posted in Technology

Google buys Spirit Airlines data for AI training for just $10 million — purchase includes hundreds of millions of emails, Microsoft Teams chats, billions of flight pricing records, and anonymized pass

www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/google-buys-spirit-airlines-data-for-ai-training-for-just-usd10-million-purchase-includes-hundreds-of-millions-of-emails-microsoft-teams-chats-billions-of-flight-pricing-records-and-anonymized-passenger-records
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Replying to an earlier post

Court records reveal that the Google purchase includes 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams chats, 7.2 billion records for competitors’ flights, 7.5 billion passenger transaction records from 2008, and more than 175,000 employee records from 1986. Aside from this, the company will also get information on revenue, aircraft operations, employee productivity records, audits and fraud, marketing campaigns, human resources records, project management, and pricing curve data, among others.

This could be a cause of concern for anyone who’s ever transacted with the airline, either as a customer, employee, contractor, or even investor, especially as AI is known for its privacy problems.

Add it to the list of reasons to always use email aliases as well as unique passwords and phone numbers!

Replying to @⁨RadicalRebel@sh.itjust.works⁩

And never work for any company ever, apparently.

If my place of business goes bankrupt, is Google going to get access to my employment records? The memes I share in work chats? My disciplinary record? My bank account details I used for direct deposit?

If someone puts that they worked at Spirit on a resume, what is the likelihood that job openings will start to query these things to see how far they can lowball someone on wages, or whether they’re a “difficult” employee? This is shit that runs the risk of following someone for life.

Replying to an earlier post

These are becoming absurd. Like what the fuck is the benefit of this training data? Now the Gemini can statistically generate new ways to euphemistically refer to poor people?

Or Amazon scraping the “data” out of Twitch streams. I barely see the appeal of watching someone elese play a game. I mean, at least they’re a real person I can conceivably pester with chat messages. Why would I watch a fake person play a game that doesn’t exist?

Replying to an earlier post

GDPR should in theory prohibit them from putting it for sale in the first place in a bankruptcy scenario, but if they are bound to disappear, there’s no one to go after so idk…

I’m mentioning European regulations in a post about an American airline company just because you said any, and yeah, I’m bound to disagree there.

In any case, I already didn’t trust any American company since they can be subpoenaed and they are bound by law to give all the data to the government, which looks as or more evil than the general evil American company rn.

Replying to an earlier post

But it’s not the company itself putting those assets up for sale. It’s the court-approved or court-appointed bankruptcy trustee of that company, executing transactions approved by the court. That’s why bankruptcy has to go through court, but it also provides a level of immunity (commonly called “exculpation” in bankruptcy cases) to the individuals actually doing the things ordered by the court.

If it’s illegal to do, a court shouldn’t be ordering it, so the affected people should have to fight the court order before it happens. But it’s not illegal to sell anonymized user data like this, and not illegal to sell employee work-related data, either, in the U.S.