The OpenAI $200,000,000 contract with the US Department of War was a hot topic when news of it broke out.
There's no denying that data is a valuable asset. Your thoughts, your needs, your actions, your purchases are all part of a massive puzzle piece that help companies decide how best to cater to a potential market.
Much of the time, we agree to have our data handed over for third parties to sell to larger corporate entities. Sometimes we aren't aware of it being collected when we use a service or app. However, there's generally consent in allowing the harvesting of such data, so that the correct kinds of advertising are shown to you. Some may view it as a nuisance, but in the end, no real harm done.
However, when harvested data is being used to potentially increase the effectiveness of autonomous weapons, people will understandably draw a line. OpenAI isn't the first tech company to land a military contract. OpenAI is just landing a military contract because of all of the user input it's been receiving since its inception.
We're still very much in the wild west era of AI where legal enforcement is lacking, because frankly we just aren't entirely sure yet what really needs enforcing.
There's always a period of "well, we'll just figure it out as we go along", when introducing something radically new to the current era. As time moves on, it'll become more and more evident that consent will be the driving factor in what makes data truly valuable.
The real question will be how best to go about it. What's admissible? What's justifiable, and what isn't? Time will tell as information lines are drawn, both by legislation, and public opinion.
-------------------------------------
If you maintain or publish a dataset and are interested in testing cross-dataset interoperability through the Global Model Intelligence Platform (GMIP), a limited beta is underway.
Participation involves submitting a dataset to test metadata normalization, provenance classification, and cross-domain compatibility.
contact@datflash.com
More transaction detail