2024-01-11 16:55:00 +0700 by Mark Smith
I've been listening to various podcasts recently that cover the goings on in the publishing industry vis-a-vis how they are handling the new dynamics that have been introduced by large language models (LLMs). Publishers aren't too happy that their content is being used to train AI models, and the models are then steeling their customers.
The New York Times is sueing OpenAI for copyright infringement. It's an interesting case. Here's OpenAI's public response to the accusations. I've been reading it every few days, there was something about it that seemed very familiar. It's been really bugging me. Well it took listening to somebody else reading it out to figure out what my brain was matching.
It's weird but the way they describe the tactics used by the NYT to get the model to do unnexpected things, well that's what it feels like living in Vietnam as a foreigner. People here are constantly trying to hack you, constantly. I can't emphasize this enough, it's literally every interaction, everywhere I go, all the time. The same groups of people show up at the same places each time, and they seem to try out new tricks / hacks they have created or learnt. It gets very involved, happens across multiple locations. It's mind bending, enough to send you barmy.
You do sort of get used to it after a while but it pretty much destroys your mood, makes it super hard to concentrate, causes confusion, often ends up escallating. Anyway, just wanted to put that out there, the NYT's described behaviour really reminds me of many of the people I meet or pass by here in Vietnam.
Is this what the whole world is turning into? I hope not, it's rarely very fun, and often unpleasant. It feels a lot like bullying, and unfortuntely relatively often results in violence or injury or both.