New York Times Lawsuit against Open AI - a deeper look

New York Times vs OpenAI and Microsoft

This legal skirmish highlights some critical questions regarding AI ethics that extend beyond tech circles. At its core, it's about the uncharted interplay between intellectual property rights, emerging technologies, and public benefit.

While innovations like ChatGPT deliver undeniable value, taking shortcuts during development can undermine their full potential. The "move fast and break things" mantra rings hollow when externalities aren't accounted for.

What the New York Times is Asserting

So it turns out that if you ask ChatGPT to spit out an entire article that's supposed to be behind a paywall, it'll do it. Like, how is that even possible? Some people are saying that OpenAI must have taken this data from the NYT, which is illegal. [side note: But OpenAI patched this behavior so that ChatGPT will just tell you to go check out the NYT. Microsoft has been slower and Copilot will still do it.]

This brings me to an interesting point of the lawsuit. OpenAI has always said that GPT models transform the data they were trained on, so they're not infringing on copyright. But the NYT proved that's not true, because GPT models - when instructed to - will just copy the protected content word for word.

The lawsuit also claims that these AI models are hurting news outlets like the NYT by making it harder for them to protect and make money off of their content. The lawsuit says that Microsoft's Bing Chat (which was recently renamed "Copilot") and OpenAI's ChatGPT are taking advantage of the NYT's hard work and using their journalism to create similar products without permission or payment. The lawsuit says that this is not cool because the NYT has invested a lot of time and money into creating high-quality journalism, and these AI models are just using it without giving anything back.

At some point, GM foods, solar power, and PCs also faced skepticism amid their growing pains. With ethical leadership, AI can hopefully follow a similar trajectory - extraordinary machines, handled responsibly, for the benefit of all. But it takes proactive collaboration between brilliant builders, thoughtful scrutinizers, and pragmatic policy shapers.

The NYT lawsuit puts this delicate dance under the spotlight. Irrespective of the judgment, there are pivotal learnings here for constructively shaping AI's integration into business and society.

Winners and Losers

On the surface, removing the New York Times' data may seem insignificant - it represents less than 1% of what was used to train ChatGPT. Technically, OpenAI could just retrain their model without it.

However forced transparency around OpenAI's broader training data could reveal additional issues, necessitating more deletions. This risks degrading performance and spurring further lawsuits.

Ironically, the fallout may buoy two of OpenAI's seeming competitors - Apple and open-source developers.

As a worker in and advocate of open-source, I like this idea. This may or may not come to pass.

Apple caught flack for taking a slower approach to releasing AI products. But that caution may now seem prescient rather than plodding. Unlike OpenAI racing to launch at any cost, Apple invested to legally acquire publisher data to responsibly train its models. In some cases, Apple is paying up to $50 million for the privilege.

So while OpenAI and Microsoft have possibly fumbled early market dominance by cutting corners, Apple may now leverage its prudence to pull ahead. Open-source efforts also stand to gain if legally obtained training datasets must now be disclosed.

This story represents a crossroads for AI development as a whole. While innovation demands rapid iteration, ethical progress requires patient coalition-building between consumers, creators, and control bodies. Prioritizing understanding and trust may ultimately accelerate adoption more than rushing discoveries out the door. If AI is to enhance our collective future, its present calls for compassion - not just cleverness.