The owner of the social network Twitter, Elon Musk, announced this Saturday a temporary measure to limit the number of tweets -or status messages published by other accounts- that a user can view. He explained that the measure aims to limit the use that generative artificial intelligence makes of its social network services. The decision is controversial.
First modification:
With his characteristic style of using his personal Twitter account -the social network he owns- to make announcements, Elon Musk warned that he will now limit the number of tweets or trills that a user, whether paid or not, can view per day.
He explained that the measure, which would be temporary, was taken “to deal with the extreme levels of data extraction and manipulation of the system.”
“Sorry, you have reached the query frequency limit. Please wait a few minutes and try again” That is the message that thousands of users have experienced since July 1, in what seemed to be a crash in the platform’s services.
To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:
– Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
– Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
– New unverified accounts to 300/day— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023
However, in this tweet Musk pointed out the reason and that for verified (or paid) accounts you can consult up to 6,000 tweets per day; for unverified accounts (or free to use, without payment) the number drops to 600 and for new, unverified accounts, the highest restriction applies: 300 tweets per day.
The official reason given by the owner of Twitter is that artificial intelligence (AI) companies, such as OpenAI, use the platform to analyze and feed generative capacity systems.
In any case, in the face of the reaction of millions of followers of the network, at dawn on July 2, Musk moderated his initial message, assuring that it was an “exercise in irony” and extended the limits to 10,000 tweets for verified accounts; 1,000, in unverified; and 500 on new unverified accounts.
Musk and his reluctance to AI, a legitimate concern?
The billionaire and also co-founder of companies such as Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company has criticized the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
In fact, in March 2023, Musk and more than a thousand technology experts, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, signed an open letter calling for an “imminent pause” on the development of “more powerful” AI. ” than GPT-4, from OpenAI.
However, the South African businessman co-founded with Sam Altman, current CEO of OpenIA, the company that operates ChatGPT. According to NY Timesthe million-dollar donations to create this company were made with the aim of mitigating the risks that only technological giants such as Google or Microsoft would have access to the development of this technology.
For this reason it was proposed that the operation of the company would be “open innovation” so that everyone had access to the developments. However, Elon Musk resigned from this, according to the NYTimes, due to growing conflicts of interest related to his other business activities.
What is interesting is that despite his publicly expressed criticism, his company’s cars use AI technology, mainly to develop accident prevention patterns in autonomous vehicles, which according to the New York newspaper have not been without controversy given the accident. that generated a vehicle Tesla, Model Y, in November 2022 in China, which killed two people.
Another theory presents that Musk would be interested in entering the race for the development of artificial intelligence, as revealed by the The Wall Street Journalbecause last April the billionaire registered a company in the state of Nevada under the name of X.AI.
One purchase, a thousand controversies
Since the businessman acquired Twitter, controversies have surrounded the ‘blue bird’. In October 2022, he tried to reverse the purchase agreement, citing the presence of numerous accounts. bots or managed automatically to mimic human behavior.
Then he restored the account of Donald Trump and other personalities accused of having hate speech such as comedian Theo Von, with whom he interacts from his personal account; or comedian Kathy Griffin and actor Jordan Peterson.
It also readjusted Twitter’s verification policies so that those interested must pay an amount. What caused disgust among users at the time.
Also, some media such as npr National Public Radio, in the United States, and the BBCin the UK, were labeled by Twitter as “government-funded media” or media funded by the government, a fact that also aroused the sensitivities of these media.
With AP, EFE and international media
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