Do social networks feed subscriber data to AI? The Reddit case
The social network Reddit has sold its platform data (including users?) to a software house that will exploit it to feed AI
The companies that are lovingly looking after AI algorithms (such as Microsoft's ChatGpt and Copilot or Google's Gemini , but there are now many examples), it is known, often have quite a few legal problems due to the "scraping" activity carried out by these last. In fact, imagine smart algorithms as hungry larvae which, in order to grow and become beautiful – and also very intelligent – butterflies need to devour everything. The more information the AI takes in, the better its performance will be. This is why it is necessary for it to devour human knowledge. However, a significant problem is created given that "scraping" is the web's trawling and, like trawling, it overwhelms everything, destroying the ecosystem: where does the information end up? By what right are they taken? How will they be used?
THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN REDDIT AND THE AI SOFTWARE HOUSE
All these questions will soon be joined by many others, given that the business model of social platforms could move from providing targeted advertising based on our tastes to directly selling our data to software houses that cradle and nurture the powerful AI of tomorrow. It seems like a dystopian novel, but it's all already current.
It happens in that of Reddit, a social network known for its communities dedicated to vertical topics (with the prospect of a listing), which has just concluded an economic agreement that will earn the platform operator 60 million dollars on an annual basis. In exchange, Reddit will make its content available for AI training. In all likelihood user data included, writes Bloomberg .
WHAT SCENARIOS OPEN UP?
The model could also be replicated across larger social platforms. Or be exploited by other social networks to directly breed home-made AI, i.e. developed internally. In all of this, it seems, the bargaining power of the members is zero: it is always possible to delete your account, but all the traces left up to that moment will still end up in the mess devoured by the AI.
Furthermore, Reddit is not even the first case of an agreement in broad daylight between those who manage large quantities of data and the breeders of increasingly ravenous AI (which in this case remains unknown). In fact, let's not forget that The New York Times recently wrote that Apple (which entered the arena of artificial intelligence well behind its opponents) would have offered some large publishing groups 50 million dollars in exchange for the contents in their archives. In particular, the negotiations would have concerned the Condé Nast group, which publishes Vogue and The New Yorker among others.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/reddit-accordo-vendita-dati-ia/ on Wed, 21 Feb 2024 06:29:14 +0000.