alt Hacker NewsIf you don’t like the way your data is used to train AI models, you can’t currently move your data to a non-AI service while still contributing to and using iNat data, even if such a service existed. But you should be able to do that.
100x yes! I was disgusted to learn that while the very non-profit status iNaturalist enjoys demands that they share their output, the organization thinks keeping its models secret is legitimate. https://github.com/inaturalist/inatVisionAPI No, it isn't. I am a big contributor to iNaturalist and will be sharing my concerns at the next local meeting. I tried to raise the question through the forums and was censored.
Frankly, it seems to me that iNaturalist is to open science as Android is to open source. That is to say in name only, not in spirit, because "legalese" and "market position" and "lack of enforcement". Not surprised to learn Google's money is assisting with corrupting them.
If you contribute to iNaturalist, COMPLAIN. If you want to start a class action, count me in.
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100% agree, I am still shocked that the models are not open sourced. It's the data from the community and I feel it goes very much against the spirit of the community to keep the machine learning part, which is very central to the app, so secret.
Do you have a copy of what you posted that was censored? I assume you mean censored on the iNat forum.
Asking for their models to be open and banning AI are two different things. AI is used throughout the scientific world and banning it would be immensely damaging. Putting aside consumer use cases, being able to do large scale analysis or search via machine learning is incredibly important to various fields of science.