Words: the new data commodity

Culture as an industry is nothing new. Neither is the notion that data is ‘the new oil’. With the popularity of AI chatbots and large language models, we’re starting a new chapter of it through access to and the commodification of words. Words have become another type of data commodity that is extracted for profit. One of the problems this creates is that words are being commodified without the consent of users or their platforms. So, what will this mean for the large language model (LLM) industry? Commodifying language in this way is new and needs discussion more so than whether chat-based platforms are good at producing accurate semantics, syntax and whether the language ‘feels human’. If companies commodify decades of conversations in online forums without users’ informed consent for the benefit of private companies, then we’re opening another can of worms around AI ethics, consent, privacy, and data. I don’t want to talk about semantics, syntax, or anything specifically linguistic. Let’s instead talk about the emerging problem of language as data and the economy around access to it and what I think will be industry trends that we’ll observe. <a href="https://uxdesign.cc/words-the-new-data-commodity-5832634b723c">Learn More</a>