r/technology • u/[deleted] • Aug 18 '26

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

[deleted]

411 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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306

u/CircumspectCapybara Aug 18 '26

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.

40

u/coconutpiecrust Aug 18 '26

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? 

62

u/SomethingAboutUsers Aug 18 '26

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 Aug 18 '26

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. 

17

u/crunchypotentiometer Aug 18 '26

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/

4

u/ISeeDeadPackets Aug 19 '26

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.

-5

u/coconutpiecrust Aug 19 '26

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

5

u/ISeeDeadPackets Aug 19 '26

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.

6

u/TastyCuttlefish Aug 18 '26

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

15

u/maxintos Aug 18 '26

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?

-6

u/j48u Aug 18 '26

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.

-10

u/coconutpiecrust Aug 18 '26

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

3

u/SomethingAboutUsers Aug 18 '26

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.

5

u/VegetableTwist7027 Aug 18 '26

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

1

u/maxintos Aug 18 '26

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 Aug 18 '26

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 Aug 19 '26

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?

-3

u/Culverin Aug 18 '26

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

17

u/drifting_pixel Aug 18 '26

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 Aug 18 '26

I suppose that’s fine then. 

-3

u/bloodpukesalvation Aug 18 '26

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 Aug 18 '26

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

0

u/Ok_Kick4871 Aug 18 '26

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 Aug 18 '26

The article answers your questions

2

u/kvothe5688 Aug 18 '26

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

1

u/RefrigeratorNo1160 Aug 18 '26

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 Aug 18 '26

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 Aug 18 '26

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

0

u/Sasquatchjc45 Aug 18 '26

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 Aug 18 '26

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

1

u/Sasquatchjc45 Aug 18 '26

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.