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+layout: post.njk
+title: Consent, Attribution, Compensation and AI
+tags: post 
+date: 2023-12-08
+---
+
+<p>Many people these days are very excited about AI. As a tech enthusiast, I want to be excited by the possibilities of AI. However, there is a big elephant in the room, and that is the way AI companies source the data today and that, to be honest, kills most of my excitement. </p>
+
+<p>
+Two year ago I started on a journey to write a cookbook. My aim is one vegan recipe from every country--I want to share with the world what people from all over can teach us about vegan cuisine. On the way, I have needed to reflect a lot on the ethics of how these recipes are sourced, presented, and credited and I am noticing that there are parallels to learn from my personal project and my travels for the AI world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Early on in my travels, I travelled to the city of Oaxaca de Juarez. It lies in the southern part of Mexico, and it is a city that was created during a colonial era rooted in exploitation. One form of exploitation still prevalent today, which I will focus on, is how corporations and people come to Oaxaca for "inspiration", and profit off of that inspiration, all without giving any credit or reimbursement to the original creators or communities that, let's say, developed a particular pattern or cooking technique. One such example of that happening is within fashion. A news story a while back <a href="https://fashionunited.com/news/business/major-fashion-brands-accused-of-cultural-appropriation-in-mexico/2021053040212">covered how major clothing brands like Zara took patterns from Mexican indigenous textiles for the design of their clothes</a>, all without giving credit of where they took those designs from or compensating those who shared the designs with them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This way of extracting cultural resources from other nations, communities and people is a form of exploitation. The story of major fashion brands stealing styles from Oaxaca is not the only example. I have heard of someone coming to Oaxaca, learning about their various traditional drinks, and then creating and selling a cookbook without proper attribution or compensation. These incidents of theft of communal and individual "intellectual property" occur constantly and are not just tied to Mexico.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mexicans in general are very proud and happy to share their culture, but when people just take their work without respecting the fundamental ideas behind them, don't give any attribution, don't give back to the community that shared parts of themselves with outsiders, then they are rightfully pissed. It is very much a form of "intellectual" extraction of resources, and it is deeply unjust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Attribution is important, consent is important, reimbursement is equally important. If you visit a community that has a deep history of suffering from abuse and exploitation, it becomes even more important to act with tact and respect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Companies have the funds and resources within the legal system to assert their property and intellectual rights, even if it is not always just. Marginalized communities or ordinary individuals do not have the same resources nor does the system have any opening for them to partake within it and defend themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now how does this tie into AI? Well the pattern of extracting data without attribution from parts of the web is at heart a very similar issue. Notice how the word data alone creates a distancing effect--almost as if we were not talking about people's creations, whether they are artistic, intellectual, or just for fun. Just how in Mexico, global companies came and stole the designs of the people from certain regions, so do AI companies steal data from different sources all over the web. AI companies don't give attribution, don't pay for the data and do not even ask for consent to take it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is nearly impossible for us to enforce protection of the content we share, especially when many of us waive the protection of our data in return for big corporations to host the data for us. There is a court case going on in the US right now that might even determine that it is <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/what-is-fair-use-us-supreme-court-weighs-in-on-ai-s-copyright-dilemma">not even a copyright infringement to take someone's work and train an AI on it</a>!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With regards to my cookbook, I want to put it out for free on the web. I have carefully designed the website with the help of my girlfriend. The recipes on the website are shared with me by people who I have compensated for their time and knowledge. They have the expectation that I will credit and share the history behind the recipes, so that people not only learn the recipe, but also where it comes from and the cultural significance of it. Companies could take the recipes without consent, and AIs could strip the important history and remove attribution of the authors! In doing so, AI companies would commit the same injustice as the major fashion companies, they would steal and commodify others' work!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let me reiterate: attribution is important, consent is important, reimbursement is equally important.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The way AI companies take drawings, texts, programming code, patterns without consent is all a form of resource extraction. Big players with big money take data, people's artistic and intellectual creations. It is understandable to be angry at the injustice, AI companies are exploiting our natural desire to share our experiences and work with others!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is easy to think that it is a small group of smart people who builds AI and that they are just using their big brains to build it. However, we must not forget that they are not alone in building the AIs. AIs are built using the collective resources that we all share, it is built by the Kenyan workers labelling the data for <a href="https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/">low pay and abusive working conditions</a>, it is built using <a href="https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/ai-internet-carbon-footprint/">earth's limited resources</a>. The artificial in artificial intelligence is therefore misleading, there is nothing artificial about AIs. It is regurgitating the data that many of us involuntarily contribute (sometimes very much involuntarily, like when <a href="https://blog.gitguardian.com/yes-github-copilot-can-leak-secrets/">LLMs leak secret information</a>), and we are not being compensated nor credited properly for it either.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What is the end result? Money and power gets even more concentrated in a few rich Silicon Valley tycoons who get even more control and monitoring of our everyday life. It would be more just if the AIs were trained with data that has been shared with consent and fair compensation, but that is not happening today. We need to start expecting better from AI companies, and they need to start doing better.
+</p>
+
+