I have shared my work, both writing and visual, openly for the most part. (There is a part of me that secretly hopes to publish something that becomes wildly popular and makes tons of money.)

I’ve been thinking about this lately in terms of AI. AI has scraped the web for data to create models. There are several lawsuits currently in place trying to resolve some of the issues around collecting and using data.

There are a couple of theories around the issue of collecting and using data to train models.

  1. Data used for training AI models is just like a human accessing the data. If a human reads something that helps inform the human moving forward. Likewise, AI should be able to “read” something and use that to create things.
  2. The data provider should have the right to approve or deny the use of that data. These rights would include payment if requested.

Jeff Jarvis falls into the camp that any data can be used for training. His argument largely falls into the bucket of this is how things have always been done and how humans have been doing things forever. Additionally, information is free, but the value comes from the expression and analysis of that information.

Others fall into the camp, the data is “stolen”. For things behind a paywall for example, should the AI pay a one-time fee to completely copy everything and use that forever? The structures that have been put in place were put in place long before AI was making a difference, but there has long been controversy around similar issues.

The AI providers have made an interesting argument that they can’t afford to pay for all the data. (Apparently, in many cases AI companies have used pirated copies of data.) That is, I can’t become a millionaire unless I get your data for free. (I need to find the link to this)

Anyway, my thoughts are a bit more emotional at this point. I create and share things that I intend for other humans to use (or me – because sometimes I search for something and find that I did the write-up on how to do it). I want to help people. Similarly, I’ve shared photos under the construct that people are looking at them.

So, I’m not sure how I feel about things that I’ve created being used to train an AI model. One could argue that the result of the training is used by humans, so it’s really no different. Yet, somehow, at least right now, it feels different.

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