Protecting users in the bargains we strike with big tech is a worthwhile and noble effort, but privacy law has generally woefully failed to do this.

Millions upon millions have been spent on cookie banners -- people are still arguing about them in this thread -- but there is almost zero benefit to this expense.

The main thing that's good about this, IMO, is that fundamentally training a large language model and privacy law as it's written today cannot coexist. They are incompatible. And allowing someone to break the law forever (as is happening today) is not a good long-term solution.

I don't see how training an LLM has anything to do with privacy laws.

It is perfectly possible to not train them on personal information, to remove or rewrite names, to remove IP addresses, etc.

> Training a large language model and privacy law as it's written today cannot coexist

If they aren't compatible, then the conclusion is abundantly obvious; the LLM has to go, not privacy. Small and questionable economic utility in exchange for a pillar of stable democratic society are NOT negotiable tradeoff.

There is enough data on the internet to train LLMs without breaking a single privacy law. If the economic value of LLMs are as real as the companies like to claim, there is enough data on the internet to train LLMs while paying for proper royalty for every single word.

I don't argue that privacy laws have been perfect. Only a fraction of GDPR seems to actually do much. But bending over backwards because big tech slips a few dollars in the pocket of Brussels is NOT the reason we should revise those laws.