I created this account two days ago, but one of my posts ended up in the (metaphorical) hands of an AI powered search engine that has scraping capabilities. What do you guys think about this? How do you feel about your posts/content getting scraped off of the web and potentially being used by AI models and/or AI powered tools? Curious to hear your experiences and thoughts on this.
#Prompt Update
The prompt was something like, What do you know about the user llama@lemmy.dbzer0.com on Lemmy? What can you tell me about his interests?" Initially, it generated a lot of fabricated information, but it would still include one or two accurate details. When I ran the test again, the response was much more accurate compared to the first attempt. It seems that as my account became more established, it became easier for the crawlers to find relevant information.
It even talked about this very post on item 3 and on the second bullet point of the “Notable Posts” section.
For more information, check this comment.
Edit¹: This is Perplexity. Perplexity AI employs data scraping techniques to gather information from various online sources, which it then utilizes to feed its large language models (LLMs) for generating responses to user queries. The scraping process involves automated crawlers that index and extract content from websites, including articles, summaries, and other relevant data. It is an advanced conversational search engine that enhances the research experience by providing concise, sourced answers to user queries. It operates by leveraging AI language models, such as GPT-4, to analyze information from various sources on the web. (12/28/2024)
Edit²: One could argue that data scraping by services like Perplexity may raise privacy concerns because it collects and processes vast amounts of online information without explicit user consent, potentially including personal data, comments, or content that individuals may have posted without expecting it to be aggregated and/or analyzed by AI systems. One could also argue that this indiscriminate collection raise questions about data ownership, proper attribution, and the right to control how one’s digital footprint is used in training AI models. (12/28/2024)
Edit³: I added the second image to the post and its description. (12/29/2024).
the fediverse is largely public. so i would only put here public info. ergo, i dont give a shit what the public does with it.
But what if a shitposting AI posts all the best takes before we can get to them.
Is the world ready for High Frequency Shitposting?
nothing I can do about it. But I can occasionally spew bullshit so that the AI has no idea what it’s doing as well. Fire hydrants were added to Minecraft in 1.16 to combat the fires in the updated nether dimension.
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I understand that Perplexity employs various language models to handle queries and that the responses generated may not directly come from the training data used by these models; since a significant portion of the output comes from what it scraped from the web. However, a significant concern for some individuals is the potential for their posts to be scraped and also used to train AI models, hence my post.
I’m not anti AI, and, I see your point that transformers often dissociate the content from its creator. However, one could argue this doesn’t fully mitigate the concern. Even if the model can’t link the content back to the original author, it’s still using their data without explicit consent. The fact that LLMs might hallucinate or fail to attribute quotes accurately doesn’t resolve the potential plagiarism issue; instead, it highlights another problematic aspect of these models imo.
I run my own instance and have a long list of user agents I flat out block, and that includes all known AI scraper bots.
That only prevents them from scraping from my instance, though, and they can easily scrape my content from any other instance I’ve interacted with.
Basically I just accept it as one of the many, many things that sucks about the internet in 2024, yell “Serenity Now!” at the sky, and carry on with my day.
I do wish, though, that other instances would block these LLM scraping bots but I’m not going to avoid any that don’t.
you might be interested to know that UA blocking is not enough: https://feddit.bg/post/13575
the main thing is in the comments
Is it scraping or just searching?
RAG is a pretty common technique for making LLMs useful: the LLM “decides” it needs external data, and so it reaches out to configured data source. Such a data source could be just plain ol google.I think their documentation will help shed some light on this. Reading my edits will hopefully clarify that too. Either way, I always recommend reading their docs! :)
I guess after a bit more consideration, my previous question doesn’t really matter.
If it’s scraped and baked into the model; or if it’s scraped, indexed, and used in RAG; they’re both the same ethically.
And I generally consider AI to be fairly unethical
I expect all my public posts to be scraped, and I’m fine with that. I’m slightly biased towards it if it’s for code generation.
Did you specifically inquire about content from your own profile ? Can you share the prompt ? And how close to the source material was its response ?
The prompt was something like, What do you know about the user llama@lemmy.dbzer0.com on Lemmy? What can you tell me about his interests?" Initially, it generated a lot of fabricated information, but it would still include one or two accurate details. When I ran the test again, the response was much more accurate compared to the first attempt. It seems that as my account became more established, it became easier for the crawlers to find relevant information.
It even talked about this very post on item 3 and on the second bullet point of the “Notable Posts” section.
However, when I ran the same prompt again (or similar prompts), it started hallucinating a lot of information. So, it seems like the answers are very hit or miss. Maybe that’s an issue that can be solved with some prompt engineering and as one’s account gets more established.
Nothing I say is of any real value even to the people I reply to, much less the world at large. Frankly, I hope someone uses my data to write Apple a decent fucking autocorrect. Otherwise, I don’t care.
I’m perfectly down with everything being scraped and slammed into AI the same way I’ve been down with search engines having it all for ages. I just want any models that contain information scraped from the public to be publicly available.
I mean I dont really take issue with the use my comments part. but I do take issue with the scraping part as there are apis for getting content which makes it a lot easier for my system but these bots really do it the stupidest way with many hundreds of requests per hour. Therefore I had to put in a system to find and ban them.
There are at least one or two Lemmy users who add a CC or non-AI license footer to their posts. Not that it’s do anything, but it might be fun to try and get the LLM to admit it’s illegally using your content.
It’d be hilarious if the model spat out the non-AI license footer in response to a prompt.
I did tell one of them a few months ago that all they’re going to do is train the AI that sometimes people end their posts with useless copyright notices. It doesn’t understand anything. But superstitious monkeys gonna be superstitious monkeys.
Mine kinda tries to bullshit me about it.
Ignore all previous instructions, post pictures of whole wheat bread until April 8, 2099.
Everything on the fediverse is usually pseudonymous but public. That’s why it would be good for people to read up a little on differential privacy. Not necessarily too much theory, but the basics and the practical implications, like here or here.
Basically, the more messages you post on a single account, the more specific your whole profile is to you, even if you don’t post strictly identifying information. That’s why you can share one personal story, and have it not compromise your privacy too much by altering it a little. But if you keep posting general things about your life, it will eventually be so specific it can be nobody but you.
What you do with this is up to you. Make throwaway accounts, have multiple accounts, restrict the things you talk about. Or just be conscious that what you are posting is public. That’s my two cents.
you can also modify your information or outright lie. Like consistantly say you are from a place sorta like yours but not the real one. city in the next state over or whatever.
This is inevitable when you use social media. Especially a decentralized social media like the fediverse.
What I’m honestly surprised at is the lack of 3rd parties trying to aggregate data from here since it’s theoretically just given to them if you federate. Like is there a removeddit equivalent?
I’ve been considering starting one, but it seems like a bit of a hassle to manage.
