Make Illegally Trained LLMs Public Domain as Punishment
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Last year, I wrote a piece here on El Reg about being murdered by ChatGPT as an illustration of the potential harms through the misuse of large language models and other forms of AI.
Since then, I have spoken at events across the globe on the ethical development and use of artificial intelligence - while still waiting for OpenAI to respond to my legal demands in relation to what I've alleged is the unlawful processing of my personal data in the training of their GPT models.
In my earlier article, and my cease-and-desist letter to OpenAI, I stated that such models should be deleted.
Essentially, global technology corporations have decided, rightly or wrongly, the law can be ignored in their pursuit of wealth and power.
Household names and startups have, and still are, scraping the internet and media to train their models, typically without paying for it and while arguing they are doing nothing wrong. Unsurprisingly, a number of them have been fined or are settling out of court after being accused of breaking rules covering not just copyright but also online safety, privacy, and data protection. Big Tech has brought private litigation and watchdog scrutiny upon it, and potentially engendered new laws to fill in any regulatory gaps.
But for them, it's just a cost of business.
[...] After careful consideration over the time between my previous piece here on El Reg and now, I have come to a different opinion with regards to the deletion of these fruits, however. Not because I believe I was wrong, but because of moral and ethical considerations due to the potential environmental impact.
[...] In light of this information, I am forced to reconcile the ethical impact on the environment should such models be deleted under the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine, and it is not something that can be reconciled as the environmental cost is too significant, in my view.
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