Data Colonialism and Data Sets | Hacker News Reader

Data Colonialism and Data Sets

harvardlawreview.org

18 pointshhs8 comments

While the article raises some interesting issues, giving some interesting terminology to test, they are hidden in a wall of regurgitated textual background that ironically would fit what I would expect from an AI generated text. Is this a piece sponsored by Getty? It reads like it.

> AI generated text.

> It reads like it.

One could make this argument about any text.

And please note this is a blog piece, and there is no disclosure that notes it is sponsored by anyone.

> Only after resources have been distributed along familiar lines of gender and race do discussions of equality enter the scene. [...] The colonization of data to generate training sets resembles a familiar plot in our world. Pioneers have once again sailed into the horizons, hoarding wealth and disregarding potential claims to property that don’t fit within the dominant legal system.

Isn't this analogy backwards, and the "hoarders" should be existing copyright behemoths (that even had a hand in writing copyright law), who currently hold the most resources? The AI companies that scrape the data aren't depriving anyone of that data. Complaining that "after resources have been distributed, do discussions of equality enter the scene" makes no sense - the data will still be there, for anyone else to train on it.

It doesn’t help that “data colonialism” is nonsensical as a concept but nevertheless sounds sexy and edgy. I mean, everyone (sane) is against colonialism as we now understand that set of practices/beliefs. So now they’re safely and nicely positioned to write a few tens of thousands of additional words theorizing the decolonization of data and how we should have a data praxis that is consciously postcolonial. That there’s real law review publication potential!

I see know what you mean and agree (and upvoted) but man I can’t think of anything as devoid of sex appeal as these fields that hyperventilate endlessly about metaphorical “colonialism”, metaphorical “violence”, and so forth.

I mean, even somewhat more staid fields like history too comes to trendiness. For about 15 years, there was an emphasis on trying to explain basically everything through the lens of empire. And that made the concept of empire so expansive that it became empty and lost all explanatory value. But it was the hot topic that got you a book published.

Yeah, I agree. But “colonialism” is not just pervasive in one field—it’s everywhere and it (like so many “activist” terms) have expanded so broadly that in many cases it doesn’t seem to mean anything apart from “really bad, but in some really vague indiscernible way”. It’s valid jargon more often than not.

This almost seems like satire:

Harvard writing an article on behalf of Getty talking about unfair distribution of resources.

Harvard literally benefited from colonialism. Getty is prime example number one of an early “land grab” with regard to copyrighted images.

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