ANPThe KB national library in The Hague
NOS News•today, 9:04 PM•Adjusted today, 9:34 PM
The KB national library in The Hague is taking measures against commercial companies that use its collection without permission to train artificial intelligence.
The library is in the process of digitizing its collection of books, newspapers and other texts. Commercial companies, like the company behind ChatGPT, use those resources to train artificial intelligence (AI). “The texts of the KB national library have been digitized in high quality, so they are very interesting for those companies,” says library board member Martijn Kleppe in the radio program News and Co.
The national library believes it is not ethically responsible for commercial companies to simply use the texts. Some companies do not respect copyright and source attribution, the library said.
Debate about use of data
Many publications in the collection are still under copyright, which means that the rights still belong to the creators. The library has made agreements with the makers for the use of those texts, says Kleppe.
But use by commercial companies does not fall within those agreements. “We especially want to have a debate and start an ethical conversation about how the data can and cannot be used.”
Artificial intelligence, abbreviated AI in English, is an umbrella term for all kinds of tasks that computers perform that normally require human intelligence. It is good at recognizing patterns and analyzing situations. The applications vary enormously: from recommendations on your streaming account, driving self-driving cars to coming up with solutions to combat climate change.
The library will adjust the general terms and conditions and carry out a technical intervention so that commercial companies can no longer use the data automatically on a large scale.
The library believes it is important that private individuals can continue to use the texts, says Kleppe. “The library has been collecting everything that has been published in the Netherlands for 225 years. Over the past 20 years we have been digitizing that collection, so that people can read a newspaper from 1944 at home behind their computer, for example.”
According to Kleppe, the library’s policy remains focused on providing access to data as openly as possible. “People who want to do their own research into, for example, their family history can simply continue to view the data.”
2024-01-12 20:04:12
#Royal #Library #restricts #access #collections #commercial
