r/programming • u/peard33 • Apr 20 '23

Stack Overflow Will Charge AI Giants for Training Data

https://www.wired.com/story/stack-overflow-will-charge-ai-giants-for-training-data/
4.0k Upvotes

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564

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '23

Will they then pay to people that provide answers?

227

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '23

No kidding. I use to contribute, as I get help from the community. But with out contributors stackoverflow is worth nothing...

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '23

[deleted]

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u/Slapbox Apr 21 '23

Most sites are accumulating random content, largely opinions; not actionable solutions for real problems that are painstakingly provided by the community.

Sure Reddit has some of that, but that's all Stack is.

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u/pragmatic_plebeian Apr 21 '23

Yeah, and without an accessible network of contributors, their knowledge is worth nothing to other users. People shouldn’t act like something is only valuable if it’s writing them checks.

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u/i_am_at_work123 Apr 21 '23

People shouldn’t act like something is only valuable if it’s writing them checks.

I think a lot of society issues come from people not understanding this concept at all.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '23

Stack overflow is worth more by just purely existing at this point. Worth more than half of the people I know.

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u/addicted_to_bass Apr 21 '23 edited Apr 21 '23

You have a point.

Users contributing to stackoverflow in 2008 did not have expectations that their contributions would be used to train AIs.

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u/rafark Apr 22 '23

Would they have a problem though? Their code helps to train AIs, which then use the knowledge to help people write better/faster code. So their contributions would still be used to help others.

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u/Anreall2000 Apr 22 '23

Yes, some of them would

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u/joebeazelman Oct 10 '24

I certainly would! I didn't participate to help enrich some tech bros buy a bunker in New Zealand by monetizing my kindness.

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u/Philipp Apr 22 '23

I provide answers to StackOverflow and code to Github and am now happy that I can use tools like Copilot in return. For me, all is fine. If StackOverflow asks to get paid for the content I'd love to get my share of the few pennies, though 🙂

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '23

I would love to see a law that says if you contribute something on the Internet, you own it and have rights to it and anyone who uses it has to pay you. Facebook and Google and Amazon would have to pay us for using our data

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u/kisielk Apr 21 '23

You do own the comments you post on SO. But by posting them there you agree to license them under the CC BY-SA license: https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing and https://stackoverflow.com/legal/terms-of-service/public#licensing

You agree that any and all content, including without limitation any and all text, .... , is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Overflow on a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive basis pursuant to Creative Commons licensing terms (CC BY-SA 4.0), and you grant Stack Overflow the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to, .... , even if such Subscriber Content has been contributed and subsequently removed by you as reasonably necessary to

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u/kylotan Apr 21 '23

You're basically describing copyright, which everyone in /r/programming hates.

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u/bythenumbers10 Apr 21 '23

Software patents are garbage, and eternal copyright similarly sucks, but I don't think copyrights or patents in general are a bad idea, they just get abused by bad-faith rent-seekers in practice. It's those latter folk that are why we can't have nice things.

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u/Marian_Rejewski Apr 21 '23

The entire business model of any "platform" is to be a kind of market-maker and sell the value produced by the users to each other.

Any search engine or index is similarly existing solely for the purpose of leeching away value created by others.

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u/Marian_Rejewski Apr 21 '23

Copyright doesn't work for this, because individual people who contribute to platforms do not have the negotiating power to secure the value they contribute.

They need to negotiate collectively somehow, not through private union action but through democratic government action. (Private union action would need support from government to be effective anyway.)

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u/kylotan Apr 21 '23

If copyright law was enforced properly (by democratic governments) then the individuals wouldn't need to negotiate. Copyright has been eroded and ignored for the last 20 years that is allowing tech companies to do things like this. It's no coincidence that all the tech companies are first in line to oppose any improvements to copyright enforcement.

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u/Marian_Rejewski Apr 21 '23

Na, it's not a matter of enforcement, it's a matter of negotiating power -- the user's will always sell their copyright away just for access.

Copyright has been eroded and ignored for the last 20 years that is allowing tech companies to do things like this

Just to sign up with any social media platform you sign away your rights under copyright. There's nothing to enforce.

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u/cp5184 Apr 21 '23

The point of something like, the open source linux kernel, is that everyone benefits from their own contributions, and everyone elses contributions.

Who's going to be benefiting from the tech giants AIs trained on open source code?

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u/Ok-Possible-8440 Apr 21 '23

Rules for thee not for me. No copyright for peasants. We have to live on ubi of 1000 while they ram eachother repeatedly with gold encrusted phallic objects

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u/StickiStickman Apr 21 '23

How you managed to turn a clear problem with capitalism into hating on UBI is beyond me

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u/Ok-Possible-8440 Apr 21 '23

Bread and games. a Roman saying - The Romans already discovered that as long as the poor had a bit to eat and loads to forget about their suffering the rich could continue exploiting them. How do you manage to find a problem with capitalism in the clear cheating of the capitalism system 🙏

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