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Brave appears to be selling copyrighted data for AI training and giving third parties the “rights” to that data, while not disclosing its own robot crawler (www.techmeme.com)

submitted 1 year ago by hhj@kbin.social to c/tech@kbin.social

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[–] bear 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not sure I agree. I literally can't think of a better usage of AI than aiding development, particularly parsing documentation. If one thinks AI doesn't belong there, then I have to assume you are just against it conceptually.

[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I, and many others, are against using AI for this purpose because the AI is a compulsive liar. It makes up features that don't exist, pretends that features don't exist when they do, incorrectly describes how to use them, etc.

Go read the thread yourself.

Mozilla representatives have been consistently evasive and obtuse about the whole affair, which tells me that they have an ulterior motive, probably money, for pushing this useless nonsense through. It's extremely alarming.

And the consequences of Mozilla failing are dire. It will be the end of the open web, exactly as Microsoft once envisioned in the Halloween documents. You will be forced to choose between using an untrustworthy browser that spies on you and blasts you with ads, or being a social pariah.

[–] bear 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm aware of the flaws. I don't agree that means it shouldn't exist. There's certainly room for improvement, and I'm even open to the idea that it's too early to roll it out.

I'm not sure I understand the argument that this is somehow making them money. This is likely a huge money sink for them. I guess you could say they're trying to court more investment, but I'd need more than just conjecture for that.

[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I’m aware of the flaws. I don’t agree that means it shouldn’t exist. There’s certainly room for improvement, and I’m even open to the idea that it’s too early to roll it out.

This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the technology on your part. Large language models do not understand anything. They have no concept of truth or falsehood. They are not intelligent. The only thing they do is predict text. They're more complex and realistic versions of the classic ELIZA program, not real AI. They will never be capable of filling the role Mozilla has shoehorned them into.

I’m not sure I understand the argument that this is somehow making them money.

The behavior of the Mozilla representatives strongly implies it. I have no idea how they intend to make money with this, and they may or may not succeed, but people don't generally act like this unless they think they can strike it rich by doing so (and don't care about the harm they'll cause in the process).

[–] bear 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They will never be capable of filling the role Mozilla has shoehorned them into.

You're probably right that generative AI on its own, even if improved, can never fundamentally solve the truth problem. A probability engine is exactly just that, merely testing the probability of an output given the dataset. But for such a specific use-case as this, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility to build some sort of reverse-lookup system that sanity checks the output before sending it. It'll probably never be suitable for extremely advanced applications, though. But I'm just not thoroughly convinced that this is entirely useless and needs be abandoned just yet.

The behavior of the Mozilla representatives strongly implies it. I have no idea how they intend to make money with this, and they may or may not succeed, but people don’t generally act like this unless they think they can strike it rich by doing so (and don’t care about the harm they’ll cause in the process).

I don't like to assume ill intent just to fill in an unexplained gap. It's entirely possible for someone to just be wrong. Just like I might be wrong, and this is in fact a technological dead end.

[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

But for such a specific use-case as this, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility to build some sort of reverse-lookup system that sanity checks the output before sending it.

What kind of reverse-lookup system, exactly? As far as I know, that's impossible without AGI.

I don’t like to assume ill intent just to fill in an unexplained gap. It’s entirely possible for someone to just be wrong.

That doesn't explain the evasiveness. Something's up. Something we won't like when it's revealed.