Comment by topgrain2
6 hours ago
Alibaba's asking for things, and receiving what they asked for.
> If it was the underlying data, that's freely available.
A bunch of it is not, but was pirated. And "underlying data"—JFC, that's billions of person-hours of thoughtful work by real people, practically infinitely more worthy of respect and care than what these LLM companies have done, without which they would have nothing. Alibaba's being more above-board about this than the major American firms have been (are they in general? Oh no, I doubt it, but in this particular case, yes). Extra accounts to get around TOS restrictions is the lesser evil here, and it's being done to companies that did worse. This is the least they should suffer, and their complaining about it is as comical as a professional fence crying about how unfair it is their shop got burgled.
Live by the sword...
What AI firms are trying to build is the artificial equivalent of a human brain. If a human learns from a source material and uses the knowledge in their career that doesn't violate the copyright law. If an artificial brain does the same then it doesn't violate it either. This is up to the courts to decide. Alibaba can't take the law into its own hands and decide what the punishment ought to be.
This also shows how Chinese firms are weak in AI algorithms, they can't build a model without stealing from American firms.
> What AI firms are trying to build is the artificial equivalent of a human brain.
We should probably leave this here, because I don't think this is even close to true (that it's what they're trying to do, or that it's what they've done—I do believe it's the sort of claim their marketing departments and investor-hype-meisters might make, though).