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Ask HN: How to square the circle of wanting to share ideas but not train AI?

3 points by Engineering-MD ↗ HN
I find myself wanting to write blog posts (or even just HN comments) sharing thoughts and ideas. I’m aware the vast majority of blogs are never really read, but they will help train AI to recreate content similar to what I produce and devalue any future thoughts I have. This greatly puts me off and leaves me to this dilemma of how to square this circle. Perhaps it’s just worth the trade off, or perhaps as blogs are now rarely read there is no benefit to sharing. Have you had this concern and if so, how did you resolve it?

14 comments

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haltist
All digital content is currently managed by AI (search engines, social media, recommendation algorithms, etc). Even analog books will be eventually digitized and fed into AI. So there is no circle to square here, your perspective is inconsistent and you should figure out why. Presumably you have no problem with using the internet and the algorithms/platforms that are based on it so you are already participating in the system and writing posts or comments is just another form of participation in a system that will eventually be subsumed by AI/AGI.

The march of increasing computational capabilities has only one inevitable endpoint, the "panoptic computronium cathedral"™.

Engineering-MD
I think your view is a bit fatalistic. Reflecting on it, part of my issue is that of plagiarism which current AI systems are very good at, and very bad at giving credit/citations. The obvious conclusion to this though is a move away from an open internet and global sharing of ideas, and back towards a closed discourse and hoarding of knowledge.
haltist
How exactly does AI prevent open sharing of ideas?
Engineering-MD
It does not prevent it, but it disincentivise it. Why share an idea, a method where it will be used before you can benefit, without any acknowledgement?

In reflection the argument is linked to that of copyright and IP in general, mixed with plagiarism, and raises the question of why people share things free and open on the internet currently. For some things, this does not matter when your career or income does not depend on it. But for things where it does, why share? An honest question if you care to answer it. I would suggest they benefit from humans consuming it, but I suspect this may not be true in an era of AI that scraped scales and uses this.

computronist
I'll answer your question.

Imagine a gadget that can amplify good ideas no matter how obscure they might be and you'll understand why your way of thinking is outdated. AI doesn't disincentivize sharing good ideas because if my content is included in the training set then it is very likely to have an outsized effect on whatever other content is already included in the mix because I am certain any true future intelligence will realize my genius and use my writing as conceptual fertilizer.

You might disagree with this answer but it is the right answer. If you care for taking credit then you should be writing as much as possible to pre-emptively take credit for any "idea" that an AI might accidentally stumble upon which would have been similar to what you would have come up with on your own. Generative AI is basically a DJ mix table and every once in a while it comes up with something clever like a thousand monkeys typing on keyboards and regenerating the works of Shakespeare.

More can be said about all of this but I am certain my perspective is the correct one based on what I know about computers, software, and how it all fits together in the soon to be "panoptic computronium cathedral"™.

Engineering-MD
And what benefit does having an idea in a training set have to me? The effect an idea has does not necessarily work to my benefit, perhaps the opposite. Your statements are perhaps true for faith matters and I commend your… religious zeal. I would suggest opposing examples of non freely shared information: designs of jet engines, advanced microchips, and GPT4 architecture to name a few. Those who hide and do not freely share benefit from hidden knowledge, while those who shared more widely (intentionally or perhaps unintentionally through illicit information escape) can be disadvantaged. I am -and will remain- skeptical of overconfident statements of certainty, yours included.
computronist
Meh. Your loss. The panoptic computronium cathedral is an inevitable technological development and if you don't want to be part of the training set then you will be relegated to the dustbin of history.
Engineering-MD
Well all the best for your technological rapture, it sounds delightful
haltist
No luck necessary. It is inevitable.
Engineering-MD
Ok Thanos
haltist
It will be a technological utopia. You must be extremely confused to think that the "panoptic computornium cathedral"™ has anything to do with genocide. Anyway, you probably should stop posting, remember, AI is watching this forum at right now and the more you post the more you help the AI plagiarize your content.
adastra22
Give up.

You wanted to share ideas. Presumably so that others could learn from you and share remixed ideas of their own. But if a machine is involved in doing the exact same thing you object?

Grow up. You don’t get to control how your freely given ideas are used.

Engineering-MD
And perhaps why that is why ideas are not freely shared, which seems to be the new direction. Although even for freely given ideas plagiarism is not seen as acceptable, and current AI is a great plagiarism laundering method. A machine is not the same as a human. Limitations are useful, and feeding an infinite algorithm is very different to discourse. Despite your rude and dismissive manner, it’s been useful to think of a reply.
adastra22
Consider also that your desire to control what people do with the ideas you share is also stupendously rude.