Silicon Valley Cities hit With Request for Residents’ Emails to Train AI
San Jose Spotlight reports "Mountain View-based company GovernmentGPT filed 90 California Public Records Act requests with multiple cities across the Bay Area, for resident emails received by cities’ mayor, councilmembers and city clerks."
Brian Green, Ethics Center director of technology ethics, said AIs need lots of data to train off of, so it’s possible that the company is intending to sell the data rather than build the AI tool itself.
Green said this situation is likely outside the scope of the California Public Records Act and federal Freedom of Information Act, as the writers of those laws didn’t conceive of public records being used in this way.
“That’s not what those emails were intended for in the first place,” Green told San José Spotlight. “These are legally accessible but that doesn’t mean they should have access to them.”
Brian Green, director, technology ethics, quoted by San Jose Spotlight.