There's a rumor flying around the Internet that OpenAI is training foundation models on your Dropbox documents.
Some articles are more nuanced, but there's still a lot of confusion.
Dropbox isn't sharing all of your documents with OpenAI. But here's the problem: we don't trust OpenAI. We don't trust tech corporations.
Willison expands this in a blog post, which I strongly recommend reading in its entirety.
Companies lying about what they do with your privacy is a very serious allegation.
A society where big companies tell blatant lies about how they are handling our data-and get away with it without consequences-is a very unhealthy society.
A key role of government is to prevent this from happening.
If OpenAI are training on data that they said they wouldn't train on, or if Facebook are spying on us through our phone's microphones, they should be hauled in front of regulators and/or sued into the ground.
We risk letting companies get away with real misconduct because we incorrectly believed in conspiracy theories.
Privacy is important, and very easily misunderstood.
People both overestimate and underestimate what companies are doing, and what's possible.
This isn't helped by the fact that AI technology means the scope of what's possible is changing at a rate that's hard to appreciate even if you're deeply aware of the space.
If we want to protect our privacy, we need to understand what's going on.
We need to be able to trust companies to honestly and clearly explain what they are doing with our data.
On a personal level we risk losing out on useful tools.
While Dropbox is not sending your data to OpenAI today, it could do so tomorrow with a simple change of its terms of service.
So could your bank, or credit card company, your phone company, or any other company that owns your data.
Any of the tens of thousands of data brokers could be sending your data to train AI models right now, without your knowledge or consent.
It's only a matter of time, unless we get serious government privacy regulation.
Tags: artificial intelligence, data collection, national security policy, trust.
This Cyber News was published on www.schneier.com. Publication date: Tue, 19 Dec 2023 12:43:04 +0000