Maven Imported 1.12 Million Fediverse Posts (Updated)
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A social network founded by a former OpenAI employee was caught importing public posts from Mastodon...and ran AI analysis to add tags to them.

Maven, a new social network backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, found itself in a controversy today when it imported a huge amount of posts and profiles from the Fediverse, and then ran AI analysis to alter the content.

  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
    155·
    6 months ago

    It sounds like they weren’t “being fed into an AI model” as in being used as training material, they were just being evaluated by an AI model. However…

    Have you spent more than 4 seconds on Mastodon and noticed their (our?) general attitude towards AI?

    Yeah, the general attitude of wild witch-hunts and instant zero-to-11 rage at the slightest mention of it. Doesn’t matter what you’re actually doing with AI, the moment the mob thinks they scent blood the avalanche is rolling.

    It sounds like Maven wants to play nice, but if the “general attitude” means that playing nice is impossible why should they even bother to try?

    • doctortofu@reddthat.comEnglish
      71·
      6 months ago

      The anti-AI knee-jerk reactions can be extreme, I agree, but at the same time one of important features of Mastodon is that your feed is nor controlled by an algorithm in any way.

      So when a company comes, takes those posts and screws with them to create an algorithm to show them, I understand people getting angry - at least some of them joined to be free of that exact thing…

      • FaceDeer@fedia.io
        91·
        6 months ago

        One of the important features of Mastodon is that you can choose what your feed is. Everyone’s feed has an algorithm determining what’s in it even if it’s just a simple “list the posts of everyone I’ve subscribed to in chronological order.”

        If someone else wants to see a feed of content that is curated and sorted in a different way, why get angry at them? They’re not forcing you to see that feed.

    • xavier666@lemm.eeEnglish
      31·
      6 months ago

      Yeah, the general attitude of wild witch-hunts and instant zero-to-11 rage at the slightest mention of it. Doesn’t matter what you’re actually doing with AI, the moment the mob thinks they scent blood the avalanche is rolling.

      This wasn’t always the case. A lot of research on NLP uses scraped social media posts (2010’s). People never had a problem with that (at least the outrage wasn’t visible back then). The problem now is that our content is being used to create an AI product where there is zero consent taken from the end-user.

      Source: My research colleagues used to work on NLP

      • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.businessEnglish
        4·
        6 months ago

        For me, more specifically, the problem is they took my data and made a tool to sell it back to me without paying me for it.

        I have no real issue with current ai stuff, other than you’re effectively taking our stuff and want us to pay you for doing so.

        If they weren’t freeloading on everyone, I suspect you’d have a lot less angry people.

        • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          This. If Maven offered me a stipend for life to have my content used (because they’re not going to remove it in 3 or 6 months, right? once ingested it’s there forever), then I would be far more open to at least discussing their terms.

      • jackalope@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        Consent isn’t legally required if it’s fair use. Whether it’s fair use remains to be ruled on by the courts.