My original, editorialized title: Ars Technica Sells Out
Linking to this because I know people here read Ars Technica, and I totally didn’t become a subscriber three days before this was announced. Nope. No sir.
llms suck because they steal content and are unreliable since they don’t link back to sources
Open ai makes a deal to pay media org for there content and makes it so they can link back to original article
“Ars technica sold out”
I want Ars content to be part of whatever training data is provided to the best models. How does that get done without appearing like they are being bought?
Even if their contract explicitly states that it is a data sharing agreement only and the products of the media organization (articles/investigations) are not grounds for breach or retaliation, it is assumed that there is now some impartiality in future reporting.
So, for all media companies, the options seem to be:
- Contribute to the greater good by openly permitting site scraping (for $0)
- Allow data sharing to contracted parties only (for a fee)
- Public or privately prohibit use of any data, and then seek damages down the road for theft/copyright infringement when the legal framework has been established.
Is there a GPL or other license structure that permits data sharing for LLM training in a way that it does not get transformed into something evil?
The main problem now is that Ars Technica and all other Conde Nast publications, with it now having a vested interest in openAI (they’re getting paid by them), can no longer be reliably trusted to report on any AI or AI-adjacent topic whatsoever. And every user comment and content is now owned by openAI.
Damnit! I still like and respect the Ars Technica staff but Condé Nast can piss off.
I feel for you KingThrillgore. I was thinking of supporting the site with a subscription but not after this. Still if enough people stop subscribing we may loose them altogether. This is a double edged shit sword.
I understand them. If they refused for integrity reasons, openai would steal their content anyways via scrapers.
Suing them for copyright infringement, even if is the desire we all have, is ultra expensive.
I would also have signed that deal with the devil…
Their EIC is in the comments replying to people. He seems buttoned up about it (understandably) but I get the impression he’s not thrilled
what’s the problem here? openai isn’t pirating content if they pay for it,? have i misunderstood something
