LinkedIn does not use European users' data for training its AI

82 pointsposted 8 hours ago
by robertclaus
(techradar.com)

64 Comments

slowmovintarget

7 hours ago

Which implies that elsewhere...

There are some consumer protections that I really do wish we imported into the U.S., especially food safety and chemical usage. Too much regulatory capture for that, though.

benreesman

2 hours ago

The FTC under Lina Khan’s enlightened, benevolent leadership seems anything but captured (though I agree with you that this is atypical): she’s the #1 enemy of everyone with a family office for a reason and if they don’t manage to throw her out, she seems to just be warming up. Everything from search monopoly to prescription drug price negotiation is on its back foot for the first time in decades.

zaptrem

7 hours ago

Why do you care if someone trains an AI on content you have chosen to post publicly (LinkedIn profile/posts)? I’d understand if it was your DMs or something but this stuff is no secret.

ManBeardPc

6 hours ago

Posting images, articles and other content doesn’t grant everyone the right to use it for every purpose. Especially not to republishing it partially under the excuse a machine is doing it. It’s just not the same as someone getting inspired by it or citing it.

Automatically doing something is a whole other quality from a person doing it. Police watching a protest is fine, police filming it or documenting all participants via face recognition is forbidden (at least here).

zaptrem

6 hours ago

I understand and completely agree republishing content (even altered) isn't cool, and I also agree government use of technology for mass surveillance is incompatible with our idea of democratic/open societies. However, in the case of LinkedIn posts you have already given the ideas behind your content to the world (and in this case specifically and explicitly LinkedIn) for free.

I've said this before, but it's sad how quickly this community swapped from being champions of the free exchange and use of information for the betterment of humanity to gleefully stomping on an incredible and beautiful new technology because someone else might make money off it. Reminds me of the Judgement of Solomon [1] (people would rather kill the whole technology and all the incredible things that may come with it then miss out on "my cut!", "my cut!" even if it's a single LinkedIn post in a corpus of billions)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_of_Solomon

ants_everywhere

2 hours ago

> government use of technology for mass surveillance

Well, for context, when the US wanted to create a mass surveillance apparatus in the 1990s, they funded the tech sector. Now the tech sector both does the surveillance and fuels the economy. The surveillance info is fed back to the government in various ways and is increasingly used for things like military targeting.

Generally speaking, any information you give to a private company you should assume will be used by your government. Either directly via subpoena/tapped data lines/etc, or indirectly via AI services provided by these companies to the government.

batch12

2 hours ago

The Judgment of Solomon is a bad analogy as the mother is willing to give her baby away to save it. You've reversed the roles and are comparing those who want control of their data to the woman who never had a claim to the child to begin with.

zaptrem

an hour ago

I see the open weights/source model community as the ones willing to give the baby away.

_DeadFred_

4 hours ago

Has this community done a complete 180 randomly out of the blue, or is it a reflection of how the new technology is being used? And if this previously ultra friendly community did a 180, imagine the feelings in the general public that never had the friendly attitude.

CaptainFever

2 hours ago

> A reflection of how the new technology is being used

This statement can be interpreted as:

1. Some AI is bad (e.g. "some AI take jobs"), therefore LinkedIn's AI is bad. This is an invalid argument, so we can ignore this.

2. All AI is bad, therefore LinkedIn's AI is bad. Valid, but probably unsound, because intuitively this would mean saying "AI used to fight cancer is bad". So we can ignore this too.

3. LinkedIn's AI is bad by itself. Why? What is LinkedIn using it for? Is it just a chatbot? There's no risk of obsolete careers from that. Is it a privacy issue? It is public data. Is it because it makes money? What's wrong with that? Is it simply a fear of the new? I think so, but that's just my uncharitable opinion.

Please elaborate.

potamic

an hour ago

> how quickly this community swapped from being champions of the free exchange and use of information for the betterment of humanity to gleefully stomping on an incredible and beautiful new technology

You're assuming this community is a monoculture. I'm sure you'll see people on various sides, from ardent free exchange advocates to die hard copyright supporters.

Barrin92

6 hours ago

>I also agree government use of technology for mass surveillance is incompatible with our idea of democratic/open societies.

well, corporate use of technology for mass surveillance is equally incompatible with the idea of a democratic society, which is why the EU imposes limits on what LInkedIn can do with your data, and thank God for it.

Free exchange of information is being able to access a textbook at the library, not a corporate behemoth vacuuming people's personal information so they can sell them to the highest bidder to put you under surveillance the next time you attempt to switch a job or send you more ads. Betterment of humanity? Blink twice if a LinkedIn PR person is holding you at gunpoint

zaptrem

6 hours ago

> Betterment of humanity? Blink twice if a LinkedIn PR person is holding you at gunpoint

I was referring to Generative AI in general, this use-case is quite boring.

> a corporate behemoth vacuuming people's personal information so they can sell them to the highest bidder

Do people not use LinkedIn to explicitly signal to the world that they're looking for a job? Why does it matter how that information is being delivered? If you don't want the world to know you're looking for a job simply don't update LinkedIn?

> corporate use of technology for mass surveillance is equally incompatible with the idea of a democratic society

The argument against government power/surveillance is that they have a monopoly on it and may use their power to hurt people. It is good to legally protect sensitive information like health data from advertisers, but in this case you can, again, simply not use LinkedIn. What difference does it make if the info is collected by a company looking for new hires, a third party analytics company working on behalf of them, or LinkedIn itself working on behalf of them? It's not private data.

ants_everywhere

2 hours ago

> ... surveillance is that they have a monopoly on it

Wait what, this isn't even close to being true

> government power ... is that they have a monopoly on it

This is only true by definition. McDonalds also has a monopoly on serving McDonalds food.

> use their power to hurt people

This is universally true of anyone with power. The difference between the government and other powerful organizations is that the government has a universal feedback mechanism via voting. In a democracy everyone gets a say in the laws that affect them.

sweeter

5 hours ago

"just dont use LinkedIn" is such a narrow minded thing to say. How do you feasibly expect people to exist in society without interacting with any of these systems and corporations? if its not LinkedIn its Indeed or w/e else. They all collect data and most of them are pumping it into some kind of LLM or behavioral analysis algo. That is not functionally different than the argument for the Government doing it, except for that the Gov has a monopoly on violence.

This applies for pretty much everything in our daily life like banking, shopping etc... "just don't interact" is such a useless nothing-burger that side-steps the problem entirely. You can "solve" all societal problems by becoming a hermit, moving to the woods and living off the land... but that is not a functional or reasonable thing to do for 99.99% of people. Its baffling especially when the reasonable solution is simply having a bare minimum standards of protection across the board, which many countries already implement to great effect.

tourmalinetaco

3 hours ago

I’ve never gotten a job via LinkedIn, and neither has my wife. We both got our entire job history due to connections already formed through college. In fact I can’t name a single genuine offer that came from LinkedIn/Indeed, let alone that depended on me having an account. People have been getting great paying jobs for almost the entirety of industrialized society without LinkedIn. Saying “don’t interact” with LinkedIn, especially if you disagree with their “you are the product” mentality, is a fairly realistic stance.

CaptainFever

2 hours ago

> Free exchange of information is being able to access a textbook at the library, not a corporate behemoth vacuuming people's personal information so they can sell them to the highest bidder to put you under surveillance the next time you attempt to switch a job or send you more ads. Betterment of humanity? Blink twice if a LinkedIn PR person is holding you at gunpoint

This sort of language is unproductive and causes further division. It's just buzzwords hoping to evoke a certain emotion in the reader. I'm being genuine when I say the following:

> corporate behemoth

Why is this bad? (Steelman: it isn't bad by itself, but it makes the other things worse.)

> vacuuming

Evokes a certain image, but it is not true. It is copied.

> personal information

True, but note that it is public in this case. Why is this bad? What's so special about personal information (I'm interpreting this as PII specifically)? (Steelman: it can be used to track you; see "under surveillance the next time you attempt to switch a job")

> sell them to the highest bidder

Why is this bad? (Steelman: it feels unfair, to have contributed something without compensation; Counterpoint: access to LinkedIn itself is your compensation, such fairness is a subjective feeling, compensation is for example not needed if you reuse GPL code in a commercial context)

> under surveillance the next time you attempt to switch a job

Is this true? If this is true, I can see why LinkedIn AI would be bad, but only for this specifically. If this becomes false, then it's no longer bad. I doubt it is true, however, since this is not generative AI, which they're likely focusing on.

> send you more ads

This has nothing to do with generative AI, which I assume we're talking about.

> Betterment of humanity? Blink twice if a LinkedIn PR person is holding you at gunpoint

Not a useful statement.

csallen

5 hours ago

> not a corporate behemoth vacuuming people's personal information so they can sell them to the highest bidder to put you under surveillance the next time you attempt to switch a job or send you more ads

I genuinely don't see what the problem is.

I rarely post updates on LinkedIn. When I do, they're updates that are intended to be broadcast to the public. If some execs at LinkedIn are smart enough to find a way to profit off the back of that, why should I be upset about that? Why are you upset about it?

tourmalinetaco

3 hours ago

Because they somehow thought a free service was there to benefit them, and not generate revenue.

AStonesThrow

6 hours ago

Well, look at it this way: you gave stuff to LinkedIn.

Whatever their terms say, they're storing your stuff, they are serving your stuff, and they've reserved the right to extract value from your stuff in perpetuity, according to your agreements when you signed up, when you posted, and when they updated. Doesn't matter about your privacy settings, because it all happened on LI.

I mean, you can delete the stuff you posted if you don't want future AIs trained? Delete your whole account if you didn't like LinkedIn messing with it?

(I could likewise say this about MS Windows, Apples or anything: if you don't want someone to have your stuff, give it to someone else, or don't give at all?)

But in the end, you voluntarily gave it to them, because it was free, but you are the product, and not the artist.

gomerspiles

5 hours ago

Microsoft probably owns the physical media from before LinkedIn was acquired so by your physical ownership logic they can keep using all the data you have "deleted" and ignore your new opt outs on all those backups..

The point of making legislation is to have things to enforce at times like buy outs to say things there is no reasonable way to enforce our expectation that our 2FA numbers are not abused by this new buyer so the buyout can not continue.

Maybe you don't need a job social network, but presuming you do you have no way of knowing what org will own the physical media of the one you pick today unless it is in a country with competence, I.e. not the US.

ManBeardPc

6 hours ago

I partially agree, you agree to the terms of service. However one should also not forget that LinkedIn is quite dominant and a very big player. For many businesses it is simply not an option to not be on their platform, unless they can afford to lose potential customers and employees.

Rules change for monopolies and oligopolies, and for a good reason IMHO. LinkedIn belongs to Microsoft, so does GitHub. Don’t forget Windows, Azure, Office, Visual Studio and a long list of other products. They want to take your data from all possible sources and if you just point to the TOS alone this would be totally valid. But we have to look at the bigger picture and already do so in other areas, for example GDPR.

mystified5016

7 hours ago

Yeah, everyone should be allowed to cut down trees on public property for firewood, or dump their trash in public parks!

If they didn't want these resources to be exploited, they shouldn't make them publicly accessible!

zaptrem

7 hours ago

Cutting down a tree implies the tree is no longer there and cannot be used by others. In this case, the content is still there, unaltered.

hn_throwaway_99

6 hours ago

This is probably the worst analogy I've read this year.

gdhkgdhkvff

6 hours ago

Are we back to the “you wouldn’t download a car” pointof things?

Kim_Bruning

7 hours ago

Of course this then later leads to: "Linkedin AI has non-European bias"

I'm of two minds.

makeitdouble

2 hours ago

This would be a bigger issue if Linkedin cared a lot about EU users in the first place.

If tomorrow a user facing feature needed to be radically different between US and EU users, I think they'd also delay EU rollout until it reaches an actionable priority, so it's kinda par for the course.

smdyc1

6 hours ago

Exactly what i was thinking.

Brajeshwar

an hour ago

It might sound naive, but how does LinkedIn confirm and be sure that someone is a European user?

wodenokoto

an hour ago

What is a European user anyway.

Someone who created their account from EU IP-address, someone who says they live in EU, someone who says the work from a company (division) based in EU?

left-struck

3 hours ago

I wonder how this works for Europeans abroad. More to the point, as an Australian can I trick these tech companies into thinking I’m a European because my government won’t protect me.

zmmmmm

2 hours ago

I know Europeans will probably be all high fiving each other and congratulating themselves on how much better their regulatory environment is.

But consider the other side of this coin : one of the biggest risks identified for AI is bias in training sets and there are actual demands that companies explicitly make their training sets as inclusive as possible to incorporate all cultures, genders, etc etc.

So if Europeans find out they are being excluded from job opportunities later on because employers are using AI tools within LinkedIn to process candidates and it simply doesn't understand the background of European candidates - will they be upset? Will they be demanding LinkedIn be fined for not including Europeans in the training set?

I am very curious how all this will play out long term as these competing tensions get worked through.

edelbitter

16 minutes ago

Those "demands" for inclusive training sets are a spin attempt. And a bad one at that: It does not even address the main problem. If I refuse to be judged by a person trying to evade legal review, then that situation does not improve once they promises to make their still-hidden thought process at least as biased as the regional internet spam variety plus a few fan fiction texts for which they violated my copyrights.

The whole idea of "you cannot sue me for my discriminatory practices, because I colluded with AI company X to hide the process" is a net negative. It does not matter which side of the coin is up, when I have to pay for it.

tempaccount420

2 hours ago

Why can't they get that training data in another, legal way?

Chris_Newton

3 hours ago

In the UK, I found the relevant setting was present (and had been turned on) for my profile when this came to my attention last week. Curiously, I can no longer find that setting now.

Given the UK’s privacy and data protection environment is still largely the same as the EU’s, I wonder whether this was an oversight.

JSDevOps

7 hours ago

How fucked In the head do you have to be to train ANY AI on LinkedIn Data.

yarg

7 hours ago

It could be used for all sorts of things:

    You could use it to indicate the fit between employees and companies;
    You could use it to detect lies and exaggerations in CVs;
    You could use it to estimate when employees are likely to be considering seeking new opportunities.
There's significant potential for business relevant applications.

bastawhiz

7 hours ago

I'm looking forward to getting fired because my employer thinks I'm considering new opportunities because they used LinkedIn AI

yarg

7 hours ago

That's cool, but when decent companies think that legitimately useful people are considering resigning they often don't fire but instead offer a raise.

chrsw

7 hours ago

Don't worry, people are hard at work making sure these AI systems are "aligned".

wkat4242

4 hours ago

But linkedin is far from accurate information. It's full of hollow mindless corporate PR and trumped up CVs.

Brajeshwar

an hour ago

Unfortunately, the bitter news is that LinkedIn works for 98.42% of people.

bqmjjx0kac

7 hours ago

I think it depends on what your objective is. Like if you want to simulate the LinkedIn experience, it's natural to train on LinkedIn data.

Havoc

5 hours ago

HR and marketing will love it.

Make of that what you will

playingalong

7 hours ago

Well, not a general purpose one, but...

knowing LI doesn't have any NSFW content, is full of marketing content (both corporate marketing and self boasting individuals), tends to prefer positive signals (all projects succeed, etc.), is mostly done in English, and so on...

... There is clearly a market for text generation in this language bubble. Think of all the internal and external communication in your $BigCorp. That has immediate use not only in marketing, but also HR, recruitment, company policing, etc. Your next company town hall can be prepared and led (!) by this thing.

bastawhiz

7 hours ago

Half of LinkedIn posts are already written by chatgpt, you don't need a model trained on the output of another model

jart

6 hours ago

You just described most open source models.

artursapek

7 hours ago

maybe someone needs an AI that generates smug self-congratulatory word salad

yarg

7 hours ago

No, but the ability to probabilistically detect it could be used to build useful filtering and prioritisation functions.

gedy

7 hours ago

Training is one thing, but that feature to have AI help you with your LI posts seems psychotic. Generic generated slop for what exactly.

amarcheschi

7 hours ago

Yup, I noticed this a few days ago in some subreddit like /r/assholedesign, I think a few months ago we had a similar feature on instagram and perhaps fb, I don't know if it's still active in EU on those meta products

ein0p

4 hours ago

I wonder how they use US data too. LinkedIn is so cringe, the value of its data in the mix is probably negative.

ilrwbwrkhv

7 hours ago

LinkedIn is the bottom of the barrel of the labour pool. Wonder why even train the data with any of them.

bastard_op

7 hours ago

Just imagine if we had the same privacy protections as the EU in the US.

antegamisou

6 hours ago

Well one can't have everything.

The average webdev in many countries of Europe earns pennies and cost of living being still abysmal. Meanwhile one can only be breathing in the USA with a CS degree and easily make quite a lot, more than enough to get by.

wkat4242

4 hours ago

Development makes decent money here. Not the 250k$ you'd get in silicon valley but the costs of living are also way lower here. It's definitely one of the better classes of jobs.

yazzku

7 hours ago

Fuck LinkedIn. They should have already been sued for their exploitation of people's identities a long time ago.

cyanydeez

7 hours ago

Imagine an AI that's only allowed to mine the data of people to stupid to elect representatives that protect their privacy.