Do you really think Western providers will not train on your data? I have no such illusions.

I try to keep PII out of what I share with LLMs. Otherwise, I do not see the point, really. Very little of my code is "unique." I simply approach things a bit differently. Otherwise the algorithms and code would be similar to what others with domain knowledge would write. So much of code and algorithm implementations are available in the open. And LLMs have trained on all of them.

What they most probably gain from you is your prompts and your thinking approach more than the code.

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ascorbic 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The US labs would lose billions in enterprise contracts if they were found to be secretly training on data when opted-out. It's not worth it.

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dhx 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Great in theory, but what are US enterprises going to do _if_ their private data is later found to be used for training?

1. Not use AI technology and fall behind the rest of the world.

2. Use Chinese AI technology, either hosted by Chinese companies or the models self-hosted.

3. Sue US AI companies for damages, but not enough to have any meaningful impact to such companies that it'd impact US national security goals (per US government contribution to NY Times copyright lawsuit).

	▲	vikramkr 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		3. They would sue. And it could have very meaningful impact. NYTimes copyright lawsuit is not a valid comparison because because that's a violation of national/state law which really only matters to the extent that the government is enforcing that stuff which is not the biggest concern rn (these companies are large enough that the threat of the legal costs of fighting in court is not that scary and you'd need a government actually willing to punish them substantially for them to be scared). This stuff would be under contract law against other mega corporations with big legal teams who are also their customers which is a much scarier prospect imo
	▲	Kyo91 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		There's a huge difference between AI companies exploiting a grey area like training on public corpora and violating a private contract that they explicitly entered into with another party. The latter is very explicitly illegal and would never survive trial in Delaware Chancery court. And all of that is before we get into Federal contracts where training on TS/SCI data could lead to criminal charges. There's a huge market in the US for providing AI services while respecting client privacy. It makes sense for at least one major provider to offer this.
	▲	heon29 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> Great in theory, but what are US enterprises going to do _if_ their private data is later found to be used for training? This. And it’s already happening: > 2. Use Chinese AI technology, either hosted by Chinese companies or the models self-hosted.
	▲	tomnipotent 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Sue US AI companies for damages Yes that's the whole point, at least it's an option in the US and Europe. Good luck getting any redress from China. Anthropic was already hit with a $1.5B class-action which would be impossible against a Chinese business.

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atmosx 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Oh. Yeah of course… and the US population will revolt if the figure the NSA is spying on them.

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asaddhamani 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People use LLMs for far more personal tasks than just writing code. There are AI journaling apps for instance. And yeah, western providers give you a toggle but I don’t know if that toggle actually does anything or not. They were fine with collecting training data in many morally questionable ways before, no reason for them to stop when you’re literally handing it over to them.

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intended 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The meager difference is that, in theory, you can eventually sue people in the US.

In theory.

Also, this is a feature for people who live in America, and mostly irrelevant for everyone in the global south.

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gf000 17 hours ago | parent [-]

As a European, I honestly don't see a difference between the US and China from this perspective. They are both equally untrustworthy in my book.

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rrr_oh_man 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As a Western European, I see the same untrustworthiness in Europe.

We just have our personal privacy security theater in the form of GDPR and a feeling of moral supremacy that's been drilled into our heads from primary school on.

	▲	bigfudge 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		GDPR isn’t theatre in many organisations. Yes large tech firms (mostly US) probably ignore or circumvent. But most businesses I’ve worked for have taken concrete steps to reduce the data they hold and consider how it’s being used asa direct consequence of gdpr.

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lejalv 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Don't understand why you are downvoted.