Unleashing the Power of AI: Reddit’s Surprising Partnership
Artificial intelligence companies hide behind user-friendly software to sell users’ data. Although governmental mass surveillance raises concerns, people barely worry about the surveillance under legal trading agreements. Every time people open an account with a Web 2.0 company, they unknowingly sign up for surveillance and data harvesting.
Recently, individuals have been forced to sign new “terms of service” which allow companies to sell their raw data to train AI models. The latest case of data exploitation is between Reddit and Google, where Reddit sells real-time data to Google for $60 million. This news is personally disheartening as one of Reddit’s co-founders, Aaron Swartz, was a staunch defender of personal privacy.
AI models thrive on training data, and the more data they have, the better the model. However, this data may include copyrighted or personal information, leading to lawsuits by companies against AI giants like OpenAI. While AI models only retain statistical versions of the data, certain prompts can reveal the actual underlying information, posing risk to personal privacy.
To ensure safe and ethical data usage, AI companies should only train on publicly available data with user consent. This consent can only be meaningful if users have control over their data. However, when users post data on social media platforms like Reddit, they unknowingly give up ownership of their data. By using these platforms, users consent to their own surveillance in exchange for the “free” privilege of using the platform.
The concept of Web3 was to give users control and ownership of their data in a decentralized network. Blockchains could be used to cryptographically secure data ownership, preventing platforms from selling data without permission. However, this vision seems to have been forgotten in the race towards AI dominance.
Aaron Swartz, through his accomplishments as a child prodigy and his work on decentralizing social media, was an advocate for personal privacy. He believed in a world where public data was freely accessible, but individuals had the choice to protect and control their own information. His untimely death, fueled by government persecution, serves as a reminder of the importance of protecting personal data rights.
The rise of AI is certainly exciting, but we should not sacrifice personal privacy and security for the sake of technological advancements. Like Aaron, we should strive for a world where transparency is expected from those in power while the weak are given the right to privacy. Let us not forget his words, “Transparency for the powerful, privacy for the weak.”
