---
date: '2024-04-04T15:00-08:00'
title: "Access to data isn't a grant to exploit it"
description: "As the AI hype cycle continues and continues to take on ever more characteristics of a bubble, we should be making an ever more concerted effort to block, confound and frustrate the crawlers they use to trawl the public internet for data. They've operated under the assumption that public access to data comes with the implied permission to exploit and train their models on said data."
tags: ['AI', 'tech', 'webdev']
---
As the AI hype cycle continues and continues to take on ever more characteristics of a bubble, we should be making an ever more concerted effort to block, confound and frustrate the crawlers they use to trawl the public internet for data. They've operated under the assumption that <strong class="highlight-text">public access to data comes with the implied permission to exploit and train their models on said data</strong>.<!-- excerpt -->

**[Ed Zitron:](https://www.wheresyoured.at/bubble-trouble/)**
> As I previously warned, artificial intelligence companies are running out of data. A Wall Street Journal piece from this week has sounded the alarm that some believe AI models will run out of "high-quality text-based data" within the next two years in what an AI researcher called "a frontier research problem."

These models demand more data, more energy, more computational power — endless demands in a farcical pursuit of endless growth. They want free access to data with the benefits accrued to only the companies operating the models. <strong class="highlight-text">You should be able to share something without a nameless AI company gobbling it up to train a new model.</strong>

Writers should be able to post or publish something without it being regurgitated by a company that provides minimal attribution or benefit.

Musicians should be able to continue to create without an AI company creating derivative works without permission — the same is true of film, movie and video.

Art should be able to be safely shared without it being fed into a blender that'll create uncredited imitations rife with artifacts.

[I hope musicians succeed in their efforts to gain protection from AI](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/02/musicians-demand-protection-against-ai), I hope film workers, artists and writers do. <strong class="highlight-text">A need for data doesn't entitle any of these companies to it.</strong> I see little benefit to any of these products, despite the hype. [Block their crawlers](https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/go-ahead-and-block-ai-web-crawlers/), skip using their chatbots, do your best to ignore the torrent of worthless text-based sludge and skip the derivative media. It's not designed to benefit you, it's not designed to benefit creators. It's a digital landgrab, an effort to set up a defensible position from which they can ask for foregiveness because — let's face it — they were never interested in asking for anyone's permission.

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