ScientistPankaj: Your Personal Information Is Probably Being Used to Train Generative AI Models

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Your Personal Information Is Probably Being Used to Train Generative AI Models

View all Scientific American publications.

October 24, 2023

You may have heard that popular generative AI systems, such as ChatGPT, have been trained on "the whole internet." But what exactly does that mean? The companies that develop these tools might draw data from all public online posts, including "anything on popular photograph-sharing site Flickr, online marketplaces, voter registration databases, government webpages, Wikipedia, Reddit, research repositories, news outlets and academic institutions," among other sources. And as this week's lead story shows, some of that publicly available data can include incredibly sensitive personal information, such as private medical images.

Sophie Bushwick, Associate Editor, Technology
@sophiebushwick

Privacy

Your Personal Information Is Probably Being Used to Train Generative AI Models

Companies are training their generative AI models on vast swathes of the Internet—and there's no real way to stop them

By Lauren Leffer

Robotics

Above-Elbow Bionic Arm Can Control Every Finger

Researchers have created the first nerve-controlled prosthetic hand that can be used in daily life

By Simon Makin

Artificial Intelligence

A More Reliable Wikipedia Could Come from AI Research Assistants

A neural network can identify Wikipedia references that are unlikely to support an article's claims—and scour the web for better sources

By Chris Stokel-Walker,Nature magazine

Space Exploration

Space Manufacturing is Not Science Fiction

A Stanford researcher is growing crystals on the International Space Station to withstand the extreme environments of Venus.

By Jason Drakeford,Tulika Bose,Kelso Harper,Jeffery DelViscio

Artificial Intelligence

Generative AI Models Are Sucking Data Up From All Over the Internet, Yours Included

In the rush to build and train ever-larger AI models, developers have swept up much of the searchable Internet, quite possibly including some of your own public (and possibly private) data.

By Sophie Bushwick,Lauren Leffer,Tulika Bose,Elah Feder | 11:22

Medicine

How New Advances in Organ Transplants Are Saving Lives

Advances are increasing the supply of organs. But this isn't enough. Enter the genetically modified donor pig

By Tanya Lewis

Renewable Energy

These Bizarre Devices Could Generate Power from Ocean Waves

A facility off the coast of Oregon is being constructed to test devices to harness wave power that resemble everything from buoys to carpets

By John Fialka,E&E News

Public Health

What Went Wrong with a Highly Publicized COVID Mask Analysis?

The Cochrane Library, a trusted source of health information, misled the public by prioritizing rigor over reality

By Naomi Oreskes

Sociology

New DNA Tests Are Identifying Missing Persons and Solving Crimes

Every year about 1,000 human remains go unidentified in the U.S. New genetic technology can give them names and return them to their families

By Erika Engelhaupt

Energy

'Virtual' Power Plants Give the Grid Vital Flexibility

Virtual power plants are aggregations of electricity producers, consumers and storers that power grid managers can call on to balance electricity demand and supply

By Daniel Cohan,The Conversation US

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"We decided to put ChatGPT to the test and find out how it fared when asked about news stories. Did the chatbot offer accurate and up-to-date information? How would it handle contentious topics? How would it handle requests in languages other than English? What sources would it use?"

Marina Adami, NiemanLab

FROM THE ARCHIVE

'AI Anxiety' Is on the Rise--Here's How to Manage It

Rapid advances in generative artificial intelligence have prompted big questions about the future of work and even human creativity. Experts have suggestions for how to manage all these unknowns

By Lauren Leffer | October 2023

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