this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024

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When corporations scrape academic papers, it's justified. When individuals do it, it's inexcusable. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (9 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.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 4 days ago

Rip Aaron

[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 days ago

Anything the rich and powerful do retroactively becomes okay

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

Epstein his own life

[–] [email protected] 36 points 4 days ago (6 children)

double standards are capitalism's lifeblood

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 days ago (1 children)

and in due time, we'll hack OpenAI and get the sources from the chat module..

I've seen a few glitches before that made ChatGPT just drop entire articles in varying languages.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 days ago (1 children)

AI models don't actually contain the text they were trained on, except in very rare circumstances when they've been overfit on a particular text (this is considered an error in training and much work has been put into coming up with ways to prevent it. It usually happens when a great many identical copies of the same data appears in the training set). An AI model is far too small for it, there's no way that data can be compressed that much.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 days ago (6 children)

Is OpenAI profitable now?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (8 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?

[–] [email protected] 32 points 4 days 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days 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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[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Running those datacenters is extremely expensive.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago

Worse than Bitcoin miners, AI seems to have the wholethroated support of capital (rather than a single faction), who see it as the next big form of automation

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

It's following the Amazon monopolization model.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Is OpenAI open still?

[–] [email protected] 36 points 4 days ago

No and no.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 4 days 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 🤡

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days 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 ?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 days 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

[–] [email protected] 182 points 4 days ago (13 children)

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

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