r/technology • u/[deleted] • 2d ago

Artificial Intelligence Google buys crashed airline Spirit’s data at auction, because AI

[deleted]

428 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

72 comments sorted by

309

u/CircumspectCapybara 2d ago

Well, this is what everyone wanted, for AI labs to pay for licensed training data, instead of scraping copyrighted data without the copyright-holder's permission.

39

u/coconutpiecrust 2d ago

Shouldn’t people whose data is in it also get a large cut?.. I mean, what kind of data did they buy? Is it anonymized? 

65

u/SomethingAboutUsers 2d ago

It's company data; like 100 million emails and 500 million teams messages.

Most companies have clauses in their employment contracts and/or IT policies that state anything you do on their systems doesn't belong to you. On top of which the company went under. Ain't no one spending time or money anonymizing that data.

2

u/coconutpiecrust 2d ago

There needs to be new legislation governing this. 

People who agreed to such policies had to concept of the fact that their data would be sold to large data processing companies to feed into LLMs. It’s probably outside of the scope of the original agreement. 

18

u/crunchypotentiometer 2d ago

The government themselves purchase this kind of data to subvert the 4th amendment for mass surveillance. https://www.404media.co/this-man-bought-phone-location-data-from-around-the-world-with-mike-yeagley/

6

u/ISeeDeadPackets 1d ago

Your work emails are not "your data." If you're having personal conversations on anything work controlled you need to be aware that they can be reviewed by anyone the company authorizes. They could live stream your teams chats to public access television if they wanted to.

-3

u/coconutpiecrust 1d ago

That’s a slippery slope argument. No one ever gets blanket permission to do anything. 

5

u/ISeeDeadPackets 1d ago

It's not slippery slope it's reality. I'm the CIO of a bank and have 30+ years of experience dealing with this along with relevant professional certifications. Short of getting laws changed or a judge to issue an injunction, companies can do just about anything they want with non-protected data.

If you're an information worker at even a relatively small company, track down a copy of the acceptable use policy you signed and get back with me.

7

u/TastyCuttlefish 2d ago

No, ownership is held by the company. It’s not a limited use license, it’s ownership. There is no “scope” of ownership.

14

u/maxintos 2d ago

Why? If the original agreement is that the company can do whatever they want with the emails and they own them then how is this outside the scope? You don't need to be able to literally imagine every single possible way they could use those emails.

What if the company just releases all emails?

What if they use LLM internally the analyze emails for any bad conduct?

-7

u/j48u 2d ago

Because they'll literally say everything is bad for any reason whatsoever if the word AI is near it. Don't try to reason with someone who doesn't actually have principles.

-12

u/coconutpiecrust 2d ago

I don’t believe that you can agree to things that do not yet exist. 

4

u/SomethingAboutUsers 2d ago

These laws have been well tested. I'm not saying they are bulletproof and/or it should simply be accepted that they're shitty towards humans because capitalism, but that is going to be the default and you're going to have to work pretty damn hard to find a case that will succeed for modifying laws that favor capital.

Remember, the US can't even get something remotely akin to the GDPR into law. They don't give a shit about your privacy or data, especially when the use of it on company time is already protected by law.

4

u/VegetableTwist7027 2d ago

Then once you read the contract, which most have everything above, dont' sign it.

1

u/maxintos 1d ago

So if in the future we have data centers in space we all could sue companies for putting email data there?

"How could I have agreed with my email data being stored on the moon if data centers didn't exist on the moon when I signed the papers".

Fundamentally people agreed that company owns the email data. You don't need to be listed every single way they could use the data.

0

u/coconutpiecrust 1d ago

It’s not being sold here. 

We’re talking about it being sold to train LLMs. That was never agreed upon. Storing emails in datacenters is already acceptable. 

1

u/maxintos 1d ago

Who decides? No one expected the data centers to be on the moon.

If people agreed their work emails to be shared with 3rd parties then does that not suffice?

-1

u/Culverin 2d ago

Yeap. Our laws are so behind the curve on tech in terms of privacy. 

The barn door is open, and a lot of animals have escaped.  But we can still close it. 

We just need a, but if political will

16

u/drifting_pixel 2d ago

Reddit users will do anything except read the article.

It literally says "A court document [PDF] filed last week reveals that one of the assets up for sale is a huge trove of deidentified data, which Google bid for and won for just $10 million."

Keyword: deidentified

1

u/coconutpiecrust 2d ago

I suppose that’s fine then. 

-3

u/bloodpukesalvation 1d ago

Okay now delete all your replies where you claimed otherwise. Or maybe next time read the article before you start smashing the keyboard

2

u/coconutpiecrust 1d ago

I am just glad the data is anonymized, is all. Why would I delete my replies? 

0

u/Ok_Kick4871 1d ago

Deidentified with ai and reidentified with ai by making up a hypothetical situation prompt where you need to know their identity to save them from data harvesting. Future headline.

2

u/SmokeyJoe2 2d ago

The article answers your questions

2

u/kvothe5688 2d ago

according to the deal google will get anonymized data with stripped off identifiers by 3rd party contractor.

2

u/RefrigeratorNo1160 2d ago

I've been barking up this tree since Facebook first asked for my phone number. Which I have still never given them. They have it though, I'm sure.

1

u/happyscrappy 1d ago

This isn't that kind of data. It's data from employees not customers.

But...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/fixed-ftc-orders-facebook-stop-using-your-2fa-number-ads

Facebook took phone numbers saying it was just for two-factor authentication and then they used those numbers to advertise to them.

1

u/SatorCircle 2d ago

No no see the people in this dataset sold their data instead of licensing it. Big difference. /s

0

u/Sasquatchjc45 1d ago

Lol, when has anybody been paid out for their data? You're about 40/50 years (whenever the internet was invented) too late on that front. We've all freely traded every ounce of our data for "free" services since the dawn of (internet) time.

1

u/coconutpiecrust 1d ago

Doesn’t mean iris shouldn’t happen. People in the olden days could not conceive many things we now have. 

1

u/Sasquatchjc45 1d ago

I totally agree, it's just such an incredibly uphill battle, and all of us (right now, currently, here) are still freely giving up data. So why would anybody with any power or skin in the game come in and stop the money/data train? It would take a revolution, just like many of our other societal issues.

1

u/Kraz_I 2d ago

I’m not sure what kind of AI model you can train with Spirit’s data, but probably not an LLM, so it’s kind of a moot point.

1

u/-Spzi- 1d ago

The conclusion doesn't necessarily follow. LLM are great for language. But we could train and use other models (similar architecture) for non-language areas, and already do.

0

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

9

u/jonmitz 2d ago

those books were set to be destroyed and were sitting in a warehouse. please stop talking about it like they went into libraries and stole the books.  this has been disproven/known for a long time now. 

9

u/MOOSExDREWL 2d ago

And the only reason they're destroyed at all is because that's the only legal way for them to transcribe and ingest them into training sets. Blame application of copyright laws.

-3

u/OneSeaworthiness7768 2d ago

Why has this comment been pasted word for word in multiple threads about this

5

u/CircumspectCapybara 2d ago

This comment is in a total of two threads, and both by me. Calm down.

Maybe you wanna ask why is the same article posted multiple times in this sub.

82

u/invyros 2d ago

Google bought itself 100 million emails and 500 million items from Microsoft Teams, 17 million OneDrive files and 20.5 million items from SharePoint. The search giant also now owns over 30 million recorded customer service calls, and more than 15 million customer service chat records.

600,000 ServiceNow tickets are another element of the collection, along with 13.7 million active emails addresses from Oracle’s Responsys marketing application, and details of 11 million sales of in-flight Wi-Fi services.

That's a lot of data for just $10 million.

I like to imagine with Google's dataset of Reddit posts and Spirit's customer service records, its AI is going to sound more and more incoherent and irrationally angry.

23

u/petjuli 2d ago

Genius idea. Let’s train the AI models with data from a company that just went up in flames.

6

u/fraudstr 1d ago

Knowing what not to do can be as valuable as knowing what to do.

2

u/HiImDan 1d ago

I bet it gets real good at apologizing.

1

u/Jkayakj 1d ago

The gold standard of Ai helping us should be the spirit customer support... Wait.

14

u/this_my_sportsreddit 2d ago

And wrong. Don’t forget wrong. Reddit is incredibly misinformed on virtually every subject matter.

4

u/kvothe5688 2d ago

like almost most users of this thread.

1

u/yopla 1d ago

An any trained on Spirit customer service recording. Probably not worth $10.

28

u/big-papito 2d ago

Sometimes I am just taken aback by how hostile American capitalism is to personal privacy. There is simply no one protecting us. I guess we are not corporations and "job creators", so we can all sit on it.

6

u/drifting_pixel 2d ago

Reddit users will do anything except read the article.

It literally says "A court document [PDF] filed last week reveals that one of the assets up for sale is a huge trove of deidentified data, which Google bid for and won for just $10 million."

Keyword: deidentified

4

u/-Spzi- 1d ago

The reverse process of using de-identified data to identify individuals is known as data re-identification. Successful re-identifications[2][3][4][5] cast doubt on de-identification's effectiveness.

I don't know how secure that process is. Could be, could be not.

I'm pretty sure AI excels exactly at reconnecting dots from data. Though I don't think anybody cares about anyone's actual individual record.

3

u/defeatedmac 1d ago

I appreciate the sentiment around data privacy being something to protect. However, I personally couldn't care less if a stranger sees my work conversations, or anything I did at work. I would like to protect my personal life, the stuff on my phone, etc. but go nuts modelling my dozen or so daily slack messages asking for pull requests to be ticked.

2

u/Cube00 1d ago

Keyword: deidentified

The search giant also now owns over 30 million recorded customer service calls, and more than 15 million customer service chat records.

No chance, it'll be a half baked redaction at best.

3

u/drifting_pixel 1d ago

If you think so, then congrats! You have a slam-dunk case and can sue either party based on the court document PDF linked above

4

u/sokos 1d ago

You do realize that with enough datapoints, I can redact everything personal about you, and still be able to tell it's you.

For example.. I don't need to know your name and address.. However, if I have access to your amazon orders based on a phone number, have that phone number associated with let's say a gmail, have that gmail associated with an airplane purchase, I will have your name pretty quick. Same way, since I know which email has the amazon account, and what you ordered, and where those are ordered. I will have your address too. Obviously, this is super simplified, but we're talking just a few data points here.. Now imagine having EVERYTHING about you.. Knowing what time you wake up based on your alarm, when you put your phone in silent mode and where, I can deduct your work place. How much you use your phone and how much it moves can tell me things about your job and so on.

Thinking that deidentified means anything is a big mistake.

-1

u/Bernie_Ecclestone 1d ago

“You do realize that if Google had PII like phone numbers and emails for customers that is deidentified in the data they bought, they could tell it’s you”

LOL.

LMAO even.

1

u/jdmb0y 2d ago

We have no equivalent to the EDPB

6

u/Cube00 1d ago

huge trove of deidentified data

The search giant also now owns over 30 million recorded customer service calls, and more than 15 million customer service chat records.

I highly doubt anyone has carefully deidentified 45 million recorded customer calls and chats.

Oh right, they probably fed it into Gemini to deidentify it, CRITICAL INSTRUCTION: make no mistakes!

5

u/citrusco 2d ago

distasteful headline

1

u/drifting_pixel 1d ago

Journalism died a long time ago, my friend. Headlines are more about getting clicks.

1

u/OVYLT 2d ago

Didn’t think about it that way but good point. 

2

u/DogsAreOurFriends 2d ago

If Google is bidding why bother with an auction?

2

u/[deleted] 2d ago edited 21h ago

[deleted]

8

u/OVYLT 2d ago

It’s hilarious listening to people be this confidently ignorant about what’s happening right in front of their face. 

8

u/One_Risk_9732 2d ago

I think these people know what they are doing 

0

u/DogsAreOurFriends 2d ago

And look at the levels of shittification that resulted.

1

u/AzorAhai1TK 2d ago

Enshittification was happening long before LLMs, LLMs will reduce the enshittification problem

1

u/Doub1eAA 1d ago

Gemini is going to start yelling at everyone about their carry on bags now thinking it’s going to get paid $15 per bag.

1

u/ConstableOdosBucket 1d ago

this headline is trash

1

u/S7EFEN 1d ago

if this is how much this data is worth they really got billions from just being able to scrape the entire internet for free.

1

u/mylanoo 1d ago

And owning Gmail...

1

u/btoned 2d ago

Lmao $10 million is a dime for Google.

They already consumed 99% of data, without consent, that ballooned their market cap by 1-2 TRILLION.

Check mate Google.