13 - Technology Whisperers Season 2 Launch episode

Contact Details

Alistair Ross

[e-mail]

Web: https://revolutioninfosec.com

Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/alistairjross  https://www.linkedin.com/company/revolutioninfosec 

Sean G Muller

[e-mail]

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sgmuller/

Show Notes:

1) OpenAI are being sued. 

Since the inception of ChatGPT back in November 2021, controversy has never been far away, and smaller legal battles have always been looming, however, at the end of June, A firm in California filed a class-action lawsuit for "stealing" personal data in order to train ChatGPT.

What is interesting about this case is that depending upon how well prepared the complainants are, OpenAI may be required to fess up to how they trained their model. The only public information about OpenAI's ChatGPT that we really know is that OpenAI scraped 300 billion words from the Internet. We don't know how they scraped them and where they scraped it from. The complainant states that OpenAI trained its model partially with personal information, some of it from social media accounts, including Twitter and Reddit. The complainant goes on to state that OpenAI did so in secret, without registering as a data broker as was required to do under applicable laws.

The most interesting aspect for me is by how much OpenAI are profiting from these sources, or whether they in fact are profiting, OpenAI have oft stated that they do not (yet) turn a profit. Certainly, on paper, OpenAI are worth many billions in unrealised value, and recently Microsoft made a $10B USD stake in them, so that might have turned them into a profit making machine. The fifteen counts in the complaint include privacy violations, negligence in failing to protect personal information, as well as larceny by obtaining large amounts of personal data to train its models by illegal means. The lawsuit has stretched as far as to seek injunctive relief in the form of a temporary freeze on commercial use of OpenAI's products. If granted, this could have vast reaching effects on organisations that currently use OpenAI's model on their own applications or services.

Where do you sit on this Sean? It could be argued that the information that is publicly accessible on the Internet is free for anyone to see, including OpenAI, regardless of whether that is ethically responsible, it certainly is 'freely available'. On the other hand, it could be argued that people have a right to be guardians of their own content. If it is to be used in a wholesale manner by another corporation (potentially for profit), then they must seek permission from the original content author. Doing otherwise could be seen as a violation of privacy.

2) Elon Musk launches new AI company called xAI.

A team around of 12 engineers. His mission he states to 'Understand the true nature of the Universe'. On the website, it states that more information is coming in the following weeks and months, so I won't expect to see anything like an OpenAI or Bard competitor for the foreseeable future. However, they certainly have the chops to do it, remembering that Musk was one of the original founders of OpenAI.

What is interesting is that Musk was also one of the people who recently spoke out about AI as a whole, and took issue with the rapid pace of development (mainly pointed at OpenAI), stating that we should press the pause button on AI development. By launching this startup, it's clear that he's made a u-turn on that decision!

The website states that it is a standalone company, unrelated from Tesla and other Musk companies including Twitter (now called X corp), however Musk states that he will work closely with them to make progress towards xAI's mission. From a privacy perspective, will this mean that it could use tweets (including DMs) as a training model for xAI? Obviously this is possibly where OpenAI are in hot water, as per my previous story, so it will be interesting to find out how transparent Musk will be about the training and development of xAI. However, Musk is well known to be critical about the less than transparent nature of OpenAI, he would likely have a lot of egg on face if he too, chose to be less than open about the training of his model.Obviously this is possibly where OpenAI are in hot water, as per my previous story, so it will be interesting to find out how transparent Musk will be about the training and development of xAI. However, Musk is well known to be critical about the less than transparent nature of OpenAI, he would likely