Let me off this crazy AI train!

Over the last year or two, we have inundated with AI tools and slowly over time, new tools have been developed.

More specifically, in the last couple of weeks, we have seen leaps in this technology, including OpenAI's GPT-4o that had a fairly impressive demo:

While the tech is cool, I am just not happy as to how they (and may other LLM's (Large Language Models)) have gathered their data.

And it seems that on a daily basis, there is some company that they are adding a AI tool or are using AI to determine the user's gender or looking at your work DM's.

Mark Newton (@NewtonMark@eigenmagic.net)

Attached: 1 image Slack is now using all content, including DMs, to train LLMs. They offer a thing they’re calling an “opt-out.” The opt-out (a) is only available to companies who are slack customers, not end users, and (b) doesn’t actually opt-out. When a company account holder tries to opt-out, Slack says their data will still be used to train LLMs, but the results won’t be shared with other companies. LOL no. That’s not an opt-out. The way to opt-out is to stop using Slack. https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/trust/data-management/privacy-principles

eigenmagic.net

On top of that, I have read stories over the last 6 - 12 months that LLMs are apparently crawling websites to gather information and data for their LLMs.

We get to last week and Google I/O showed off a plethora of new AI tools for their existing services, including Google Search. So instead of showing links and content belonging to bloggers who spent hours or even days on writing blog posts, they are just being summarised on Google with no accreditation to the author of those posts.

This can be fixed of course by adding udm=14 to the end of the Google Search URL... or just use another search engine. While writing this blog post, I was alerted to DuckDuckGo has started to implement some sort of AI tool and changes the results similarly to what Google is doing.

So for search, I have switched to a SearXNG instance.

Then Microsoft holds an event where they showcase new Surface devices that has a new NL processor, dubbed "CoPilot+" - One "feature" is titled 'Recall' which would allow you to go back to a previous point in time and pick up where you left off. An old version of a document, an Excel sheet that you deleted, all back!

While Microsoft claims that none of the information leaves the computer, I wouldn't be surprised if they did 'phone home' and contribute to Bing AI's LLM in some capacity. Yes, it can be disabled, but you don't know what it is doing on the back end.

Maybe I am just too sceptical about the claims. Maybe I need a tin foil hat.

What is clear though is that, until there is regulation on what AI can do, it's a hellscape right now. The technology is growing quicker and quicker by the day, it seems, and there doesn't appear to be an end.

What about me? I dislike AI. I have disliked what Microsoft, Google, Discord, DuckDuckGo, Slack and countless other companies have been shoehorning AI into products that are probably not needed. Let's see how far down the 'AI Rabbit Hole' that we can dig...

I have been putting it off for the last couple of years, but I plan to use Linux going forward. I will eventually transition away from Windows. Games are the biggest hurdle in that of course, but with the leaps in progress they have been making via the Steam Deck and Proton. I will detail more about this transition in another post.

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