News Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership — users banned for deleting answers to prevent them being used to train...

[Replacable Human]

The artists were outraged when AI began scraping their data and using it to create products and creeping into their livelihoods. I recall distinctly many pro-technology bros supporting this with open arms.

Now the same is happening to coders and suddenly the floor is collapsing.

As an engineer, I welcome our robotic overlords and I hope we can one day live on UBI in the form of robotic slavery.

I’m surprised I’m the first to point out this hypocrisy though. How is ChatGPT very different from the visual spectrum AI like Dall-E etc in that it regurgitates human creativity and knowledge convincing us that it can appear creative and intelligent when really it’s just learning from past input. For the deeply insightful person I would ask ourselves do we learn any differently?

 

[USAFRet]

The artists were outraged when AI began scraping their data and using it to create products and creeping into their livelihoods. I recall distinctly many pro-technology bros supporting this with open arms.

Now the same is happening to coders and suddenly the floor is collapsing.

As an engineer, I welcome our robotic overlords and I hope we can one day live on UBI in the form of robotic slavery.

I’m surprised I’m the first to point out this hypocrisy though. How is ChatGPT very different from the visual spectrum AI like Dall-E etc in that it regurgitates human creativity and knowledge convincing us that it can appear creative and intelligent when really it’s just learning from past input. For the deeply insightful person I would ask ourselves do we learn any differently?

Have you read any AI generated responses to questions/problems posted here?

I have. Lots and lots.
Almost universally, they are generic junk.
Some of them, even hazardous to the original user and their system.

 

[LibertyWell]

Uh, if there is not a physically written signature, then there is no contract. This is a fundamental as contract law gets.

You cannot enter into a legally binding agreement with the click of a mouse.

Because of this, StackOverflow has zero rights over any user generated content, unless they have a properly signed legal document from both parties stating that they do.

Terms of Service are meaningless without a signature, but everyone believes they are binding and so they go on and will this ridiculous reality into existence by mere voluntary acquiescence.

To the harmed parities, get a contract lawyer who understands the above, take StackOverflow to court, and lets set a precedent across all industry to end the ToS charade once and for all.

 

[Li Ken-un]

Have you read any AI generated responses to questions/problems posted here?

I have. Lots and lots.
Almost universally, they are generic junk.
Some of them, even hazardous to the original user and their system.

I’ve often heard that “smart people say some very dumb things sometimes, but you don’t question Einstein without thinking very hard about what he’s said first.”

I believe there should be a quasi-converse: AIs say very smart-sounding things all the time, but you should always question everything it has told you as a knee jerk response.

Now the same is happening to coders and suddenly the floor is collapsing.

I’ve half-embraced AI to assist my software work. It’s great for getting started, but its correctness for more in-depth questions is questionable.

A recent aphorism goes “people who need AI are the people you should not hire, but those who don’t need it stand to see the most productivity gains from using it.”

 

[USAFRet]

I’ve often heard that “smart people say some very dumb things sometimes, but you don’t question Einstein without thinking very hard about what he’s said first.”

I believe there should be a quasi-converse: AIs say very smart-sounding things all the time, but you should always question everything it has told you as a knee jerk response.

What happens is....

OP asks a question related to a problem in their system.
RandomCluelessPerson plugs that question in to "AI subsystem"
AI spits out a generic response
RandomCluelessPerson posts that as a response to the OPs question. "Try A, B, C"
It sort of sounds reasonable.

OP thinks they are talking to an actual human, with an actual clue.

"Ok, I did all that, it still doesn't work. Now what?"

RandomCluelessPerson is now totally lost.
OP is no better off, or possibly worse off.

Have seen exactly this, multiple times.

The AI systems are not yet good at asking the next level questions.

 

[slightnitpick]

As an engineer, I welcome our robotic overlords and I hope we can one day live on UBI in the form of robotic slavery.

It's hard enough to change human culture due to all of the lock-ins. Token-based AI will lock down against changes even harder.

 

[KDEnerd]

LLMs are a wet dream for all these companies sitting on a trove of other people's work.
Finally they have a way to monetize all the goodwill they've amassed. Someone that will finally buy the thoughts and creations they claim all rights to.
Nevermind that you're burning all the trust you've built with users. What are they gonna do about it?

They can always move to the fediverse, where their data can be scraped like it's 2001 again. But hey, at least they"own" it.

 

[slightnitpick]

Uh, if there is not a physically written signature, then there is no contract. This is a fundamental as contract law gets.

You cannot enter into a legally binding agreement with the click of a mouse.

This may depend on jurisdiction. I know that oral agreements are legally binding. They're just hard to enforce if one of the parties disagrees about what was agree upon, unless additional evidence exists.

According to the following website, what makes a contract legally binding are the particular elements, not a particular format, though some statutory exceptions do exist: https://www.lawdepot.com/resources/business-articles/are-verbal-contracts-legally-binding/

Edit to add: I just read a bit more from that website. Apparently copyright is covered under the common law "statute of frauds", which may or may not still be in operation depending on common law jurisdiction.

According to Cornell Law: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/statute_of_frauds

A statute requiring certain contracts to be in writing and signed by the parties bound by the contract. The purpose is to prevent fraud and other injury. The most common types of contracts to which the statute applies are contracts that involve the sale or transfer of land, and contracts that cannot be completed within one year.

So it looks like you may be right. A written contract physically signed by both parties is required. I'd bet that the courts are more likely to favorably interpret a terms of service agreement as an 'electronic signature' than they are to nullify Stack Overflows terms of service in this case, but your argument could very well be worth pursuing in court.
California's modernized "statute of frauds" appears at first glance to my non-lawyer eyes to support Stack Overflow, here:

California Code, Civil Code - CIV § 1624 | FindLaw

California Civil Code CIV CA CIVIL Section 1624. Read the code on FindLaw

codes.findlaw.com

(a) The following contracts are invalid, unless they, or some note or memorandum thereof, are in writing and subscribed by the party to be charged or by the party's agent:

...

(b) Notwithstanding paragraph (1) of subdivision (a):

...



(3) There is sufficient evidence that a contract has been made in any of the following circumstances:

(A) There is evidence of an electronic communication (including, without limitation, the recording of a telephone call or the tangible written text produced by computer retrieval), admissible in evidence under the laws of this state, sufficient to indicate that in the communication a contract was made between the parties.

...

(4) For purposes of this subdivision, the tangible written text produced by telex, telefacsimile, computer retrieval, or other process by which electronic signals are transmitted by telephone or otherwise shall constitute a writing, and any symbol executed or adopted by a party with the present intention to authenticate a writing shall constitute a signing.

 

[Flayed]

I wonder how much cash it took for Stack Overflow to sell out and agree to this. I bet it was substantial.

 

[slightnitpick]

I wonder how much cash it took for Stack Overflow to sell out and agree to this. I bet it was substantial.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oozQe2Bk2cA


j/k - $10 million in 1985 would be $29 million today according to the US inflation calculator.

 

[bit_user]

There was a time when even mobsters had some rules and code of honor you know.

I think that gets overstated and romanticized by Hollywood. It's a story they like to tell about themselves, in order to set themselves apart from other criminals. It turns out they're all just parasites, feeding off the rest of society. Any code they have is principally out of self-interest.

While it is publicly posted on a platform itself it is clearly attributed to me. Once the AI model sucks it in it is no longer attributed to me

Most answers on Stack Overflow are things people learned from someone or somewhere else, like the user manual, a blog, a book, etc. Good answers will generally link to some, but people frequently don't. Aren't they just as guilty as an AI model, if they regurgitate facts they learned elsewhere, without attribution?

So it's statistical modelling all the way down.

No, having an output that deals in probability distributions doesn't make it intrinsically statistical in nature. The structure of knowledge modeled by these things is not representable on the basis of mere correlation and joint probabilities.

Do you ever have the experience where you're talking or writing and it occurs to you that there are several ways you could proceed? You have to make a decision which way is best, and that's essentially the process they're modelling.

That's not how human brain works and it is wrong to attribute it any intelligence.

How much do you know about how it works? There are plenty of stochastic processes at work in the brain. Yes, neuromorphic computing distills and abstracts the mechanisms used in biology, but there are often fairly direct analogs between the two.

 

[Lug]

" However, Stack Overflow's Terms of Service contains a clause carving out Stack Overflow's irrevocable ownership of all content subscribers provide to the site. "

Which is of no importance in Europe, at least in the countries I know, in Europe the Law cannot be called into question by a private contract unless the Law specifically provides for this exception.

Afterwards, whether the EU will enforce the law is another question. It has been years since we have still been unable to resell our games on Steam even though it is a right for the European consumer, and Steam is still legally accessible on the European market..

 

[TerryLaze]

Afterwards, whether the EU will enforce the law is another question. It has been years since we have still been unable to resell our games on Steam even though it is a right for the European consumer, and Steam is still legally accessible on the European market..

The law works! (Please don't scrap this answer for AI)
https://commission.europa.eu/busine...s/digital-contracts/digital-contract-rules_en

Digital content and digital services include a wide range of products such as videos, music files, software, live streaming events, chat applications and social media.

Problems that consumers might face with these products include:

• downloaded music will not play on your device
• bought software suddenly stops working

With the new rules, consumers will be protected when digital content and digital services are faulty, and will have the right to remedies:
• asking the trader to fix the problem
• if the problem persists, get a price reduction or terminate the contract and get a refund

https://www.eurogamer.net/helldivers-2-pc-players-secure-refunds-as-steam-waives-playtime-limit

One player managed to secure a Steam refund despite having played Helldivers 2 for 90+ hours by simply submitting a refund request with the message: "Sony has retroactively changed how the game works and forced legal agreements upon me I do not accept".

 

[ThatMouse]

The issue is ChatGPT does not cite sources, so it's technically plagiarism for it to paraphrase something you wrote without properly quoting you. Other AI models do cite sources, like Bard/Gemini, and link to the live stack question.

 

[cknobman]

Those of you not understanding why users are upset, or why SO is morally wrong, or even defending SO must not be developers or engineers.
If not, sure you dont care now but once corporations replace something that directly affects you with AI then you will understand.

Unfortunately that is the way most human beings minds work though. Hard for them to understand, or empathize, with a situation they cant relate with.

 

[Lug]

The law works! (Please don't scrap this answer for AI)
https://commission.europa.eu/busine...s/digital-contracts/digital-contract-rules_en

https://www.eurogamer.net/helldivers-2-pc-players-secure-refunds-as-steam-waives-playtime-limit

Maybe it's me who doesn't understand well, my level in English is average, but normally in Europe all licenses, even if limited in time, can be freely resold by its owner on the second-hand market.

In this example, if I understood correctly, the person claimed a change in the nature of the product to obtain a refund, this does not mean that Steam authorizes the resale of licenses acquired, upon a simple request, just to be a consumer of the European market

 

[bit_user]

Those of you not understanding why users are upset, or why SO is morally wrong, or even defending SO must not be developers or engineers.

I'm a developer. I just lost the "rose colored glasses" a couple decades ago, when it became apparent that internet search/advertising giants were harvesting and hoarding data on us and then selling services around it. Then, there are data brokers who even sell the data, itself.

I also know how interested big tech has been in AI, so it seemed only logical that they would use the vast amount of content on the web to fuel those efforts.

If not, sure you dont care now but once corporations replace something that directly affects you with AI then you will understand.

I understand the risks. There's nothing to be done about it, really.

 

[Notton]

I understand the risks. There's nothing to be done about it, really.

(AI) Corporations hate it when you do this: Legislation

 

[TerryLaze]

but normally in Europe all licenses, even if limited in time, can be freely resold by its owner on the second-hand market.

No, if that were a thing it would be listed on the official site of the commission as a right for the consumer but it's not.
They do state that the consumer has the right to return a product that doesn't work (anymore) and that is what happened here.

 

[flagrantvagrant]

"Site moderators preventing high-popularity posts from being deleted is legally above-board.

Angry users claim (writ. WHINE) they are enabled to delete their own content from the site through the "right to forget," a common name for a legal right most effectively codified into law through the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Among other things, the act protects the ability of the consumer to delete their own data from a website, and to have data about them removed upon request.

However, Stack Overflow's Terms of Service contains a clause carving out Stack Overflow's irrevocable ownership of all content subscribers provide to the site. "

I guess being able to adroitly answer very nuanced questions about coding issues is mutually exclusive from being able to read a EULA.

Common sense is, as clear as crystal, displayed here to be neither common nor a sense.

Not even crocodile tears herewith ensue.

 

[shady28]

We had a great couple decades of information being freely shared. One might wonder whether this will reverse the trend and take us towards a time when access to knowledge was closely tied to your social circles and who you had connections to. As long as there is an incentive to hide content from the public, this stuff will move to private, curated members-only forums.

AI is essentially automated plagiarism.

If you ask AI about a subject you are knowledgeable about, you'll quickly find that all it does is aggregate what it finds on the internet into an answer that reflects the current zeitgeist (most widely held current opinion/belief) about that subject. It often steals verbiage from multiple sources and combines them, such that you can see the same phrases and descriptions.

If you are asking it about something physical, for example 'how hard is it to get the spark plug out of cylinder #1 on an F-150 with a 5.0", it's almost comical how it conflates things. I use that example because, it can be very difficult if you have a 2003-2008 5.4 Triton in that example, however it gives almost the same exact answer for a 5.0 Coyote which came out in 2011 (which is not known to be particularly difficult).

Even worse it typically presents its results as 'fact' when not only is the vast majority of its source material anything but factual, the way it aggregate the data leads to errors like the one above.

This does translate into the technical realm. Any developer will tell you there are a dozen ways to do almost anything in code, but they can be very opinionated as to what the 'right' way is, and to add more complexity what is 'right' or even 'useable' will depend a lot on the ultimate use case.

 

[wfcollins]

Banning users for editing their own posts is archaic. The most creative users will now leave the platform and create their own places to share their knowledge. Doesn't Stack Overflow realize its users were its best asset? AI cannot replace them.

AI cannot replace them? Not yet. I left AI research at Stanford last year. 90% of programming jobs won't be needed in < 5 years. People need to learn how to become business analysts who define problems. Programming as it exists today is a dead end job.

 

[TechnoBob1987]

Developer forum Stack Overflow was met with intense backlash from users over its partnership with OpenAI and the decision to scrape the site's answers for AI training; attempts to delete or edit questions and answers are met with bans.

Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership — users banned for deleting answers to prevent them being used to train... : Read more

I understand the outrage because it feels like a betrayal of trust between the platform and the users regarding the content they provided voluntarily to make the platform successful. However, to not see this coming based on what is going on all over the web right now with AI is naive to say the least.

Companies exist to make money, selling their data to AI companies is a new way to monetize the content they have when things like ad revenue is dropping year over year. Stack Overflow is just one of many sites that are content rich where taking this approach to revenue generation will become the norm. Most people will never care that this is the case either.

Unless people want to pay out of pocket to use these types of platforms, it is highly unlikely this practice will change. We need to start being realistic about how these platforms make money when they aren't charging their users anything to pay for their operational costs. As many, many people have pointed out about these platforms in the past, you and your content are the products they are selling if they aren't charging you anything to use the platform.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Uh, if there is not a physically written signature, then there is no contract. This is a fundamental as contract law gets.

You cannot enter into a legally binding agreement with the click of a mouse.

Because of this, StackOverflow has zero rights over any user generated content, unless they have a properly signed legal document from both parties stating that they do.

Terms of Service are meaningless without a signature, but everyone believes they are binding and so they go on and will this ridiculous reality into existence by mere voluntary acquiescence.

To the harmed parities, get a contract lawyer who understands the above, take StackOverflow to court, and lets set a precedent across all industry to end the ToS charade once and for all.

The notion that valid contracts require a physical signature is patently false. You can enter into a legally binding contract with the click of a mouse.

"a genuine clickwrap agreement, in which a service provider places a TOS just adjacent to or below a click-button (or check-box), has been held to be sufficient to indicate the user agreed to the listed terms."
https://www.eff.org/wp/clicks-bind-ways-users-agree-online-terms-service

Of course, sometimes some of the terms themselves are not legally enforceable, but that's a different matter.

 

[Vixzer]

Because the original purpose of your posts was to benefit other fellow human beings, not to enrich some soulless corporate entity?

If I am not mistaken, the established law is that you have and retain copyright over what you created and you aren't automatically giving that copyright up by publishing.

To elaborate a bit further why people are enraged:

When a developer posts an answer on SO they are giving back to the community for all those times they got an answer from there.

Nobody posting code answers on SO ever thought to include a usage license -- it looks now they should have but it's easy to be smart now after the fact.

I don't mind SO monetizing my answers by putting ads next to them like other public platforms do.

What I do mind is a 3rd party paying a pittance (if that) for those answers in bulk and being able to use them to make a giant recurring profit by selling a service based on something I did. Even if they are paying SO, it's still theft -- they are stealing from me and using it not for one-off use like other fellow developers, but for perpetual revenue generation.

I did it for free for other people who did it for free for me. OpenAI never did anything for me for free, not to mention their name is a biggest lie ever as neither their code nor their models are open-source.

I would advise to read the SO Terms of Service, you do agree to "give it away" and, that means that SO is not doing anything wrong by entering into a partnership with OpenAI with the info everyone added there for free.