OpenAI and Microsoft knew they were starting a ‘doom

What happened

Recently unsealed court documents in the New York Times’ case against OpenAI and Microsoft are pretty damning. ” Many of the most eye-catching quotes from the document come from Microsoft’s Director of Applied Science, Brent Hecht. Though, the company has tried to distance itself from Hecht’s assertions. ” In a separate court filing, Jordan Usdan, GM for Data Strategy and Ops at Microsoft AI, characterized Hecht’s role as adversarial.

Microsoft is quoted as admitting that “LLMs are a product that destroys its own supply chain” because it’s a substitute for its own training data in many cases. OpenAI’s own media and economic experts attributed the drop in referral traffic for sites like the Times directly to AI summaries like Google’s AI Overviews. They’ve speculated that search referrals may be down as much as 60 percent.

Microsoft spokesperson Haurek cautioned that “Satya’s testimony and Microsoft’s position in this case are perfectly consistent. He spoke to broad principles and changes underway in how people find and consume information.

Why it matters

” But whether or not Microsoft wants to own these comments, it’s clear that this came true. Google Zero is real! AI is eating the web! There are plenty more wild statements in NYT’s filing from a variety of figures, including Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, and other OpenAI employees. Here are some highlights from the 92 page document.

The introduction quotes Hecht and OpenAI’s Head of ChatGPT (presumably Nick Turley) in a way that seems to show the companies knew they posed an “existential threat” to publishers like the New York Times. ’” Satya Nadella admits that chatbots have basically replaced search and removed the need to go straight to the source for info. ’” Don’t be fooled by OpenAI or Microsoft’s claims of altruistic intent.

OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman is more interested in the “gazillions” of dollars it he could potentially make through commercial AI. Despite Nadella later being quoted as saying, “anything that is paywalled should be licensed,” An OpenAI representative admitted that he was “unaware” of any effort to detect or remove paywalled content from training data.

” The filing then goes on to cite several examples of ChatGPT outputting long strings of copy straight from articles in the Times, Mercury News, The Denver Post, LifeHacker, and Eurogamer in response to queries. ” OpenAI’s Nick Turley is later quoted as saying that once you get an answer from its chatbot, there is “no good reason to click” on a link to the source.

What to watch

” But it seems pretty clear based on this newly unsealed document that both Microsoft and OpenAI knew they were going to irreparably harm the publishing industry, the “millions of people” it employs, and, by extension, damage their own product, but carried forward anyway in pursuit of “gazillions” of dollars — doom loop be damned.

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