The New York Times, in defense of their paywall, sued OpenAI. It comes down to how people might have used ChatGPT to find out news that was blocked to non-paying readers. OpenAI was delivered an order to reveal the entire and complete chats of 20 million users as part of that, and they are fighting back, stating that 99.9% of the chat exchanges have no relevance to the case. The New York Times is responding that the information is de-identified, so shouldn’t be a concern to individuals. I’m inclined to think that this could raise concerns for everyone, where your questions and concerns could be scoured for deeper reasons. George Orwell’s 1984 raised the concern of entities being able to monitor diaries and personal writings, and this case seems like a small but subtle step towards that dystopian future. If allowed to go forward, what will be next? An erosion of privacy now in the event of protecting profits, could lead to an erosion of privacy in the event of safety of children, and then in the event of terrorism, and then in the event of undesirable speech, and then what next?
OpenAI: NYT wants evidence of ChatGPT users trying to get around news paywall.
Source: OpenAI slams court order that lets NYT read 20 million complete user chats
