Feeding AI via Communities

Everything we do is being used to feed AI models. From the way we write our blog posts, to the pictures we take, and even the way we talk to each other. Everything is being hoovered up, and being turned into a model.

The result of this is that if we share content to websites we have to see whether they have an AI learning clause. Usually these clauses are opt out rather than opt in. If you are not attentive your content will be hoovered up, and eventually regurgitated by AI.

The problem isn’t that AI models are being fed. The problem is that AI models are being fed without our consent, and without us benefiting from what we have personally contributed.

I’m writing about it today because of [this article](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/05/stack-overflow-users-sabotage-their-posts-after-openai-deal/). It makes sense for us to remove our content from such sites. Not only was Eyeem bought by a company that wants to use photos to teach an AI model but it wants to charge users for using the site that will expoit their intellectual property. The same is true of WordPress. You will pay for these features and we will ingest your content into our model and then we will monetise it.

They’re being paid twice. First by the people they’re abusing, and a second time by the people who want to use AI generated content. We can opt out, but we’re at a stage where we would have to opt out of being online. Every site is training AI models on us.

## The Case For Self-Hosting

I would have written this post earlier but I had broken Linux yet again and had to migrate from the install I damaged to a tidy one. In the process I was able to migrate Immich from one card to the next using grsync.

I am improving. In the past if something broke I would have just started from scratch. This time I copied some files from one card to the other, and I migrated other data using grsync.

The most reliable of feeding “our own” AI models is to self-host on Immich, Nextcloud and Photoprism just to use three examples.

We could even two lighter instances of LLMs but that’s more geeky and more involved. With Immich, Nextcloud and Photoprism we can keep doing things the habitual way.

## And Finally.

If Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and others gave back to their community members, rather than to shareholders there would be less of a backlash. As I have said since 2006 or 2007, online communities have value because of their users, and users should get something back from those that want to monetise the communities.

At the time I said “think of ROI for the users, not just PR firms and investors”. Two decades later the same problem is still around.