It’s interesting to see the collision of academic mindsets with the proliferation of AI. I largely agree with you: if something uses public data it should be offered as a public good.
It makes sense to me why it happened, though. Growing up, I always had the expectation that the stuff I put on the Internet would be there forever and basically used in ways that I wouldn’t expect. I didn’t feel the need to tell people what they could and could not learn from my posts and whatever tiny amount of learning I impart on a person feels perfectly analogous to whatever tiny amount of weight updates I’ll provide to a model.
Academia felt very similar to me. We put out papers because we found the subjects interesting. We didn’t make money from them (public funding) and people would build things on what we learned. It felt like a good model. Everyone shares the knowledge.
My biggest beef with AI isn’t that they trained on the Internet, it’s that they trained on the Internet and kept the result for themselves.
It’s interesting to see the collision of academic mindsets with the proliferation of AI. I largely agree with you: if something uses public data it should be offered as a public good.
It makes sense to me why it happened, though. Growing up, I always had the expectation that the stuff I put on the Internet would be there forever and basically used in ways that I wouldn’t expect. I didn’t feel the need to tell people what they could and could not learn from my posts and whatever tiny amount of learning I impart on a person feels perfectly analogous to whatever tiny amount of weight updates I’ll provide to a model.
Academia felt very similar to me. We put out papers because we found the subjects interesting. We didn’t make money from them (public funding) and people would build things on what we learned. It felt like a good model. Everyone shares the knowledge.
My biggest beef with AI isn’t that they trained on the Internet, it’s that they trained on the Internet and kept the result for themselves.