Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
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Title: The New York Times says OpenAI deleted evidence in its copyright
lawsuit

Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2024 23:18:05 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-new-york-time...

Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking told Last Week TonightΓÇÖs John Oliver a
chilling but memorable hypothetical story a decade ago about the potential
dangers of AI. The gist is a group of scientists build a superintelligent
computer and ask it, ΓÇ£Is there a God?ΓÇ¥ The computer answers, ΓÇ£There is
nowΓÇ¥ and a bolt of lightning zaps the plug preventing it from being shut
down. LetΓÇÖs hope thatΓÇÖs not what happened with OpenAI and some missing
evidence from the New York TimesΓÇÖ plagiarism lawsuit.

Wired reported that a court declaration filed by the New York Times on
Wednesday says that OpenAIΓÇÖs engineers accidentally erased evidence of the
AIΓÇÖs training data that took a long time to research and compile. OpenAI
recovered some of the data but ΓÇ£the original file names and folder
structureΓÇ¥ that show when the AI copied its articles into its models are
still missing.

OpenAI spokesperson Jason Deutrom disagreed with the NYTΓÇÖs claims and says
the company ΓÇ£will file our response soon.ΓÇ¥ The Times has been battling
Microsoft and OpenAI over alleged copyright infringement with its AI models
since December of last year.

The lawsuit is still in its discovery phase when evidence is requested and
delivered by both sides to build its case for trial. OpenAI had to turn over
its training data to the Times but hasnΓÇÖt publicly revealed the exact
information it used to build the AI modes.

Instead, OpenAI created a ΓÇ£sandboxΓÇ¥ of two virtual machines so the
NYTΓÇÖs legal team could conduct its research. The NYTΓÇÖs legal team spent
more than 150 hours sifting through the data on one of the machines before
the data was deleted. OpenAI acknowledged the deletion but the companyΓÇÖs
legal team called it a ΓÇ£glitch.ΓÇ¥ Although OpenAI engineers tried to
correct the mistake, the restored data was missing the NYTΓÇÖs work. This led
the NYT to essentially recreate everything from scratch. The NYTΓÇÖs lawyers
said they had no reason to believe the deletion was intentional.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-new-york-time...
in-its-copyright-lawsuit-231805285.html?src=rss

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