaper to run and/or train. The current cost in silicon is insane and just screams that there's efficiencies to be found. As always, in a gold rush, sell pickaxes

[–] dan@upvote.au 2 points 1 week ago

Definitely a possibility! It'll be interesting to see what happens.

[–] ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social 7 points 1 week ago

No and AI almost never will be. However, investor money keeps coming, so it doesn't matter.

[–] ddplf@szmer.info 3 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Wait, since when it had not been? Or are you telling me that vastly the fastest growing platform in history with multiple payment gates (subscriptions, pay per token, licensing etc.) was not profitable for some reason?

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Not sure if you are joking but... it does not appear to be making anywhere near the amount of money that has been invested in it.

It costs a stupendous amount of money to develop the models, to train them, to rent out or just buy the hardware needed to do this, to pay for the electrical power to do this.

[–] ddplf@szmer.info 15 points 1 week ago

Not joking, I'm just underinformed

Now that I think of it, yeah, it makes absolute sense. It's not a stable income OpenAI is based on, but rather the endless wagons of money from hyped up sponsors. Very much unsustainable.

[–] cygnus@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

It isn't even close to making a profit. They are bleeding billions per year with no obvious path to breaking even, let alone profiting enough to justify their enormous valuation. It's very much a bubble and I look forward to the day it pops.

Edit: if you want a lengthy read on the subject https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai-business/

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[–] umami_wasbi@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Last time I heard, no. They are burning money to train new models.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Running those datacenters is extremely expensive.

[–] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The cost is to the whole world, because they consume enormous amounts of energy and produce essentially nothing. Like bitcoin miners.

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[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago

Estimates from earlier this year are that they spend $2.35 for every $1 they make.

[–] dan@upvote.au 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They've never been profitable and current estimates say they won't be profitable until at least 2029: https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-profit-funding-ai-microsoft-chatgpt-revenue-2024-10

[–] selokichtli@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

They should ask ChatGPT hoe to make OpenAI profitable. I'm sure the answer will make them take off.

Epstein his own life

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