Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft Create Partnership on AI
I was starting to get worried about the data collection already happening individually at these big companies. Now that they have announced a partnership which potentially combines all this data together, I feel so much better!<p>The funny thing is, the companies are ALWAYS going to put a positive spin on this. Not very different from the WhatsApp &quot;we won&#x27;t show ads, ever&quot; messaging. Now I am in the camp which says &quot;Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me&quot;. Almost none of these companies can be trusted at this point. [1] Their refusal to ask OpenAI to be at the table really does not reflect well on them [2]. And the less said about the tenured professors who are now becoming company mouthpieces saying things like &quot;we create products which cannot make profit but which is meant purely for data collection&quot; the better [3]. And lastly, if these companies had such a sincere desire to &quot;improve AI for the sake of humanity&quot;, how about they start by letting OpenAI (or a similar company) do a data audit of all the information they share so that we can actually be certain it is not just a data brokerage masquerading as a public service?<p>I wanted to say that I wish the AI community will boycott this effort completely. I find it a bit worrying that this community now resides almost entirely within the walls of corporate America.<p>[1] Interestingly, the only company which is even <i>making</i> noises about user privacy is Apple. Is it possible they saw something in this partnership that they didn&#x27;t like?<p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;OpenAI&#x2F;status&#x2F;781243032582578177" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;OpenAI&#x2F;status&#x2F;781243032582578177</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12428883" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12428883</a>