Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history'
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Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history'
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
jacquesm · · focus · HN ↗
It is said that at the heart of every great fortune there is a great crime, so it should be no surprise that the most valuable companies on the planet will most likely result from this crime. And given that justice can be bought by those with the most money you can forget about anything coming of this.
Razengan · · focus · HN ↗
What if it was for free, like Wikipedia?
> Crimes this large are crimes against humanity.
jfc no, sit down.
Try doing something about the actual evil shit like arms manufacturers and the politicians ordering the deaths and misery of millions from the comfort of their couch.
At this point in our civilization, all human knowledge NEEDS to be collated in one place and easily queryable. Otherwise it's just too damn difficult to make any further progress at the edge of our understanding; there's just too much shit for one person to learn "manually" (wait I'm not advocating for low-effort slop, chill)
It's helping common folk who wanted to do something but didn't know where to start, while legacy search engines increasingly lead to spam, shallow knowledge or outright predatory shit (ofc AI could go this way too)
Not long ago I had the misfortune of becoming interested in some WarHammer 40K lore. Most of the links led to Fandom (the enshittification of Wikia) and that place is a cesspool of obnoxious ads.That content was written by unpaid volunteers. Should Fandom keep profiting from their work for perpetuity? Should I not be able to get the gist of what the heck a Qoiazrjirnowerx@# is without wasting my mortal lifespan on a horrible website?
Or, if I need to ask something peculiar, should I post on Reddit or StackOverflow or HN and wait for someone to see it and deem to give a sufficient answer, only to have a pricky mod decide that the question doesn't "fit" the community?
God hell no, if you don't know how much bullshit AI could eliminate for the silent majority then you were probably part of that bullshit.
(that's a general "you" for whomever was fine with the status quo and not a personal insult @ anybody)
If you see something you dislike increasing in popularity but can't figure out why, it's probably because a lot of people were sick of the way things used to work but their complaints were ignored by the people who now find themselves disrupted.
steveBK123 · · focus · HN ↗
Razengan · · focus · HN ↗
CrimsonRain · · focus · HN ↗
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Anamon · · focus · HN ↗
The part about collating all human knowledge also reminds me of the optimism on the early Internet. I miss having such a positive and hopeful outlook on things, but again, can no longer bring myself to truly believe it. Maybe I'm just getting too old.
What I see as the most likely scenario is that for most users, this collation of knowledge will remain behind the oligarch gatekeepers, who can and will manipulate the output to suit their interests.
I know, I know, open models and such, but I don't see those making any dents against the oligopolies. People will still go to Google or OpenAI. No non-nerd is going to self-host a niche model, and the on-device inference most people will be using will be based on models provided by the same, manipulative oligarchs.
The degrading of Google's search result quality is actually a good indicator that this are heading towards more manipulation rather than unfiltered access to real, original human knowledge.