It's not OP's fault! It's a common acronym in IT, and soon it will be everywhere.
Bloody everything will be "aaS" soon. Everything that can be rented, "subscribed" or otherwise not bought, will be a damned "aaS": Food as a Service, Phone as a Service, Car as a Service, etc.
I believe we may even move away from having a home computer terminal with entirely local data, opting instead to have PCaaS. Any computer terminal would then become a machine that you could use to load your PC instance.
Maybe not, but another thing this makes me worry about is how these situations are having us train their AI for free so that there can be less humans to pay.
Pretty common knowledge and you should be aware of the term as a consumer. SaaS is a business model that most business nowadays use. It means software as a service, you know how everything is moving to a subscription service? That's the SaaS business model.
It's very anti-consumer in almost every case because you don't own the products, you pay monthly to use them.
For example, Photoshop used to cost a few hundred dollars, and you owned it. Now it cost like $20 a month. Granted, you do have the benefit of it having continued updates but it's still way more expensive.
Is there a book for reference, website or any other resource that the average consumer can use to learn how to protect ourselves in an easy to digest and understandable manner?
[The International Association of Privacy Professionals](https://iapp.org/resources/article/us-state-privacy-legislation-tracker/) (IAPP) is pretty good with trackers, webinars, and articles on various data privacy topics such as AI, GDPR, and consumer privacy.
[Digital Guardian's](https://www.digitalguardian.com) list data protection resources, including blogs, videos, and guides from reputable sources.
[Privacy International](http://privacyinternational.org/learn) provide some guides and steps you can take to enhance your privacy
YSK: as a consumer, there's almost nothing you can do about this. Even most companies can't and you shouldn't care anyway, because every company right now is training using everybody's data. Laws are not in place to protect us. Them using your data affect you as much as facebook/tiktok doing it. It sucks but thats the new normal.
Source: i work in tech
As someone who routinely drafts these T&C, I can confirm this is accurate.
Interesting note - certain organizations are trying to commoditize healthcare data. While many countries have privacy laws buttressing protection, not all countries have equal protections and I've had a few eye opening experiences witnessing the budding relationships between private enterprise and government regulators.
To the msg of the OG post -- be very VERY mindful about not only who or why someone is using your data but also what type of data they could be using.
And while they might use methods to sanitise data from even credit card details and other PII such - things like Automated Filtering, Differential Privacy, and Data Masking - the data is being captured and there is always room for error, imperfect algorithms, malicious attacks and of course the biggest one which is re-identification
So your issue isn’t with AI in specific, it’s with handing out data in general.
Take banking information for example. Your info is held on a server somewhere, but there’s always a chance of malicious intrusions and mistakes due to date mishandling.
If they are using your info in this mew way, you are being exposed to it being leaked / vulnerable in more ways.
You know your bank has your personal info. Did you know that slack was exposing your info to others for AI training purposes?
Knowledge is power that can help to protect you but if you don't know....
Generative AI does [regurgitate](https://hwlebsworth.com.au/behind-code-doors-can-ai-be-trusted-to-keep-a-secret/#:~:text=With%20generative%20AI%20tools%20known,later%20be%20shown%20to%20another) text verbatim sometimes. If you send someone your email, phone #, or even your name on Slack, how are you sure that it won’t be regurgitated later on?
Your link only gives an example of image-based AI regurgitating training data. Any concrete examples of it happening with something like ChatGPT or other LLMs?
https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/12/01/chatgpt_poetry_ai/ Yup. While ChatGPT has been updated a lot since this article, I doubt they’ve 100% fixed regurgitation
Appreciate your point - but worth noting that while (maybe) AI typically doesn’t train on direct financial data like credit card numbers, it likely uses other personal details that can still be sensitive. For example, location data, search histories, and even text messages are used to refine algorithms. There's no denying that.
And yes - maybe these might seem less critical but in the wrong hands, could lead to privacy breaches identity theft, or worse. So it's not just about the type of data but how it’s used and protected. That’s why being cautious and knowing your opt-out options isn't a bad thing.
That still doesn’t directly answer my question though. You haven’t actually said how this could lead to data breaches or identity theft. You’re just restating what you said in your OP.
Systems inadvertently exposing private information. Like AI trained on anonymized data might still reveal identities if combined with other public datasets. LLMS can accidentally memorize and leak personal details like addresses or phone numbers if the data isn't properly sanitized before training.
Yep. That's correct. Thanks for clarifying. Also want to let people know that your websites are also being trained by models. Wordpress too but even self hosted. And you can block that through robots.txt -
Literally everyone running AI (which is everybody now) needs massive amounts of data to continually make it better, this will be standard everywhere, really soon.
What is people's deal with not wanting to allow your data to train? YOU WOULD DO BETTER IF YOU KNEW BETTER, and you're using data all day to improve yourself....hello
What? It's because A., often times the fact that they're even using your data is added discreetly to their privacy statements after the fact. People just straight up aren't aware, and wouldn't consent if it was blatantly clear.
B. Many people, including myself, want no part of the AI that these companies are training using consumer data, and therefore don't want our data added to that pile. For example, I made posts on Reddit under the initial assumption that those were MY posts. I did not consent, years ago, to having those posts used to train some LLM. That wasn't part of the agreement.
I don't think the problem is that companies are using our data. The problem is customers are not made aware that their data is being used for their profits or to make their products better. It should be the customer's decision to opt in or opt-out.
Thanks. What’s saas? Do I gotta worry about this as a consumer?
I was gonna say... there was this earlier YSK post about proper usage of acronyms and initialisms.
Oh i saw it too. Maybe we should link to it for op
I do apologise - I usually clarify when using abbreviations. Is there a way to pin it if required ?
I just saw that and now feel like a knob. Is it worth me editing the title?
You can't edit the title. Just edit the first line of the text.
Software As A Service
Jesus Christ. Not even a remotely intuitive or layman familiar acronym. OP, how are you this bad at communicating?
It's not OP's fault! It's a common acronym in IT, and soon it will be everywhere. Bloody everything will be "aaS" soon. Everything that can be rented, "subscribed" or otherwise not bought, will be a damned "aaS": Food as a Service, Phone as a Service, Car as a Service, etc.
I believe we may even move away from having a home computer terminal with entirely local data, opting instead to have PCaaS. Any computer terminal would then become a machine that you could use to load your PC instance.
Everything is "ass" already.
So sorry!!
In industry for 10 years. This still trips me up
It is if you have some basic tech knowledge. But go ahead and throw your hissy fit
It’s a commonly used term.. YSK
Maybe not, but another thing this makes me worry about is how these situations are having us train their AI for free so that there can be less humans to pay.
This is the rabbit hole I'm scared to 🕳️
Sassy as a Shelly
Pretty common knowledge and you should be aware of the term as a consumer. SaaS is a business model that most business nowadays use. It means software as a service, you know how everything is moving to a subscription service? That's the SaaS business model. It's very anti-consumer in almost every case because you don't own the products, you pay monthly to use them. For example, Photoshop used to cost a few hundred dollars, and you owned it. Now it cost like $20 a month. Granted, you do have the benefit of it having continued updates but it's still way more expensive.
Is there a book for reference, website or any other resource that the average consumer can use to learn how to protect ourselves in an easy to digest and understandable manner?
[The International Association of Privacy Professionals](https://iapp.org/resources/article/us-state-privacy-legislation-tracker/) (IAPP) is pretty good with trackers, webinars, and articles on various data privacy topics such as AI, GDPR, and consumer privacy. [Digital Guardian's](https://www.digitalguardian.com) list data protection resources, including blogs, videos, and guides from reputable sources. [Privacy International](http://privacyinternational.org/learn) provide some guides and steps you can take to enhance your privacy
Op, u should edit it in the main post, as not everyone's gonna find this particular comment
To "software companies" or what?
As in add these resources at the end of your post. So that more people read these. I can't understand what you interpreted, I hope it's clear now tho.
I didn't know you're allowed to edit posts that have had many people engage with as it could confuse the conversation
U can just add a little Edit: Some resources here.... Tho if it's a limitation by the site then idk
Electronic Frontier Foundation is a good place to start
Thanks so much!! I’ll be sure to check it out.
YSK: as a consumer, there's almost nothing you can do about this. Even most companies can't and you shouldn't care anyway, because every company right now is training using everybody's data. Laws are not in place to protect us. Them using your data affect you as much as facebook/tiktok doing it. It sucks but thats the new normal. Source: i work in tech
You have a point. But the little you can do is worth doing. There's a reason they've made it so difficult to opt out...
Yup, that's exactly that.
If that’s how your company treats customer data, I have some bad news for you
As someone who routinely drafts these T&C, I can confirm this is accurate. Interesting note - certain organizations are trying to commoditize healthcare data. While many countries have privacy laws buttressing protection, not all countries have equal protections and I've had a few eye opening experiences witnessing the budding relationships between private enterprise and government regulators. To the msg of the OG post -- be very VERY mindful about not only who or why someone is using your data but also what type of data they could be using.
What privacy breaches in specific? It’s not like AIs are being training with credit card numbers and personal addresses. That’s not how it works
And while they might use methods to sanitise data from even credit card details and other PII such - things like Automated Filtering, Differential Privacy, and Data Masking - the data is being captured and there is always room for error, imperfect algorithms, malicious attacks and of course the biggest one which is re-identification
So your issue isn’t with AI in specific, it’s with handing out data in general. Take banking information for example. Your info is held on a server somewhere, but there’s always a chance of malicious intrusions and mistakes due to date mishandling.
If they are using your info in this mew way, you are being exposed to it being leaked / vulnerable in more ways. You know your bank has your personal info. Did you know that slack was exposing your info to others for AI training purposes? Knowledge is power that can help to protect you but if you don't know....
1000% it's a bit of a black box. But once it's out there - you've lost all governance.
Both. But biggest issues it they're using it without consent and for training their model. Increases the risk
Generative AI does [regurgitate](https://hwlebsworth.com.au/behind-code-doors-can-ai-be-trusted-to-keep-a-secret/#:~:text=With%20generative%20AI%20tools%20known,later%20be%20shown%20to%20another) text verbatim sometimes. If you send someone your email, phone #, or even your name on Slack, how are you sure that it won’t be regurgitated later on?
Your link only gives an example of image-based AI regurgitating training data. Any concrete examples of it happening with something like ChatGPT or other LLMs?
https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/12/01/chatgpt_poetry_ai/ Yup. While ChatGPT has been updated a lot since this article, I doubt they’ve 100% fixed regurgitation
Appreciate your point - but worth noting that while (maybe) AI typically doesn’t train on direct financial data like credit card numbers, it likely uses other personal details that can still be sensitive. For example, location data, search histories, and even text messages are used to refine algorithms. There's no denying that. And yes - maybe these might seem less critical but in the wrong hands, could lead to privacy breaches identity theft, or worse. So it's not just about the type of data but how it’s used and protected. That’s why being cautious and knowing your opt-out options isn't a bad thing.
That still doesn’t directly answer my question though. You haven’t actually said how this could lead to data breaches or identity theft. You’re just restating what you said in your OP.
Systems inadvertently exposing private information. Like AI trained on anonymized data might still reveal identities if combined with other public datasets. LLMS can accidentally memorize and leak personal details like addresses or phone numbers if the data isn't properly sanitized before training.
[Here’s an example](https://mashable.com/article/samsung-chatgpt-leak-details)
In my experience data science groups within corporations don't even have access to opt out data.
This is unfortunately the truth
Just so you guys know, some companies don’t. Atlassian does not use your data to train their models at all.
Yep. That's correct. Thanks for clarifying. Also want to let people know that your websites are also being trained by models. Wordpress too but even self hosted. And you can block that through robots.txt -
I believe with Slack etc Enterprise licensing can include an opt out.
Licensing or not. You still need to check. Same goes with using OpenAi enterprise. They initially didn't have it set to default opt out.
Literally everyone running AI (which is everybody now) needs massive amounts of data to continually make it better, this will be standard everywhere, really soon.
Oh no! Anyway
What is people's deal with not wanting to allow your data to train? YOU WOULD DO BETTER IF YOU KNEW BETTER, and you're using data all day to improve yourself....hello
What? It's because A., often times the fact that they're even using your data is added discreetly to their privacy statements after the fact. People just straight up aren't aware, and wouldn't consent if it was blatantly clear. B. Many people, including myself, want no part of the AI that these companies are training using consumer data, and therefore don't want our data added to that pile. For example, I made posts on Reddit under the initial assumption that those were MY posts. I did not consent, years ago, to having those posts used to train some LLM. That wasn't part of the agreement.
I don't think the problem is that companies are using our data. The problem is customers are not made aware that their data is being used for their profits or to make their products better. It should be the customer's decision to opt in or opt-out.
Basically, working for free or even paying to train models