Internet data scraping is one of the biggest fights in AI right now. Tech companies argue that anything on the public internet is fair game, but they are facing a barrage of lawsuits over their data practices and copyright. It will likely take years until clear rules are in place.

In the meantime, they are running out of training data to build even bigger, more powerful models, and to Meta, your posts are a gold mine.

If you’re uncomfortable with having Meta use your personal information and intellectual property to train its AI models in perpetuity, consider opting out. Although Meta does not guarantee it will allow this, it does say it will “review objection requests in accordance with relevant data protection laws.”

Apple is hoping to recreate the success of a deal it struck with Google back in 2005 by announcing a partnership with OpenAI fit for the AI age.

JULIEN CROCKETT: Let’s start with the tension at the heart of AI: we understand and talk about AI systems as if they are both mere tools and intelligent actors that might one day come alive. Alison, you’ve argued that the currently popular AI systems, LLMs, are neither intelligent nor dumb—that those are the wrong categories by which to understand them. Rather, we should think of them as cultural technologies, like the printing press or the internet. Why is a “cultural technology” a better framework for understanding LLMs?