Partner with IWF upfront, not when problem arise! LAION knew about the risks of illegal content (e.g. child abuse) being in their dataset. It would have been sensible to partner with professional organizations like IWF to check files *before* publishing the dataset.
POLICY
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Fair Use Licensing for AI Datasets: Legal Compliance Strategy
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Use an appropriate license compatible with Fair Use. LAION's creation of the dataset required one or more Copyright Exceptions with strict terms. Picking a license that respects the terms of these exceptions would reduce legal risk significantly, and show good faith.
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LAION criticized for partnering with questionable data hosting site
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Don't partner with dubious websites to host files! LAION shouldn't have requested TheEye, a questionable "archival" website, to host their data in order for them to link to it! Maybe instead get approval from platforms like HF so they share legal responsibility for hosting.
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Copyright Compliance: LAION Must Prove File Deletion Records
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Publish code & logs upfront show files were deleted. Complying with Copyright exceptions means the burden of proof is on LAION to show they qualify. They're required to delete the files so keeping records of this (or publishing them upfront) could help avoid court.
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LAION Should Disclose User Agent Strings and IP Addresses
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Announce user agent and IP addresses upfront. It's industry-standard for search engines to disclose their User Agent strings before starting operations, and also a list of IP addresses doing the crawling. LAION could have done this in a public manner upfront.
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LAION Dataset Compliance: Robots.txt Verification Ethics
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Check opt-out themselves! LAION relies on the fact that CommonCrawl allegedly checked opt-out, but the legal defense "our upstream provider is compliant so we don't need to be" isn't strong. Instead, LAION could have checked robots.txt themselves when creating the dataset.
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Software Tool Recommendations for Robots.txt Compliance Checking
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Recommend software that checks robots.txt. One of LAION's members built img2dataset, which does not check robots.txt. It would be a stronger legal argument if this recommended tool did check at least robots.txt now, even if better forms of opt-out are added later.
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LAION-5B Legal Compliance: Dataset Challenges and Solutions
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Legal uncertainty is all around the AI industry, in particular the LAION-5B dataset. Despite the RELAION update, there are still many problems to be addressed… (My peer review follows.) Here's what LAION could have done to make their dataset more legal and more certain!
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AI Act: First Official Meeting of European AI Committee
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[#Article] AI Act: First Official Meeting of the European Artificial Intelligence Committee
https://actuia.com/actualite/ai-act-premiere-reunion-officielle-du-comite-europeen-de-lintelligence-artificielle/
… #AI #artificialintelligence -
Managing AI Risks in the Workplace for Employers
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Navigating AI Risks for Employers Employers, navigate the AI minefield. Address privacy and data security, AI bias, job displacement, and regulatory compliance. Develop strategies to manage AI effectively and ensure ethical and responsible AI use in your organization.