Stack Overflow’s New License Deal With OpenAI Sparks Criticism Amid Rise In AI Plagiarism
Stack Overflow has recently announced a new licensing deal with tech giant OpenAI but the news is not making its contributors happy.
Many are furious as the rise in AI plagiarism continues to dampen their chances of attaining credit for their content as they become the latest crowd to join the bandwagon of writers and creators who feel betrayed on this front.
The deal means the makers of ChatGPT will attain full access to the vast amount of tech data posted across this famous forum. As per the latest argument mentioned this past week, the company will link to Overflow’s API to display content across responses generated from ChatGPT and then use such content for training AI models.
The news arises after another very controversial matter including how Stack Overflow fired staff in a huge amount due to a major threat that chatbots were facing. As reported previously, this is not being taken on well by those who work relentlessly to generate original content but are stripped of ownership rights in seconds.
Not only do some feel cheated or violated but very betrayed and exploited. A discussion was gathered on this front in a thread where one employee raised the concern of how ethics and morals went out the window and how it’s getting very damaging on an emotional front.
The fact that machines were exploiting humans constantly while many would expect the opposite is really an eye-opener.
Moreover, some contributors mentioned how APIs are getting bombarded with criticism and even protest messages across content that they generated so it cannot be reused.
The fact that the AI giant has been benefitting on this front for a while now while others suffer in silence is really a matter of concern but those who opt to raise their voice are being silenced with account suspension and warnings generated in their direction.
And the more people are raising their voices, the more they are being silenced and told not to with jobs on the line. Now, those working in the EU wonder if any data protection laws in place like the GDPR could assist them on this front and exclusive content from getting passed to the ChatGPT makers in the first place.
But OpenAI refuses to remain silent on this front and vows to link back each post. However, the fact that its popular AI chatbot has a poor history of doing so has concerns running high. We even saw OpenAI do something along that front to better the deal for the long list of content licensing deals that entailed big publications such as The Financial Times.
Seeing how those changes were solely linked to models of ChatGPT with paid subscriptions was another shock to some as the free variant doesn’t provide any sources until and unless users in particular generate an explicit request.
Contributors from Stack Overflow also ask how such deals communicate more with licensing laws such as Creative Commons where all such posts by Stack Overflow fall and anyone using it must delineate the source with credit to the creators.
While the terms of service from the document belonging to Stack Overflow do acknowledge such protections and safeguards, contributors are speaking about how often they are willing to give up some rights regarding such content.
This means saying hello to the rights of processing, printing, exporting, accessing, using, copying, and commercial exploitation of materials they generate.
As explained by one critic, what more can one expect from platforms working with a centralized theme? It’s designed to monetize all material without giving it a second thought. So as you can see, various schools of thought do exist.
Image: DIW-Aigen
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