zlacker

How are the LLMs rent seeking? they are clearly providing value that people want to pay for..

>>Zpalmt+(OP)
This has to be one of the most abused terms on this website.

“People are willing to pay for it” is not even relevant to the question of whether it’s rent-seeking. Rent-seeking has to do with capturing unearned wealth, i.e. taking someone else’s work and profiting from it.

There is some portion of OAI’s (et al.) value that they themselves produce. There is another portion that is totally derivative of the data — other people’s work — they have trained on for free. A simple thought experiment can tell you to what degree OAI et al are “rent-seekers.”

Imagine a world where they had to enter into mutual agreements in order to train on that data. How much would the AI companies be worth? Not quite zero, but fairly close (Andreessen pretty much stated this IIRC). How much would the data producers be worth? The exact same amount or more.

>>Zpalmt+(OP)
The LLMs don't create new content, they can only rehash existing content (in term news), which they then don't pay for... It's not really the definition of rent seeking though, they do provide some value and mostly without manipulation, not deliberate anyway. LLM also aren't harmful as such, they can be, if we use them wrong, but that's not really the fault of the technology.

I do find is a bit dishonest when they charge for their services, but don't wish to pay the people who's work the models are based on. Why should I pay to use ChatGPT, if they won't pay to use my blog posts?