[HN Gopher] Microsoft is spying on users of its AI tools
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft is spying on users of its AI tools
Author : mikece
Score : 327 points
Date : 2024-02-20 15:28 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.schneier.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.schneier.com)
| DinoCoder99 wrote:
| How do they determine access is state-affiliated? Secondly why is
| Microsoft kowtowing to jingoist bullshit?
| poszlem wrote:
| The illusion of a borderless world has faded. The comfortable
| notion of "global citizenship" was a fleeting artifact of
| American dominance. As new realities emerge, the vital concept
| of state security demands far greater vigilance than in decades
| past.
|
| This is not jingoism, it's a clear-eyed assessment of our
| world. In this new reality, we can no longer afford the naivete
| of sharing our most valuable assets with nations who oppose us.
| int_19h wrote:
| Yet corporations still embrace this illusion when it comes
| to, say, operating in those nations. It's a borderless world
| for them, just not for us.
| 15457345234 wrote:
| Warmongers will never cease to monger war, I guess. What
| you've written is massively jingoistic; yes certain forces
| seem oddly desperate to talk a war into existence - I guess
| all those solar panels coming out of CN are disrupting
| certain money flows on a permanent-looking basis - but the
| absence of any actual, idk, military buildup will be harder
| to explain away. Unless you just deepfake the war. Which is
| probably what will happen.
| rhdunn wrote:
| You can geolocate a user/request based on the IP address. This
| is common in servers. It allows a server to know which country
| a request is coming from.
|
| I suspect that this is what OpenAI are doing, as Bing Translate
| and Google Translate do similar things.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| 2nd : Because Microsoft is still part of PRISM ?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
|
| P.S.: As a reminder, metadata is typically more informative
| than data.
| jsnell wrote:
| Original discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39368859
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> The only way Microsoft or OpenAI would know this would be to
| spy on chatbot sessions. I'm sure the terms of service--if I
| bothered to read them--gives them that permission. And of course
| it's no surprise that Microsoft and OpenAI (and, presumably,
| everyone else) are spying on our usage of AI, but this confirms
| it.
|
| What? The chatbot is not your therapist. The chatbot is
| Microsoft. They are the same entity. Everything shared with the
| chatbot is shared with microsoft, just as every google search is
| shared with google.
|
| Related legal determination re chatbots:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2024/02/18/air-canada-...
| Zelphyr wrote:
| I don't trust Microsoft as far as I can throw them collectively
| but it doesn't come as a surprise to me that they are doing this
| any more than it would if I were to hear that OpenAI, Google,
| etc... are engaging in this behavior.
|
| That's not to excuse it, however. I think it's already time they
| all implemented a privacy stance where they are only allowed to
| view chat conversations if the user gives them explicit and
| revokable permission.
| sammyteee wrote:
| In other news, water is wet.
|
| All joking aside, and even as the article points out re: the
| T+Cs, is anybody surprised?
| michaelt wrote:
| Many cloud providers maintain the pretence that their employees
| don't have access to customer data.
|
| For example, they like to maintain that if you run an amazon
| competitor hosted on AWS, amazon insiders can't look at sales
| numbers in your hosted database. Or if you run a google
| competitor with e-mail hosted on gmail, that google insiders
| can't view your e-mails. And so on.
|
| Personally I've always found these promises rather hard to
| believe, but a lot of people have a great deal of trust in
| them.
| nullindividual wrote:
| I worked for a large cloud provider and that is correct,
| employees did not have access to customer data. The
| encryption key in this product is split between a SQL
| database and the front end servers with blob data being
| stored outside of SQL (customer data). There was no way for a
| single employee to get access to both portions of the key to
| decrypt customer data.
|
| Using AWS when you're a competitor of Amazon seems like poor
| business decision making.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Who isn't a competitor of Amazon?
|
| Or, better, who isn't a competitor and is also not at risk
| of becoming one?
| surrTurr wrote:
| If you call this "spying", you should read the TOS of the OpenAI
| API again. If you, as a "hacker", still use their API, it's your
| own fault:
|
| > _OpenAI may securely retain API inputs and outputs for up to 30
| days to provide the services and to identify abuse. After 30
| days, API inputs and outputs are removed from our systems, unless
| we are legally required to retain them. You can also request zero
| data retention (ZDR) for eligible endpoints if you have a
| qualifying use-case. For details on data handling, visit our
| Platform Docs page._
|
| Source: https://openai.com/enterprise-privacy
| binarymax wrote:
| Azure's TOS are different. You can also opt-out of data
| retention: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/cognitive-
| services/o...
| gpjanik wrote:
| I'd assume Azure's TOS does not allow foreign secret services
| to use it for its operations. I remember TOS of iTunes
| mentioned you can't use it to build nuclear bombs. In that
| sense, there's no way that what Microsoft did was illegal.
| blackoil wrote:
| It also lists "30-days retention window" for Asynchronous
| Abuse Monitoring.
| binarymax wrote:
| Yes, but you can opt-out of the data retention and abuse
| monitoring if you go through a vetting process and are
| deemed low risk.
| ftkftk wrote:
| That is correct. The process is manual and definitely has
| humans in the loop. It is also required for every
| individual subscription in your account.
| bugbuddy wrote:
| That's the catch every little thing is a subscription on
| their platform.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's also not failure evident.
|
| I've managed a very large tenant with a number of carve
| out T&C. I'm aware of at least a dozen times that
| settings reverted during upgrades or migrations. O365 is
| a huge service with a lot of humans and duct tape holding
| things together.
|
| Unless you're auditing them, you have no idea.
| infecto wrote:
| These are not all that unique and pretty common across all
| cloud services, GCP, AWS, Azure included. Especially in the
| spectrum of their ML/AI services.
|
| I don't think these TOS are out of this world.
| blueblimp wrote:
| It's still an exceptionally poor privacy policy compared to
| pre-LLM online services.
|
| Compare with the Google Docs privacy policy, for example:
|
| https://support.google.com/docs/answer/10381817?hl=en
|
| > Google respects your privacy. We access your private content
| only when we have your permission or are required to by law.
|
| I think it is reasonable to expect the same from LLM API
| providers. The fact that they all currently do mass
| surveillance on users is bad.
| blackoil wrote:
| > only when we have your permission or are required to by law
|
| That can be very vague. does TOS gave them the permission?
| Does law can eb interpreted to require them to check for CSAM
| and pirated material? What about access by Iran or North
| Korea agents? If you are pushing things to cloud, these
| questions will be asked.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Anyone who cares will heed this language and not use them
| in the first place. For everyone else, Google's reputation
| as a "secure" place to host your proprietary files, docs,
| and emails will be flushed away if they cooperate with
| (foreign, mostly) law enforcement or have such a glaring
| security vulnerability that allows an org's files to leak
| from Google servers.
| api wrote:
| I've seen numerous stories recently that boil down to people
| being surprised that cloud hosted products "spy" on you.
|
| If you're sending the data to someone else's computer and it's
| not encrypted, you're.... sending the data to someone else's
| computer.
|
| Do people not understand this?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| My wife teaches English. She uses Google docs revision history
| to spy on her students writing (and occasionally to recover it
| in the event of a disaster). So if it's plagiarized, she can
| see the moment where they pasted the plagiarized version.
|
| They apparently have no idea.
|
| So yeah, I think that people legit don't understand. The gap
| between tech literate and hacker is problematically large.
| api wrote:
| I increasingly feel like a member of some kind of high priest
| or scribe class in a feudal society, and I don't like it. I
| don't like where this is going.
|
| It'll either end in a dark cyberpunk total surveillance and
| mass manipulation state or a kind of Butlerian Jihad where
| people reject networked cybernetic systems en masse. Maybe
| the first happens followed by the second.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Agreed. I think we need to be a bit more conscious of whose
| agenda we're willing to further with our work.
|
| I'd rather retire of unremarkable means in a functioning
| society than be wealthy in a dystopia of my own making.
| codeptualize wrote:
| Yes.. they are pretty clear that they monitor for abuse. 30 days.
|
| Not sure how this is a surprise.
| wredue wrote:
| As nothingburgers go, this is pretty tame and expected. You use
| a platform that entirely runs on a hosted back end, you're
| going to have everything logged and saved.
|
| Compare that to, say, Nvidia, who sends every single titlebar
| value, as well as every single click you make to their servers
| (this data sends even if you opt out, as it is classified as
| "necessary"). Probably the most invasive spyware you have
| installed today.
| ambichook wrote:
| jfc, is this from geforce experience? if so i knew it was bad
| but this is something else entirely
| 23B1 wrote:
| You should know that if you're interacting with an AI tool
| through various social channels - facebook, twitter, instagram,
| texting - those chats are not only being actively read by the
| employees of that company, but anyone who is responsible for the
| 'marketing' of that company, e.g. outside vendors.
|
| Certainly these firms are bound by contract, but the stuff I've
| seen people ask these chatbots - health information, sexual
| information, highly personal stuff you might only share with your
| shrink... well, it's being read by the 22 year old marketing
| intern as well. Unencrypted, in the clear, copy & paste'able, and
| attributable to your username/ID
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| No shit. The internet is a network of other people's computers.
|
| Was the internet designed to be private?
| bilvar wrote:
| The neighbourhood is a network of other people's homes. Let's
| allow everybody in ours then.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What does the public street represent in your analogy?
| gpjanik wrote:
| I love how the user made "Microsoft is spying on users of its AI
| tools" from "Microsoft found out that hostile governments of
| authoritarian countries use their AI tools to conduct illegal
| activities" and forgot that you legit have to click "Yes, I
| agree" under the terms and conditions that state they indeed do
| track all this stuff.
|
| Next up, "Major television broadcasters spy on soccer players
| during Champions League games".
| r721 wrote:
| Not even a random "user", but Bruce Schneier!
| tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote:
| Who also helpfully linked to his pages on Facebook and
| Twitter. I'm sure those never "spy" on their users.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| _"Yet you participate in society. I am very intelligent."_.
| ;-)
| hef19898 wrote:
| Can I use those tools without clicking on "Yes"?
| bilekas wrote:
| Can you drive your own car without a key ?
|
| You don't have a 'right' to use the services. So the answer
| to your question is "It depends if the service lets you, so
| 9/10 cases, no. Rightly so"
|
| Edit : I can see a lot of people don't like this. But like it
| or not, right or wrong, that is how it is. Expecting anything
| else is just fanciful.
| arp242 wrote:
| Informed consent is key. Do they clearly inform you of this
| when using these tools or is it hidden in a dense Privacy
| Policy somewhere with language so vague and woolly most
| people hardly understand it, which you "accepted" when you
| first installed Windows?
|
| I don't have a Windows machine and didn't check, but I'm
| guessing it's a lot closer to the second than the first.
|
| In principle I don't think anything is "wrong" with keeping
| a record of AI chat sessions, but you do need to know about
| it so you can modify your behaviour as you see fit (i.e.
| ask different questions). If there's a camera pointed at
| you then some might decide that the nose is best left
| unpicked and those balls will have to remain unscratched.
|
| This is really the problem with a lot of these things: not
| that they're doing these things _as such_ , but that it's
| so hidden and obfuscated that you need to spend an hour or
| more trying to understand it, and even then you only know
| what they "may" do, not what they "actually" do - a lot of
| these privacy policies are so vague and full of qualified
| language that they "may" do almost anything.
|
| And even in recording conversations there's nuance. Is this
| recorded with your full account detail, or is that
| information stripped? Are all conversations recorded or
| only some? Etc. etc.
| Geisterde wrote:
| >Informed consent is key
|
| _sounds_ nice
| arp242 wrote:
| If you want to say something then say it instead of
| leaving weird cryptic comments. Otherwise don't post
| anything.
| barrysteve wrote:
| There's nothing cryptic about his post.
|
| He'a referring to an idea that sounds nice in theory and
| doesn't work in practice.
|
| It's a common English phrase.
|
| And the phrase works well, the concept of informed
| concept sounds good in theory and never works in
| practice.
|
| Anyone who has observed tech companies for decades knows
| they don't ask for your consent before they make any
| consequential changes. Tech companies do whatever they
| want until they get sued or regulated. It's always been
| this way.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Read arp's comment again. The "consent" under those
| premises isn't valid, because it was neither informed nor
| freely given.
| Geisterde wrote:
| My appologies. I think informed consent is a wonderful
| idea, I just am skeptical that it exists in real life. I
| would say if you use an electronic device today, you are
| being spied on (with very narrow exceptions).
|
| Informed consent to me (take the example of a phone or
| many apps), based on the level I have to break it down to
| people for them to understand, is something like "we will
| see you whacking it to hentai, we will know when you take
| a dump, we have enough of your data to derive private
| information you never gave us, we have all the data
| necessary to totally ruin your life socially and
| economically, and it will all be leaked to criminals that
| will profit from your demise, dont worry though, we will
| give you a 1 year sub to mcafee antivirus as a
| consolation prize."
|
| I think we can at least agree that ^^that happens to
| people. So, whos going to be the first company to not
| veat around the bush and just admit that reality? That,
| is why I say informed consent _sounds_ nice, every
| company that can keep a skilled contract lawyer on
| payroll has an incentive to downplay their spying. I dont
| know in what version of reality informed consent _could_
| exist, because the incentive is fairly obvious.
| atq2119 wrote:
| Another important ingredient of informed consent is that
| there are realistic, viable alternatives. Those
| alternatives may have downsides, but if those downsides
| are so large as to become crippling, they stop being
| realistic and viable.
|
| That is often a crucial issue in these discussions around
| big tech, enshittification, and so on.
| arp242 wrote:
| Yes, it depends on the specifics though. "Simply don't
| use any AI tools" is a viable alternative, IMHO.
|
| But "simply don't use Windows" is already a lot more
| tricky, because so much of the world runs on it. You and
| I can get away with just running Linux, but we're not
| normal people in this regard.
| atq2119 wrote:
| Agreed, though I'd add that it's quite likely that
| "simply don't use AI tools" will become less and less
| viable relatively quickly.
| arp242 wrote:
| Meh; I think it's the reverse and that more and more
| people will find that automating these type of tasks is
| not actually a good thing because unlike automating
| manual labour, there is value in doing the work yourself,
| as that is the only way to have a profound and deep
| understanding of things.
| int_19h wrote:
| You don't. But it means that the title of the story is
| correct as worded: if you do use those tools, you _are_
| getting spied on. The fact that you 're warned about that
| somewhere in the TOS doesn't change the fact, and the story
| is basically correct.
| educaysean wrote:
| I think the word "spy" is problematic here because one
| might assume that the subject being spied on must be
| unaware of the fact, otherwise you no longer qualify as
| "being spied on".
| Geisterde wrote:
| The government doesnt spy on its cotizens, because the
| citizens know they are being spied on?
| anp wrote:
| I hate that states do this, but yeah it's called
| "surveillance" when legitimized by norms, statute, and
| precedent.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| It's called surveillance _to_ legitimise it.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| That's actually a fantastic example of the difference
| between actually owning something and not: I am absolutely
| allowed to modify my car in any way I please, including
| installing a ignition bypass.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > Next up, "Major television broadcasters spy on soccer players
| during Champions League games".
|
| I strongly agree with you that this story is a nothingburger.
|
| But as I note your reaction, I take a different interpretation.
| The implication that statements like "Microsoft spies on X" are
| truisms, _is_ the news. We obviously all now accept as a given
| that these are tautologies.
|
| In other words "Spies spy on X" -> (is to say) "Microsoft =
| spies", not just in this sentence/context, but in all contexts.
|
| Terms, conditions, legality, illegality, hostility or
| friendliness all recede into irrelevance hereafter.
| probably_satan wrote:
| Not to mention Microsoft intentionally built their AI lab in
| China haha. Bananas.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| You're referring to an office/lab they built in 1998, lol.
| Pretty sure they bought in on this latest round...
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The whole excuse OpenAI gave for going proprietary was
| specifically that they could spy on you and use that to
| reactively adjust GPT's alignment training.
|
| For what it's worth, the US military is also evaluating LLMs in
| the same way the Chinese and Russian hackers are. I imagine - or
| at least hope - they aren't using OpenAI's hosted ChatGPT and are
| getting copies of models they can run on SIPRNET or JWICS.
| capital_guy wrote:
| Anyone using these tools is asking for all their data to be
| hoovered up. Locally powered AI is the only way to use it if you
| care about this kind of thing.
| nox101 wrote:
| Curious what the difference is between that and a search engine.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Could be shortened to just "Microsoft Is Spying on Users".
|
| If you use a modern MS product, you are sending them lots of
| data, full stop.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| Or more generally, "Everyone is spying on users, that's how the
| internet works."
| bilekas wrote:
| I do not like M$' behavior in general but this is almost
| certainly not spying.
|
| The OP seems to think that because the users region was recorded
| its spying on sessions. With a self righteous "I didn't read the
| TOS but This just confirms it".
|
| Microsoft would obviously be recording region metrics, maybe even
| keyword/request trends. None of this information is identifiable
| and makes complete sense to be monitoring for improvement on a
| new product area.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| > I'm sure the terms of service--if I bothered to read them--
| gives them that permission.
|
| I can't tell if this article is parody or not, and that's
| concerning, haha
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| A more precise yet general headline: "Microsoft is spying on
| users"
|
| It's nearly impossible to install their products without opting
| into layers of spyware and adware cloaked in dark patterns and
| requiring extraordinary measures to back out of hidden spyware
| installs done without permission. Microsoft has always been a
| fairly malignant business, built in shenanigans of various sorts,
| and as the market perfects new shenanigan vectors they're right
| there pushing the envelope.
| vosper wrote:
| What are some examples outside of the OpenAI one in Schneier's
| blog post?
| illusive4080 wrote:
| Windows 11
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Office 365
| Zenul_Abidin wrote:
| Outlook
| throwanem wrote:
| VS Code.
| enopod_ wrote:
| Edge
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| XBox
| rubicon33 wrote:
| Notepad
| sleepybrett wrote:
| github, azure...
| vosper wrote:
| What are the "layers of spyware and adware cloaked in
| dark patterns and requiring extraordinary measures to
| back out of hidden spyware installs done without
| permission" in Office 365?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Specifically you can't back out for office 365. That part
| was windows 11. The rest of their products offer no
| option to bypass the spyware and adware.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| And Windows 10, IIRC.
| vosper wrote:
| What are the "layers of spyware and adware cloaked in dark
| patterns and requiring extraordinary measures to back out
| of hidden spyware installs done without permission" in
| Windows 11?
| jwitthuhn wrote:
| Everything you type in the start menu gets sent to
| microsoft by default and this can only be changed with
| Group Policy, so anyone on home edition is stuck with
| that.
| vosper wrote:
| Thanks for giving me an answer, all the other posts in
| this chain just seem to be people naming Microsoft
| products (I get it, people love bashing Microsoft...)
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| This does a fairly detailed analysis of the various
| vectors and wraps up patching in an enormous script plus
| related tools.
|
| https://simeononsecurity.com/github/optimizing-and-
| hardening...
|
| There's also a lot of extensive details of the dark
| patterns in the installers where no means yes with the
| privacy preserving option hidden behind rolled up options
| etc. Even then you need to do other patches to avoid
| telemetry and data collection. Even then you end up with
| ads surfaced in the start menu, etc.
| Vetch wrote:
| In this specific instance, I think it is necessary to make a
| distinction because given the direction things are headed,
| spied upon is tautological in the context of AI. AI-as-a-
| service requires sending private details to gain utility and
| there is a real risk this is the only kind of AI that will be
| allowed to exist. GPT4 was most probably used given they stated
| this action was taken in collaboration with OpenAI and so the
| emphasis on Microsoft was likely used as engagement bait by the
| blog author. In truth, Microsoft probably put this out to
| advertise how they take steps to keep AI safe. Unfortunately,
| this will also be ammunition for those who seek to ban
| opensource AI, you can only do this kind of thing with
| Monitored AIs.
|
| Even if you're not an adversarial government leaning on it as a
| hacking enhancement, it's only a matter of time till
| governments worldwide demand certain controversial
| conversational topics be reported to law enforcement. I suspect
| the Knight Paladins of Anthropic would be more than eager to
| further this greater cause for the Safety of mankind.
|
| From the start, since all but a few services are using your
| data to improve their models there is already no notion of
| privacy. The ethical ones will eventually (if not already)
| report suspicious activity (as determined by law) to law
| enforcement and the less ethical ones will report all activity
| to advertising and insurance agencies.
|
| Some already lobby to ban opensource AI because enhancing the
| learning rate and reducing the friction of gaining new
| information for humanity without controlling oversight will
| also enhance hackers or other bad actors ability to access
| sanctioned knowledge. They consider this a heresy and deem
| humanity at large incapable of responsibly handling such
| increases in cognitive ability. Only a few Adept can be trusted
| with administering AI. Truly, spying is among the more trivial
| concerns for the future of computing, given AI's compute
| heaviness and the amount of centralizing control it engenders
| by default.
| miohtama wrote:
| > In truth, Microsoft probably put this out to advertise how
| they take steps to keep AI safe. Unfortunately, this will
| also be ammunition for those who seek to ban opensource AI,
| you can only do this kind of thing with Monitored AIs.
|
| This is exactly how the OpenAI blog post reads between the
| lines: "We work with the government to make the world safe.
| Or else."
|
| https://openai.com/blog/disrupting-malicious-uses-of-ai-
| by-s...
|
| The actual "bad" tasks "bad guys" performed were no different
| that what one can accomplish with Google searches. But no one
| talks about stopping terrorists to use Google.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I've posted it before, but when I saw that Microsoft Defender
| sends your files to be inspected, and has no audit history of
| what goes from your computer to their servers, I installed
| Linux.
| jxramos wrote:
| Do you have a blogpost or something of the like to read up on
| the analysis backing that conclusion. I'm very curious here.
| tredre3 wrote:
| In Windows' "Virus and threat protection" settings there is
| the following checkbox (defaults to enabled):
| Automatic sample submission Send sample files to
| Microsoft to help protect you and others from potential
| threats. We'll prompt you if the file we need is
| likely to contain personal information.
|
| Regarding that last sentence, it is not documented what
| they consider "likely to contain personal information".
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| How generous of you to assume that one could opt-out of all of
| it, regardless of the pattern.
| m463 wrote:
| The darkest pattern is that employers use microsoft software as
| your tools for employment.
|
| This seems to violate all kinds of boundaries between your
| personal and professional life.
|
| Most people as they mature learn how important boundaries are
| to health and well-being, as a child or teen growing up, as a
| partner, as a parent, and with friends and community.
|
| People don't need this mess too.
|
| There is no clear way to opt out of this, to create and
| maintain a boundary and to say no.
| _sword wrote:
| The White House's AI regulatory order requires big cloud
| providers to monitor for and report foreign clients (ie Chinese)
| for using their services to train AI fyi. Monitoring for
| malicious activity isn't nearly as invasive as what the
| government is requiring
| mistrial9 wrote:
| oddly, top ranking AI research in the world right now comes
| from Stanford USA+Wuhan PRC .. this is trivially verified.
|
| Intelligent commentary will need to differentiate between
| public cooperation layers, non-public cooperation layers, and
| non-public adversarial layers .. because, they are all active..
| all of those.
| _sword wrote:
| The White House doesn't differentiate! If you're foreign and
| training bigger models on US cloud infra, you're reported
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-
| releases...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Sounds like the government is requiring monitoring of malicious
| activity.
| numair wrote:
| While we are on this topic -- can someone, _anyone_ , tell me how
| to disable the AI autocompletion suggestions in Outlook for iOS?
| Getting ready to dump Microsoft and Exchange to get away from
| that utter mess.
|
| Perhaps some of the people who are commenting here don't realize
| that there isn't much of a way to opt out of these data
| "analysis" activities.
| probably_satan wrote:
| Why did Microsoft build their AI lab in China, then?
|
| Sounds like Microsoft sold the US citizens out to China and are
| now trying to play the victim card while adding Russia to the
| blame.
|
| Say what you want about conspiracy theories but China and Bill
| Gates seem to be afraid of women to the point where they have
| chosen to try to eradicate them from society. Maybe the rumors
| are true about Bill Gates' attempt to make little girls infertil
| via vaccination.
| BandButcher wrote:
| Imo bad story piece to cover up the recent Microsoft hacks done
| by "state actors".
|
| This has nothing to do with MS spying on user ai tool usage.
|
| Admit it MS, you got hacked, service accounts and executive
| emails were leaked, along with who knows what else, and you
| "caught them" after damage was done.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Why waste time on performative outrage about how services that
| require a login have our data and use it in ways we'll never
| know? You have to accept it as a given and move on in order to
| start asking the right questions.
|
| Like, are we letting ourselves be herded towards a future where
| it's normalized that all search must be done by authenticated
| users, and "classic search" is effectively deprecated ten years
| from now?
| bearjaws wrote:
| EZ rage bait.
|
| Everyone of these platforms is scraping your inputs to train
| their next model.
|
| How is it not obvious they would also detect abuse?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I could see somebody being confused and not understanding that,
| say, a copilot tool in a local IDE, or some of their AI in the
| start menu stuff, is actually using online services. But it is
| pretty obvious that when you write something into a website
| that's... going on the internet, right?
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| When you send data to someone else they have that data, act
| accordingly.
|
| Anything else is just stupid. Didn't we all learn on the
| playground that a secret isn't secret any more once you tell a
| friend?
| gigel82 wrote:
| I mean, probably. But there's no smoking gun here, just wild
| speculation. Someone should dig deeper and ask Microsoft / OpenAI
| to disclose exactly how they obtained the "threat intelligence".
|
| Here's the full report for reference, but they don't answer how
| the data was collected or correlated to the specific "threat
| actors": https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/security/blog/2024/02/14/sta...
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Finally Microsoft is doing some good things. Spying on Russian,
| Iranian etc spies is what you are supposed to do.
| notavalleyman wrote:
| There are real spies in this story, who are committing truly evil
| acts in the world, and using technology to further their aims of
| spreading malware and destroying international space conventions.
|
| And yet the poster finds Microsoft the bad guys in this story?
|
| This is a story about our international enemies using advanced
| western tech to develop malware, with which to attack us.
|
| It's right to be outraged, but not at Microsoft
| bastard_op wrote:
| Do they have a product that does NOT spy on users at all?
|
| Pretty much everything they do is either cloud connected
| inherently giving them visibility into what you do, or they feed
| constant telemetry back of what you do in one form or another in
| the os, office apps, whatever you happen to use they make, on
| whatever platform you use it on, including non-windows systems.
|
| Really do you expect anything more of Microsoft at this point in
| history?
| Urgo wrote:
| Google Bard.. Gemini makes it explicitly clear that they do this
| right from the homepage:
|
| "Your conversations are processed by human reviewers to improve
| the technologies powering Gemini Apps. Don't enter anything you
| wouldn't want reviewed or used."
|
| "How conversations improve Gemini
|
| Just by having a conversation with Gemini, you're making Google
| services better, including the machine-learning models that power
| Gemini.
|
| As part of that improvement, trained reviewers need to process
| your conversations.
|
| So when using Gemini, don't enter anything you wouldn't want a
| reviewer to see or Google to use.
|
| Your Google Workspace content, like from Gmail or Drive, is not
| reviewed or used to improve Gemini.
|
| You can turn Gemini Apps Activity off If you don't want future
| conversations reviewed or used to improve machine-learning
| models, turn off Gemini Apps Activity"
| ilc wrote:
| I'd love to get some clarity on this from Google on if they
| actually support not getting spied on or not?
|
| It is only kinda 1/2 clear here.
| living_room_pc wrote:
| I always assumed so, and I never feed it anything sensitive.
| autoexec wrote:
| I assume it's true for anyone offering AI as a service. Anytime
| you hand your data over to someone else they will use it for
| whatever benefits them. No one should be handing them sensitive
| data.
| orev wrote:
| I don't think this is a surprise to anyone here (I just assume
| anything done on any of these services is being "used to improve
| it" i.e. "spying"). But if Schneier is talking about it, maybe it
| will get more attention.
| interludead wrote:
| There is no such a thing as privacy nowadays
| kelnos wrote:
| The title/headline here is a bit flamebaity. Of _course_
| Microsoft is going to retain copies of AI chatbot sessions for a
| bit, and look for signs of abuse. Even not having read their ToS,
| it 's pretty safe to assume that's going to happen.
|
| I just don't see the harm. There are plenty of examples of
| privacy overreach on the internet, and Microsoft is guilty of
| some of them, but this particular thing seems fine to me.
|
| And in this case, I think MS is doing the right thing! They
| shouldn't allow people to use these tools if they're going to use
| them to help them build malware. Certainly this sort of abuse-
| tracking should be narrow in scope, but it seems like that's
| exactly what it is, at least in this instance.
|
| If you don't want a third-party reading your interactions with an
| LLM, build/train your own.
|
| Eventually we may decide (legally, hopefully) that our
| interactions with AI tools should have strong privacy
| protections, but that has not happened yet, and companies are
| going to apply their usual privacy rules to these things: that
| is, not much privacy granted, at all.
|
| I generally have a lot of respect for Schneier, but this sort of
| breathless, sensational "reporting" isn't doing privacy advocacy
| any favors.
| lm28469 wrote:
| What's new? The vast majority of online companies are glorified
| data miners
| atum47 wrote:
| Not to be an as*ole but is anyone surprised by this?
| racl101 wrote:
| SSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHOCKER.
| canadiantim wrote:
| How much do people trust that VSCode isn't spyware?
| skybrian wrote:
| OpenAI is welcome to train on the questions I've been asking
| about how to do type-level programming in TypeScript. In other
| circumstances, I might ask such questions in a public forum like
| StackOverflow, or a discussion forum on GitHub, but ChatGPT is
| more convenient.
|
| I suppose other people might ask more private questions, but I
| have trouble coming up with examples of private things that I'd
| want to ask an AI chatbot about. And there are plenty of things
| to ask about that aren't personal.
| copperx wrote:
| That sounds like the old "I don't do bad things therefore I
| don't need privacy" pro-spying argument.
| skybrian wrote:
| I do need privacy sometimes, but not for this. Others may
| have different use cases.
|
| This is true of everyone. Do you need privacy all the time?
| Presumably you're okay with your Hacker News comments being
| public.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Duh?
|
| AI is built on data. The more you spy, the more data you get to
| train AI, the more you train AI, the better/more valuable it gets
| and the more people want to use it to give you data. It's a
| cycle.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| This is a weird post. Yes, they monitor for abuse of their TOS.
| No surprise there.
|
| But also, this is really the only way to actually improve the
| underlying tech. How do you know patterns of abuse? Normal use?
| Weird but non-abusive use? By collecting data on that usage and
| feeding it back into development.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > But also, this is really the only way to actually improve the
| underlying tech. How do you know patterns of abuse? Normal use?
| Weird but non-abusive use? By collecting data on that usage and
| feeding it back into development.
|
| You can collect that data internally or let users opt in;
| spying on users is absolutely not the only way to improve.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| It's not spying on users.
|
| And no, it's really the only way to do it effectively. When
| you make it opt in or internal only, you get far too much
| selection bias to make the product good. That's just how it
| works with this tech right now.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Microsoft is very literally an arm of the US government, I think
| people should already realize that.
|
| Google is terrible, but Google refused (they say so we don't know
| how true this is), to help the US government on spying, and
| Microsoft stepped in.
|
| Bill Gates gets to sit with Xi Jinping and get called a "friend"
| and MS has exceptions in China unlike other companies.
|
| Microsoft wants to buy ActivisionBlizzard, gets brought to the
| senate on the antitrust case, and the senators start barking
| against Sony instead, lol.
|
| Microsoft is very literally all the US accusses Chinese companies
| of being for the Chinese government, now, so far it doesn't seem
| like MS has done that much with our data, but who knows what the
| future holds.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Google is terrible, but Google refused_
|
| Isn't "we refused" what they would have said they did even if
| they haven't refused?
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Yes, I know, that's why I stated I can't confirm if that's
| really the truth. Again I'll cite the whole ordeal with Apple
| claiming they are the privacy company and how they "refused"
| the government access to a persons iphone back in the day as
| an example, I wonder how they refused when the patriot act is
| a thing? they refused the government? lol
| weare138 wrote:
| _In collaboration with OpenAI, we are sharing threat intelligence
| showing detected state affiliated adversaries--tracked as Forest
| Blizzard, Emerald Sleet, Crimson Sandstorm, Charcoal Typhoon, and
| Salmon Typhoon_
|
| Does anyone else think this new APT naming scheme is terrible or
| is it just me?
| tzm wrote:
| spying === user engagement?
| RIMR wrote:
| From the comments:
|
| >OpenAI are "spying" on ChatGPT sessions the same way that email
| providers "spy" on your email to filter spam. This sounds like a
| variation on "Google is reading your email".
|
| Yeah, but Google is actually reading your emails. They build a
| profile of everything you buy from emailed receipts, and use that
| data to target ads at you. It's definitely not about improving
| the user experience, like a Spam filter accomplishes...
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| If it's running on their serve and it's part of the license, why
| shouldn't they? A real competitor or wanna-be should have the
| sense not to do that, so it seems justified that they would keep
| an eye for how their product is used.
| wut-wut wrote:
| Well Duh.
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