This is basically what Google did when they pioneered the model of surveillance capitalism (see, e.g., The Age of Surveillance Capitalism).

Google simply provided an index on top of an existing library. Of course, a librarian has no value if he has no books to index over! But it's also worth noting that the Google "librarian" also leveraged the existing "social" structure of the internet: their core contribution (page rank) was a clever, efficient mechanism to extract the latent value in the pre-existing link structure of the internet. This structure (much like the pages themselves) had been curated by actual humans. Undoubtedly page rank was clever, but it was worthless without the existing websites (books) and the existing indexing information (the pre-existing, crowdsourced librarian work). Nonetheless, they successfully monetized it.

AI companies are even worse in the sense that initially Google was still sending traffic to the original webpages. (Until they didn't - https://www.eater.com/2017/9/12/16294380/yelp-google-scrapin...). So yes, the AI companies have even more thoroughly stolen the collective work of humanity than Google did.

> imagine stealing tons of content from every source on earth and then running ads on it

This has effectively been Google’s business for decades. Not in the same form, but the concept is the same.

>It's the only way to get all the necessary training data.

That... does not follow. The information you're getting with this is what sites a user visits. That's creepy and valuable for advertising purposes, but is hardly the type of that that's going to bring about ASI, which is what all the AI labs are working towards. That's why they're hiring data annotators (sometimes with masters or phds) to get training data.

> The entire ad tech industry may truly be an intelligence agency front. The lengths they go to track individuals is quite alarming.

Never attribute to malice what can be explained as greed.

The quiet part you rarely hear is that advertising is a smoke and mirror industry akin to throwing darts at a wall. The idea of "homing darts" that stick the target a percentage more of the time would be very attractive in this analogy.

Tech turns advertising from mostly a buckshot spread into something that kinda sounds like something solid and real ("Look, numbers! CTR! CPC! KPI! Our ad product WORKS! Paying customers for your business, guaranteed!")

Ad budgets almost never correlate with actual performance.[0] We're all just lying to ourselves that this business model is performing as expected, and I don't think a reckoning is that far off.

0. https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/01/02/when-bi...

So, knee-jerk-down-voter, what is it about what I said here which irked you so much that you just had to press that irksome button again? Or is it just because I happen to have said something else sometime earlier which makes you obligated by doctrine to down-vote whatever else I write? Let us know. Do you work in ad-tech? Don't you like the (ab)use of the Churchill quote? Is it the suggestion that it might be needed in relation to ChatGPT et. al. sometime in the future? Enlighten us, don't just attempt to get a dissenting opinion greyed out. That is for cowards, don't hide behind that button, don't be a craving coward, don't be a sheep. This is, after all, a discussion board, not some online likes competition where you get brownie points for getting rid of dissenters.

...or maybe it is the latter for some, maybe it is a way for some to raise their status among their co-religionists?

Comrade Knee-Jerk, what did you do for the cause today? Answer me!

Somewhere among the crowd a figure emerges, clearly nervous. He tries to speak but starts stammering, stops and tries again. What is he afraid of?

- Oh Great Leader, today I did the work to banish one of the hated dissenters from the internets by voting down his malign words so that no others may be subjected to anything but the Desired Narrative.

Is that all you did, Comrade Knee-Jerk? Is that how you claim your worth for the Great Cause? I am dissapointed, Comrade Knee-Jerk.

- Oh Great Leader, I will do better, I will educate myself, I will do my part to eradicate dissent from the internets for the Great Cause, I p...p....promise!

I do not like to be disappointed again, Comrade Knee-Jerk! I will have to think over your position, whether you are truly committed to the Great Cause. Now hide yourself. Comrade Zlither, what did you do for the cause today? Answer me!