Can DATA Be Processed Ethically?

 

Who decides what is the price of the DATA itself? Emily Dickenson poetries didn’t sell in her lifetime, and there are several other Authors & Painters who became famous posthumously, including Vincent Van Gogh, whose works were understood only by the later generations to come; so, by harvesting the DATA available in the public free of cost, without the users permission or remuneration, aren’t AI companies suppressing both moral, authorship, and monetary rights of the owners?

As the AI companies, in rebuttal to the allegations made against them of Web Harvesting, Web Scrapping, and using Public Data available in the public/public domains, without the consent of the owners or their legal heirs of the Copyrighted work, contends of merely collecting the Data which unless been proven of reproduction of the same work, as then only under that circumstances be subjected to Copyrighted infringement; otherwise, doesn’t come under the purview of violating anyone’s rights! Such statements need to be grinded on the ethical aspects of governance!

There are myriad who have lack of IPR knowledge, including at the Top, who claims that, if the DATA is available in public/public domain (difference between two terms, as already discussed in my immediate previous two blogs), then, it is presumed to be open for everyone, and hence when being used for the training of AI models, LLMs, doesn’t infringe anyone’s rights.

This is a classic case study of rather senior management accepting mistakes or fissures in the training module itself; decide to put the blame on the owners whose DATA has been used for training of AI models, which shouldn’t be endorsed by the company board nor the shareholders!

Moreover, instead of correcting mistakes, they double down on such statements, by hiring PR agencies, expensive legal counsels to defend them!

Should this attitude be accepted in governance?

If presumed there’s no reproduction of DATA itself, YET, the processing of Data itself require certain mandatory guidelines under the IT Act or DPDP. There’re responsibilities of the Data Fiduciaries, Data Processing Agencies who process Data on behalf of the Data Fiduciary, of the Data Principal, or otherwise!

Even if the work that is in public, and the owner of the Work is Unknown, yet, there are certain mandatory requirements to use that work, by taking the permission of the Registrar of Copyrights!

It seems that general public is ignorant by nature. But it is the duty of the Company at least, not to traverse on those paths, wherein objections are expected to be raised. The character of the company matters, and not the share value or balance sheets! Which is where when the AI companies, even if they have overlooked certain issues w.r.t. Copyrights, IT Act / DPDP; then instead of rectifying, decided to double down on their mistakes.

And the Processing companies, who used the public Data, shouldn’t have further floated their products on Subscription basis, as, even if public DATA was used for R&D, or Scientific purposes, then that shouldn’t have ended up being a Paid product at the end of the day. Further, there’s a dilemma in that, if in case, the person whose Data has been used to train AI module is not even using the product of those AI company, whether on the basis of subscription, or otherwise Free if in case the AI company decided to float its services Free of cost; then would even the Free feature be justified, as in this case now, the User has not even agreed to use any feature? Furthermore, the companies can’t even demarcate if the subscriber or user actually received its share by using the services; because they can’t even demarcate the original authors! Fact!

AI is indispensable for future growth! And not to forget that I’ the First Human Poet on this Planet to Contend for Offsprings of Species Another, vide several hundred poetries, books and blogs. But there are certain ethical aspects that the companies need to follow, and accept, rectify, wherever they are wrong; rather doubling down on the unethical aspect itself which cannot be even morally justified.😊

© Pranav Chaturvedi