Reddit Cofounder Had a Bad Feeling About Giving Data To Sam Altman 29
Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian said he had serious doubts a decade ago about sharing the platform's data with Sam Altman. Ohanian recounted on the "Brew Markets" podcast that between 2015 and 2016, Altman asked Reddit to let him "aggressively scrape" the site's content. Altman had recently helped Reddit raise $50 million in a Series B round and was launching OpenAI as a nonprofit.
Ohanian described Altman as "very smart" and "incredibly cunning" but questioned whether he was "the most philanthropically minded guy." The Reddit cofounder said he "felt in my bones" the company should refuse the request and debated internally about it against Steve Huffman. Ohanian said he "lost that debate." Reddit and OpenAI announced a formal licensing deal in 2024.
Ohanian described Altman as "very smart" and "incredibly cunning" but questioned whether he was "the most philanthropically minded guy." The Reddit cofounder said he "felt in my bones" the company should refuse the request and debated internally about it against Steve Huffman. Ohanian said he "lost that debate." Reddit and OpenAI announced a formal licensing deal in 2024.
Remember he doesn't give a shit about privacy (Score:3, Interesting)
That data was worth billions and had he realized it back then he'd be part of the billionaire club.
Basically he's upset that he's not going to be the one getting to screw you over using ai and llms.
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That data was worth billions...
You see Reddit user posts worth that much? This is approximately 50c per post.
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These tech oligarchs are largely California leftists naturally aligned with Democratic party.
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Larry Ellison. What a bunch of bleeding-heart libtards!
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Re: Basically I don't care about billionaires (Score:1)
50c (Score:1)
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Can never forget about him firing Victoria Taylor (Score:3)
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He's upset that he gave up a treasure trove of incredibly valuable data for nothing more than some help raising money and a few contacts.
Well that and $70m, most likely per year like their $60m deal with Google for the same thing: https://searchengineland.com/o... [searchengineland.com]
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I think its important to think about the context of a decade ago. At that point language models where pure research. Things that generated absolute gibberish outputs and maybe might one day be useful in spam detectors, search engines, grammar checkers and translation apps, and the "Attention is all you need" paper that basically changed everything was 3 years in the future. You could be forgiven if one of your investors said "Hey, mind if I scrape your site? We're doing some research on language processing"
Should have ... (Score:2)
Just like the Spanish Inquisition (Score:2)
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition
I have used reddit for years (Score:2)
...starting long before the release of chat gpt
Somehow, I always knew that I was training a robot, and I judged it to be a good thing
He gave Altman a favor after getting one himself (Score:4, Interesting)
Thing is, most people will buy it. Me? I'm too old to fall for it. I'm not even all that angry about it. At this point, I think that I understand how the world works fairly well. The guy got help from Altman during a critical funding round for his company, and he handed over a boatload of user data in return. This is called "quid pro quo". Dealmaking like this is literally older than our species.
But I have zero patience to listen to someone talk about how dirty they felt. Buddy, got something you really, reallllllly wanted, and then owed someone a favor. Shut up about how your tender feelings were bruised.
Walk away whistling (Score:3)
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Sounds to me like he is trying to get ahead of some news with a compliant journalist.
Yup. Reddit lost its soul when Aaron Swartz died, and Alexis's cozying up to Nazis isn't helping. I'm delighted that he's catching it in the shorts. Bet Serena leaves soon.
Who hasn't? (Score:2)
Who doesn't have a bad feeling about giving data to Sam Altman?
Large companies are all the same and even when it weren't for Sam Altman, one should feel bad about giving data to OpenAI (just as Meta, Microsoft, Apple, etc.)
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Who doesn't have a bad feeling about giving data to Sam Altman?
This is why I will never use ChatGPT.
Chatgpt learnt from Reddit ? (Score:1)
Artificial Inanity Systems (Score:2)
I wonder how much of his regret stems from how the AIs he let train on the site are now rendering much of the site worthless with their flood of spam.
Though arguably, the old school scripted bots for vote manipulation are more of a problem than the LLM comments. Good mods can remove and ban the LLMs when they find them, but I don't think they have any recourse against the votes.
Pinch me? (Score:2)
What kind of weird world do we now live in, when I find myself agreeing with some of the statements from Alexis Ohanian, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Tucker Carlson? What's next, Rupert Murdoch telling me that Trump should release the Epstein files?
Reddit, is a hot dog a sandwich ? (Score:2)
$Reddit: You're banned (and all your old posts are erased).
$Me: I appeal.
$Reddit: Appeal denied. Reason: violating the sacred taxonomy of handheld foods.
Meanwhile over on r/unpopularopinion: “Hot dogs are tacos.” +47k upvotes, gilded 12 times
What A Little Bitch (Score:2)
He's only whining because he didn't see the value back then and failed to charge accordingly.
What a little bitch.
LMAO... news about "this guy had a bad feeling" (Score:1)