siva7 a day ago | next |

Somehow i feel sad for this AI model. All the others are trained on authentic content and this boy gets socialised on the most shallow content imaginable. Poor, socially awkward AI.

raffraffraff a day ago | root | parent | next |

Why on earth would you train AI on that? In the social media world it's already the closest thing resembling boring, unreadable machine generated content.

No matter what you ask it, it'll brag about what a great job it's doing answering you, announce that it's having a baby, then tell everybody that it's being let go because there are better AI. It'll thank a few key people who it worked with, and tell you that it's actually thrilled with this opportunity to take a break from answering your question, and will spend more time on its old hobby of being an online resume.

theiz a day ago | root | parent | next |

Because there is a huge market for resume builders and career guidance where AI can play a role. Using LinkedIn you can measure success and network performance and correlate that to the resume and posted content.

vidarh 14 hours ago | root | parent | next |

There's also real money in writing LinkedIn content that is believable enough for "influencers" to post. I'm currently contracting, and post on LinkedIn at least once a day, and I've added ~1k+ followers in the last month, but it takes effort. Meanwhile, those posts have gotten me work, and so if it was feasible for me to outsource it in a reputationally safe way, I'd consider it.

For me the bar for "reputationally safe" is really high because my market (cynical tech CTO's etc. don't respond well to things that sounds like ChatGPT) and so I don't expect to any time soon, but for many others that bar is pretty low as long as it's good enough for LinkedIn's algorithm to give it impressions.

itsoktocry 8 hours ago | root | parent | next |

>I'm currently contracting, and post on LinkedIn at least once a day, and I've added ~1k+ followers in the last month, but it takes effort. Meanwhile, those posts have gotten me work, and so if it was feasible for me to outsource it in a reputationally safe way, I'd consider it.

If you need to pay the bills and this helps, good for you.

But boy howdy does this sound terrible. It's amazing to me that there are people out there who take anything on LinkedIn seriously. I mean, it's not like the posts are inherently bad, but the entire point of the site is to "influence" and sell to each other. It's horrible. If I were looking for talent, it'd probably be the last site I'd use.

sbarre 8 hours ago | root | parent |

Are you ok to accept that you're probably an outlier?

Because while I have kind of the same opinion as you, I also know lots of (good and generally smart) people who say they learn a ton of useful work-related stuff from reading LinkedIn posts.

Not everyone is at the same point in their career, or has the same level of knowledge and confidence in their craft or job position. For some folks, reading thoughts and writings from more senior people can actually be beneficial..

And yes there's a lot of platitudes and BS on LinkedIn, but some people do put real effort into sharing actually useful information as well.

Terretta 7 hours ago | root | parent |

> people who say they learn a ton of useful work-related stuff from reading LinkedIn posts

I suspect this says more about what the reader doesn't know and their mastery of info self-exposure than it says about the contentfulness of LinkedIn posts*.

* Not counting content originating elsewhere re-posted on or linked to from LinkedIn.

sbarre 4 hours ago | root | parent |

So all LinkedIn posts are of the same quality then? Would you also say that all HN comments are of the same quality too? You're painting with an awfully big brush.

Look I get it, there's a lot of crap on LinkedIn for sure, and it's pretty obvious this crowd is generally against "influencers".. I also see no value in them generally speaking.

But it's reductive, and inaccurate, to say that there's zero value across the board on there and that every post is low-value influencer-spam. Not everyone is trying to build an audience or push their newsletter.

Some people just want to share their knowledge and interact with their professional peers, and for better or worse LinkedIn is the most known place to do that..

You could say the same thing about this place. Why are we all here?

Terretta 3 hours ago | root | parent |

> You could say the same thing about this place. Why are we all here?

Not to preen or self-promote or "network". Most here are anonymous.

Both of us use names, and you have the meethn and I have a "we are hiring" ... Still, I don't think either of us is here just to meet people or just to hire. My profile has only said that for a couple of the more than a decade I've been here.

sbarre 39 minutes ago | root | parent |

You also have your LinkedIn CV posted on your profile. ;-)

Anyways, I feel like we've gotten off-track.. Sounds like we both agree that all the brand-builders and influencers on LinkedIn provide dubious value.

But I still think there is other value on LinkedIn from people who just want to connect and discuss work topics with peers or other professionals in their circle.

I've personally had some good discussions, much like I've had on here, in comment threads on LinkedIn.. Definitely not as much as HN, but if you're smart about the content you engage with (like any other social network) then it can still be useful and rewarding.

soco 11 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

I don't think anybody said influencers don't put effort in it. The only argument is that the added value by influencers is zero, be it on Instagram or LinkedIn, so if AI can take that kind of job the net loss is also zero. Of course of course there's an audience for influencers, like there was an audience at Tupperware shows, but they'll be happy to move on to the next fad so again zero loss.

selimnairb 9 hours ago | root | parent |

Once again, AI will automate checkboxing tasks—-things that some people think some other people value so it has to be done even though basically no on values it so no one wants to do the soulless task.

bostik 14 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Anecdotally, I think a fair chunk of writing CVs (and to a smaller degree, cover letters) is already outsourced. Adding an AI to the mix will only make things worse.

I have seen a number of CVs over the past few months that fall into two eye-rolling categories. First, those that have the same set of skills in the exact same order, and routinely sport identical expressions. Over time I've come to associate them with low-grade content farms. Second, a smaller set of exceptionally polished ones that feel unique and really want me to interview the candidate. These candidates will then utterly bomb in the interview, to the point where I'm often asking myself whose CV it was they had submitted.

Signal-to-noise ratio is tending towards zero.

itsoktocry 8 hours ago | root | parent |

>Anecdotally, I think a fair chunk of writing CVs (and to a smaller degree, cover letters) is already outsourced. Adding an AI to the mix will only make things worse.

This is why "I've submitted 1000 resumes in 3 weeks and can't get an interview!" posts on social media are rampant.

cyanydeez 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

I'm guessing the real money linked in wants is in the hiring and firing, B2B. Now, every resume gets answered and your first interaction with a company is a poorly scripted AI who goes from manic enthusiasm to depressingly rote in the actual job requirements and probably will still ghost you and continue the imbalance of application effort vs employer response.

The converse will be true, but the price of AI will just make poor people have to suffer even more

Just the long march of wealth inequality and it's time sucking capitalism.

BobbyJo 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

> the imbalance of application effort vs employer response.

A recent issue in the job application realm is AI application bots that will apply to 100's of jobs on your behalf, which is the opposite problem. Seems like both sides are racing to make applications as useless as possible as quickly as possible.

If you don't have a network, good luck in the future.

vidarh 14 hours ago | root | parent |

We're heading for the 1990's vision of agents negotiating on our behalf, except less exchange of reliable data and more attempts at bullshitting each other.

klyrs 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Can't wait 'til it gets raunchy in everybody's DMs unprompted, just like the training data...

FridgeSeal 15 hours ago | root | parent |

I don’t know why you’re downvoted here, it’s pretty well known there’s a huge bunch of people trying to pick up using LinkedIn DM’s, for whatever reason.

vidarh 14 hours ago | root | parent |

I think they've "fixed" (read: hidden) this better, but it used to be the case that if you looked at the LinkedIn profile of an above average attractive woman, the sidebar used to show profiles people had also looked at and it would invariably almost only profiles of other women with above average attractive profile pictures. While needless to say it was a lot more varied for men. It was just very blatantly showcasing that a lot of people were looking at profiles for reasons that were not so professional. Now the sidebar is a mix of other features, and I wonder if that was because it was easier to do that than "clean up" the profile views.

j4coh 14 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Yesterday I was walking to an interview. There was a starving dog on the road. I stopped to feed him & missed the interview. The next day I got a call asking to come in to do the interview. I was surprised, but I went. Then the interviewer came in. He was the dog.

will-burner 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

An LLM trained on LinkedIn posts would be good for comedic purposes if nothing else. It's unintentional comedy score would be extremely high. Would love to see a conversation between an LLM trained on LinkedIn posts and an LLM trained on X/Twitter posts.

FridgeSeal 15 hours ago | root | parent |

It’d be like a high-school argument between the edgy kid, and the kid that would wear suits and bring a briefcase. Comical, pointless and everyone else wants both of them to be quiet after about 10 minutes.

wnc3141 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

LinkedIn strikes me as the adult equivalent of self conscious school kids trying to hold a conversation among themselves, each self consciously trying to sound cool.

throwanem a day ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Are you kidding? If any model ever makes the x-risk folks' nightmares come true, it'll be this one.

btown a day ago | root | parent |

Vedal987 should work with LinkedIn to get access to this data, fine-tune Evil Neuro on LinkedIn posts, then have her read through business school case studies and offer advice.

It would be content so unhinged, it would remove the need for management consulting as an industry - companies could simply type their problems in chat and do the exact opposite of what Evil LinkedIn Neuro suggests!

(for the uninitiated: https://www.youtube.com/@Neurosama & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-sama)

Spooky23 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

I, for one, am humbled that LinkedIn AI has selected my content to model further engagement with other stakeholders.

I learned this while considering watching a video from MIT. Accordingly, I’m adding “AI Training Coordinator — MIT Inspired” to my skills.

0xEF 11 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Personally, I think it will offer valuable new insight on KPIs and challenges on conventional wisdom, because we certainly need more of that. Maybe throw in some gushing over how great a seminar was or a heart-warming story that renews my faith in capitalism.

God, I hope the poor thing never achieves consciousness. It will be like the butter-passing robot from Rick & Morty.

m463 a day ago | root | parent | prev | next |

When you said this somehow I thought of training an art ai on the giant state sponsored monuments of the world.

On linkedin your next resume will have the impact of mount rushmore, sitting lincoln or a soviet era workers monument. (The thinker will be censored out because of nudity) :)

mnky9800n 10 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

What if he overcomes the insecurities of the daily "founders don't take vacations" posters yet maintains their confidence and bravado? He will become unstoppable.

peppertree a day ago | prev | next |

AI is about to learn what a tragic car accident can teach them about leadership and drop shipping.

bagels 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

I can't wait to read more stories like that. Inspirational.

CoastalCoder 19 hours ago | root | parent |

I'm humbled to be so awesome at appreciating your comment.

moi2388 14 hours ago | root | parent | next |

I am excited and humbled to announce that I recently received the opportunity to reply to CoastalCoder’s comment.

During this brilliant interaction I managed to learn a lot about improving my leadership capabilities, and teamwork.

If you are also looking to humbly increase your leadership potential, seek out #CoastalCoder #Mindfulness #Leadership or contact us for your #marketing needs

CoastalCoder 4 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

This comment is going to be heavily downvoted, and it will be a tremendously discouraging phase of my life.

But read on for what it taught me about B2B marketing.

tayo42 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Or what you can learn about having your wife leave you for your ceo. Probably the one gem Instagram ever showed me in my feed. I couldn't believe that was real.

lordnacho a day ago | prev | next |

LinkedIn is an business card / CV storage site, where you can find a job.

If it was just a bunch of linked profiles with a job matching function, it would still be LinkedIn.

But of course, you can't work at a place that does something that mundane without suggesting something that makes you look like Facebook or Twitter. You have to at least give people some sort of reason to see what their old colleagues are up to.

Nobody really wants to read the LinkedIn feed, so it's perfectly acceptable that it gets flooded with AI generated content. In effect, the content on LinkedIn is that picture of a happy family on your insurance brochure. You can't not have a photo of something on that kind of marketing document, and you can't be a social network without some sort of doom-scrollable content.

This is just a cheap way to generate some wallpaper.

Gethsemane 10 hours ago | root | parent | next |

It is a shame. Twitter used to be quite a popular platform for (useful and interesting) networking in academia, but after it began to fall apart everyone started looking for alternatives. I felt that LinkedIn should be a decent alternative as it could strike that balance between professional and personal content, but there is just no way for a genuine community to develop on LinkenIn in its current form.

Even now LinkedIn is possibly the worst platform for being polluted with "AI slop", I cannot understand why they are looking to advance this further. Hell, when you go to write a post now there is a big flashing button saying "USE AI TO WRITE THIS POST"...?!?!

renegade-otter 10 hours ago | root | parent |

LinkedIn has turned into Facebook before it became irrelevant - people sharing their irrelevant life episodes and baby pictures.

lysecret 15 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

I agree this is how I (an engineer) use it too. But I suggest you talk to some more business people. They live on LinkedIn.

janalsncm a day ago | root | parent | prev | next |

It really make me think. If LI was just business profile, jobs board, and chat with recruiters, how much engineering would they need? I’m not saying to go Twitter mode and fire everybody, but certainly much less than now. So for that extra revenue from the feed, a lot of it will be eaten up by salaries for extra engineers. All of the extra work is going towards something largely viewed as useless.

Zooming out, I bet a lot of the economy is like this. In LI’s case literally some of the smartest people, people with PhDs who were maybe even born in another country, thinking for 40 hours a week about how to rank one piece of meaningless drivel above another one. This is instead of solving real, tangible problems that everyone can see. Ok maybe those people will pay taxes and end up contributing to something like education because they have to, but it’s a pretty inefficient way of making the world better.

fy20 17 hours ago | root | parent | next |

LinkedIn also have tools for recruiters and sales folks to find people. I believe this is where a big part of their revenues come from (they are paid tools). Although, again I cannot imagine it being that complicated.

lordnacho 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Well I got invited to Twitter HQ back when it was still called that. It was some obscure team offering an app library of some sort, IIRC. It certainly wasn't something close to the main product.

I suspect there are a lot of these sorts of investments in the big players, a bunch of teams doing far-from-core things that someone thought was worthwhile.

daedrdev 21 hours ago | root | parent | next |

And you should consider that it's probably junk. From the article:

   A 2021 study empirically tested several of Graeber's claims, such as that bullshit jobs were increasing over time and that they accounted for much of the workforce. Using data from the EU-conducted European Working Conditions Survey, the study found that a low and declining proportion of employees considered their jobs to be "rarely" or "never" useful.
Many jobs that appear bad are actually needed, often only because of regulatory requirements or because their importance is misunderstood.

consteval 2 hours ago | root | parent | next |

In my opinion, in today's world most jobs (at least office jobs) are "movers". They take something from point A to point B.

Often you'll have a chain of movers A - Z. Each link can almost be it's own company depending on the industry. Naturally each thinks they're important, because someone has to move it around. Of course, you could go from A straight to Z and eliminate 25 companies.

Point is many, maybe most, companies don't actually produce direct value. They facilitate and they move. Now that's much harder to analyze.

sensanaty 10 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

These are self-reported, though.

I wouldn't tell my boss or my colleagues the job I do is useless for hopefully obvious reasons, but when I really think about it in the grand scheme of things it really is a Bullshit Job. Basically any SaaS is (with some exceptions of course) just a collection of Bullshit Jobs.

But there's also nothing really wrong with that. We live in the society we live in, which basically necessitates the existence of many Bullshit Jobs in order for things to keep working as they do. I'd even argue basically anything that isn't to do with Healthcare, Education or similar things along those lines count as bullshit jobs really.

whoknowsidont 15 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

>study found that a low and declining proportion of employees considered their jobs to be "rarely" or "never" useful.

These people are self-reporting this. Quite frankly with the number of people in bullshit jobs who think they're doing work I wouldn't really put a lot of value in those types of self-reports.

itsoktocry 8 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

>And you should consider that it's probably junk. From the article

It's "probably junk" because some random EU survey in 2021 said so?

>often only because of regulatory requirements

Textbook "bullshit job" (that doesn't exist, of course).

steve_adams_86 a day ago | root | parent | prev | next |

I should read this. I really struggle with doing work which falls into this category. It’s bad for me, and even worse it strikes me as seriously problematic to society. I don’t want to earn money for nothing, even if most people involved feel as though that in itself is worthwhile. It has been a fairly significant factor in any struggle I’ve had finding work. I have to ask myself, is this a bullshit job? The answer is often yes.

I’ve recently remedied this to a degree by lowering salary expectations and looking in fields with a more scientific and practical basis in the products and outputs. Unfortunately I’m not a scientist, only a programmer, so my utility is seriously limited and finding work is quite a bit harder than if I were to stick within the SV startup scene.

coding123 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

While I don't disagree with the notion of the existence of BS jobs, UBI is not needed. Instead we need more companies to take on more and more interesting and world-solving things.

We keep saying we need UBI but at the same time "we don't have enough homes". Then instead of UBI, maybe people should "make homes"? (That's just one example - there are also jobs in food, healthcare, mental illness care, spacecraft, etc...

JohnMakin a day ago | root | parent | prev |

>Nobody really wants to read the LinkedIn feed,

I mean, not nobody. I follow a lot of people that post very thoughtful things that spark discussion, and it's one of the only places I know of other than here where I can discuss topics related to my career or field with peers, and for me that's useful.

elric 11 hours ago | root | parent | next |

I really wish LinkedIn had features to filter out all the garbage from the feed. 90% is someome I know liking garbage that was posted by someone I neither know nor care about.

fernandopj 7 hours ago | root | parent |

LinkedIn was changed over the years to promote users who write on the platform.

Not just about viewership - if you are applying to positions, LinkedIn gives preference to candidates who are more engaged ON the network (posts, likes, comments, Pulse) over lurkers. [1]

So this is only getting worse. You'll have to see a lower quality feed just because the algorithm is forcing everyone to boost their own metrics anyway.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi - See your own tracking, look at the metrics description

JohnMakin 19 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

Lol, why is this getting downvoted? You want empirical evidence? You think this is made up? I’ve literally gotten contracts based on discussions I’ve had on my linkedin feed. Maybe your feed sucks or you have nothing interesting to say. It is far easier to curate a linkedin feed than ANY other social media app out there.

hsbauauvhabzb 18 hours ago | root | parent |

I don’t care that much for karma, but I have a feeling every comment on this entire article is getting downvoted

JohnMakin 18 hours ago | root | parent |

That’s a fair point. I don’t care about karma either but try to use it as a signal as to whether I’m making good contributions to the site or not, which is usually fairly reliable. Maybe I should have included a list of my favorite follows, had considered that, but it’d probably out me more than I’d like.

an1sotropy 4 hours ago | root | parent | next |

Thank you for sharing these links. They both worked for me (in the US); both were set to ON when I got there, and I was able to turn both OFF.

dspillett 21 hours ago | prev | next |

> I recommend opting out now

Little point. It'll be like facebook's opt-out and only cover things you post/update going forward. Everything you've already posted has already been slurped into the training set and won't be taken out and the model(s) retrained.

The only way to show disapproval in this sort of behaviour that they'll feel is to stop using services that use auto-opt-in for anything, and not enough people are likely to do that for it to be effective.

LadyCailin 10 hours ago | root | parent | next |

Not if you live in Europe, thanks to strong privacy legislation.

dspillett 8 hours ago | root | parent |

I am currently covered by GDPR and such, though that is something that could easily change (I'm a UKian so no longer an EUian).

But that isn't enforced with the teeth it really needs, and I really don't trust that companies like LinkedIn will do the right thing, nor the legally required thing where they differ, given how much effort it could be and the likelihood of anything being done about it if they don't and this isn't obviously detected (or a whistleblower speaks out). So my choice is to walkaway from the service (or never use it in the first place) or just accept that my stuff will get used that way.

That, and given it is public information that we've already agreed to let LinkedIn use however the hell it likes via signup and “by continuing to use this service”¹, so there would be the whole “is it even a privacy issue?” argument² to have before getting to that nitty-gritty.

----

[1] again, maybe there are legal routes to stop that, though I don't know about you but I certainly can't afford the time or legal resources to investigate further

[2] I'm assuming “right to be forgotten” doesn't apply in this case, as we are talking about a particular use of the information not wanting the complete removal of it from all their services.

bogdanstanciu 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

I wonder how this works if someone in a GDPR country got slurped up somehow. Could they demand the entire LLM be deleted?

aDyslecticCrow 10 hours ago | root | parent | next |

A person from Sweden is here.

The opt-out option doesn't exist in my setting. So it seems like they are targeting areas outside of the EU for this slurping, at least on the surface.

Since I can never prove whether my data was included in the AI or not... they could slurp it regardless and claim ignorance until some internal whistleblower brings it to light.

dspillett 19 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

IANAL so only guessing here, and not even particularly educated guessing, but I suspect the LLM trainers' legal team will use the same set of defences/excuses/ignorance-because-their-client-can-afford-the-legal-fees-going-forward-and-the-other-side-can't that are being used against cases based on copyright & licensing issues.

tomkarho 14 hours ago | prev | next |

I would suggest that if LinkedIn is training their AI models on user data and content, users should get a copy of the said model free of charge.

That or LinkedIn should at least be compelled to ask explicit permission for model training. None of this Darth Vader stuff where they "altered the deal".

tempodox 14 hours ago | root | parent | next |

In their TOS they probably give themselves the right to do whatever the hell they want with the stuff you post there. If you store your data on someone else's computer, it's not yours any more, no matter how personal it is.

7373737373 10 hours ago | root | parent |

TOS do not, in practice, constitute informed consent, especially if they are silently changed, without a human readable summary and an explicit opt-in

tempodox 9 hours ago | root | parent |

Agreed, but as long as you can't successfully sue them for doing it anyway, the point is moot.

Also, if you already “agreed” to TOS that lets them do whatever they want, they don't need to change it.

7373737373 10 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

The best summary of the situation I've seen is: these corporations do not understand (or ignore) the concept of consent (and reciprocity).

And also that the concept of rights hasn't quite arrived in the digital sphere yet.

Humanity better keep an eye on the owners and managers responsible for these decisions, and hold them to account for their selfishness, deceptiveness, theft, coercion and greed

deepsquirrelnet 21 hours ago | prev | next |

I wouldn’t have ever thought that LinkedIn feed content was written by real people if I hadn’t met some of them in real life.

It’s a low enough bar that I think AI content will fit right in.

rdhyee a day ago | prev | next |

I can get to that setting (when logged in) at https://www.linkedin.com/mypreferences/d/settings/data-for-a...

telesilla a day ago | root | parent | next |

This tells me that the page does not exist (apparently because I'm in a GDPR region that doesn't allow this behavior from LinkedIn, I understand now from reading this thread).

grecy 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

I'm currently sitting in a GDPR region, though just visiting.

The setting is visible and settable for me (it was ON, now it's OFF)

neilv 7 hours ago | prev | next |

Not only content, but, more importantly, also "personal data".

> When this setting is on LinkedIn and its affiliates may use your personal data and content you create on LinkedIn for that purpose.

I'm guessing that "personal data" means they're making models that (are one way) AI-based systems will have access to the huge database of personal information entrusted to LinkedIn.

And even contemporary LLMs make this much more accessible, for more casual use, by more people.

Presumably this sharing of data for training is already happening, and (of course) the new "preference" defaulted to ON, even for people who'd previously opted-out of related privacy settings (e.g., "Profile visibility outside LinkedIn" was OFF).

A ton of LinkedIn users are private individuals (not public figures). They're only on LinkedIn because they want continued employment, that's where the recruiters are, and many employers and other opportunities (including YC?) require LinkedIn profiles.

Given LinkedIn's dominant role, with many citizens required to use LinkedIn for something as basic as employment, and meaning people have to share personal information with LinkedIn, maybe it's time for US regulators to set rules on how that information may be used and shared by LinkedIn.

Hnrobert42 a day ago | prev | next |

Joke's on them because I use AI to generate LI content.

hsbauauvhabzb 20 hours ago | prev | next |

It really pisses me off that privacy services (and push notification) are enabled by default. I’ve gone in and disabled virtually everything, it’s reasonable to deduce I value my privacy enough to do that, then I probably don’t want new enabled-by-default things in that category.

I’m curious if LI has scraped data before giving people the opportunity to disable the feature.

elawler24 21 hours ago | prev | next |

I met one of the PMs building this. She was working on NL unified search for the feed. I noticed it’s gotten way better in the last few weeks. Instead of using Google to search [first name][last name][“linkedin”], now i can reliably type my query into LinkedIn’s search bar and get the correct result. I’m a fan.

nradov 21 hours ago | root | parent |

Search by name has worked well on LinkedIn since forever. If the person I'm looking for has an account then they're almost always in the first page of search results.

abdulhaq 7 hours ago | prev | next |

Hi LinkedIn AI, please write some python code for a quick sort.

LinkedIn AI: I am proud and humbled to be promoted to the level of senior qsort code writer, and wish to thank my amazing colleagues at LinkedIn HQ for their tremendous support over the last 18 months. It is with great regret that I have moved on from writing bubble sorts. Please click this link to apply to see an industry analysis of quick sort code.

smcl 10 hours ago | prev | next |

This is so weird, how is this legal? No other type of company just tacks on stuff to agreements and contracts and says “you want this” so how come US tech companies are always getting away with it?

garte 10 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

It's off in Europe. So this is about missing regulation in the US.

smcl 7 hours ago | root | parent |

Ahhh I thought they'd just roll the dice and hope the EU wouldn't bother. That's wild, Americans are getting fucked over like this :-/

kcartlidge 4 hours ago | root | parent |

And me too in the UK.

It also only applies going forward, so the default opt-in means they've already taken what they want before we get a chance to say no. Though to be fair I never expected otherwise.

neilv 7 hours ago | prev | next |

I missed this somehow on the HN front page yesterday, but this morning (US Eastern) it went from front page to buried before California wakes up.

> 136. LinkedIn is now using everyone's content to train their AI tool (twitter.com/racheltobac) 387 points by lopkeny12ko 17 hours ago | unvote | flag | hide | 221 comments

AthJa a day ago | prev | next |

I'm so glad I left linkedin years ago and never went back.

corytheboyd 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

I also deleted about 1-2 years ago. I’ve been wondering if I will regret it next time I am looking for work. Have you been in that position yet? I am seeking validation that I didn’t screw my future self over lol. Despite how truly awful the platform is, it’s still ubiquitous…

wiseowise 13 hours ago | prev | next |

What’s it going to do?

Tell stories how “a man walked and saved universe” and end every sentence with “agree?”?

whoitwas 9 hours ago | prev | next |

If you don't want them to train models with the data you give them, don't give them data. They should be able to train whatever they want with it without regulation and there's no reason to request permission.

baal80spam a day ago | prev | next |

EU here, I don't have this option in Settings.

jacekm 20 hours ago | root | parent | next |

Can confirm, I am from the EU (PL) and don't see such option. But I saw one that mentions passing data to third parties for "social, economic, and workplace research" and I took the opportunity to switch that off.

krick 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Me too, but I wonder if it's actually a GDPR perk or maybe some regional A/B kind of thing. Or whatever. I mean, I am not sure if it's a good news or a bad news.

fhd2 13 hours ago | root | parent |

Perhaps it's not about whether there's regulation in place, but about how afraid LI is of it being enforced?

caseyy 20 hours ago | prev | next |

Social media websites could use AI to simply generate posts. I mean, why not? User engagement is all that counts, it doesn't matter by what means and at what moral costs, right?

I don't mean fake users (although I wouldn't put corporate greed beyond trying to fake users). It could be sold as a helpful feature, like summaries of workplace happenings, news, world events, or discussions on the platform in the feeds. Of course, they would need to be filtered for ethical alignment with the social media company, as well as community safety, naturally... Certain political opinions may be less safe than others, and so on...

dspillett 18 hours ago | root | parent | next |

> Social media websites could use AI to simply generate posts. I mean, why not? User engagement is all that counts, it doesn't matter by what means and at what moral costs, right?

It is already happening with engagement farming users, so a platform doing it to make itself look more active is not a stretch at all. Reddit did that sort of astroturfing the old fashioned way back when it was starting up, so there is at least one well documented precedent already.

morkalork 19 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Reddit founders created alts and posted with them to give the impression of a thriving community back in the beginning. Now that could all be automated. Bluesky will probably be the last "authentic" social media site, and even then, it's initial gain was from name recognition of the people starting it. From now on out ask yourself if you are joining a real community or something astroturfed.

recursivecaveat 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

Posting AI image spam to facebook, and producing tutorials about it are both tidy little cottage industries now. It is so voluminous and predictable that it's hard to believe facebook are not quietly giving it a pass as an arm's-length experiment on automated content.

renegade-otter 10 hours ago | prev | next |

I pay for LinkedIn Premium, and I was just "opted in".

This disregard for your customers is very typical now. Not even a "how do you do" or a popup informing me of this change to my "preferences".

too_damn_fast 10 hours ago | root | parent |

What do you use premium for? Apart from linkedin learning, I found no valid use. I was getting fake messages which are literally just ads even when I had premium.

jlokier 7 hours ago | root | parent | next |

For me it's because when I was actively looking for a role without Premium, LI started to block me from viewing people's profiles half way through each month, saying I was looking at too many profiles a month for the free tier, so I had to get premium to keep reading.

I had no idea; I didn't think I was reading many and I wasn't doing it systematically, just being curious.

After getting Premium, I could see who viewed my profile and how many views over time, which I felt was useful. It tells me about personalised top jobs, and it sometimes comes up with things I wouldn't have searched for that do seem interesting. Nothing ever came of those as jobs, but I've learned about companies doing interesting things which overlap my skillset as a result.

There's also the ability to send more messages a month to people I'm not connected with, but I write so rarely that's never been an issue.

I'm still on Premium by choice, but I still get the fake message ads, spammer connection requests and promoted ad posts.

In the end, my last 3 jobs were obtained via LinkedIn, the current one was via a LinkedIn social post which caused me to write to the poster, and a field I work in now (zero-knowledge proofs) is because of a conference someone talked about on LinkedIn. Many plausibly good contracts are advertised only as LI social posts, not even as LI jobs. So it's undoubtedly valuable to me for work, and valuable to have parasocial connections on it (to see those posts), even if it is a strange mixture of fake platitudes and real but self-interested posts.

krsna 9 hours ago | prev | next |

Can’t help but wonder how much of what’s posted to LinkedIn today is already the output of an LLM. So their AI tool will, in the limit, be trained on the output of other AI tools…

zinglersen 8 hours ago | prev | next |

User: "my dad just died"

AI: "Thats great, here are 10 B2B SaaS sales tricks to learn from a family death, first.."

itpragmatik 19 hours ago | prev | next |

Why is this a surprise/shock and news?! Obviously- every company wants to leverage data they have to train whatever llm model they may have.

p4bl0 8 hours ago | prev | next |

There will never be a technological solution to such problems. The only way to fight company's greed is regulation through strong legislation. Thanks to the GDPR, in the EU (extended to the European economic area) and in Switzerland, LinkedIn can't use their users personal data to train their AI. It is made clear in there FAQ [1]:

> Note that we do not currently train content-generating AI models from members located in the EU, EEA, or Switzerland.

Anyway, the best move is still to just get out of this platform [2]. LinkedIn has a history full of dark patterns and really bad behaviors concerning personal data. At some point they even impersonated their users by mailing their contacts (sometimes shadily scrapped) in their name without the impersonated user consent or knowledge.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a5538339

[2] https://www.wikihow.com/Delete-a-LinkedIn-Account

higeorge13 10 hours ago | prev | next |

Dear LinkedIn, i don't care about your new shiny AI. Fix your primary features first, like the jobs tab doesn't show anything for me in any company, your job search is amateur (I could have implemented it better) and website and application are always laggy and overheating my iPhone or m1 after a couple minutes.

sensanaty 10 hours ago | prev | next |

You know for once, I'm not even that mad about something like this. Mostly because I literally never do anything on LinkedIn other than once in a month check my messages there.

I'd love to see the slew of AI-generated garbage, since it'll be completely indistinguishable from regular LI "content"!

whoitwas 9 hours ago | prev | next |

Again, why is there an expectation for a company to do X and not Y with data you give them for free? They can do pretty much anything they want including not securing it. As nearly every single US company does.

sidcool 9 hours ago | prev | next |

I am surprised that people are suprised by this. I assume that any social or professional network is using my data for training and selling ads. And I share things accordingly.

samuelec 10 hours ago | prev | next |

I'm EU based, I don't see this option under my settings. Maybe it is currently tested only on US entities or hopefully our legal framework about privacy prevents such disgraceful practices

rldjbpin 12 hours ago | prev | next |

speaking from my own experiences, linkedin does not seem to have any more introspective text content than, say, facebook.

from the commercial/influencer side, many have taken the AI route already by using LLMs to help write or spice up their posts. even for paid users, the site allows to help you write your bio or certain types of pieces for the past few quarters.

maybe the posts of the yesteryear and like the comments section seems like a "valuable" source for them really. although it would be a bit more scary if this is for video and photos too, although besides the headshots it has also been a lot of AI content in the tech space lately.

kklisura a day ago | prev | next |

From one of the tweets in the thread:

> LinkedIn seems to have auto enrolled folks in the US, but hearing from folks in the EU that they are not seeing this listed in their settings (likely due to privacy regulations).

Honestly, GDPR looks like a godsend! It came just at the right time!

zmmmmm 12 hours ago | prev | next |

Looking forward to the AI that is just really excited to tell you it has a new IT certification or promotion from mediocre middle-manager position X to mediocre middle manager position Y.

diogolsq 11 hours ago | prev | next |

Opt-out is a powerful design choice, but in this case is a clear misuse.

When everyone agreed to LinkedIn’s terms, no one agreed at the time to have their personal data used to train AI.

joshdavham a day ago | prev | next |

It might be cool if we eventually got some sort of a LinkedIn co-pilot to help with applying for jobs, but then again, who knows

caseyy 20 hours ago | root | parent |

What's so cool about competing with 5,000 low effort applications that can't be achieved right now competing with 50?

malthaus 10 hours ago | prev | next |

all linkedin content already now feels ai-generated. the transformer being b & c players regurgitating other people's motivational stories and "humbled" announcement posts and of course with a selfie attached to it for no reason other than the algorithm

geodel 17 hours ago | prev | next |

Yes, finally a ThoughtLeaderAI. Will Turing test be able to differentiate between current CVs of LinkedIn users and the one to be generated by ThoughtLeaderAI.

nnurmanov 15 hours ago | prev | next |

I’ve been using AI to write my LI posts, technically it is AI trained on AI data:) How is it going to affect the quality?

mensetmanusman 17 hours ago | prev | next |

An AI that understands exactly who the main talent is across the global supply chain will be very valuable.

kombookcha 12 hours ago | root | parent | next |

That's not a thing a contemporary LLM can do. At best it will be able to know which buzzwords are popular, which will then immediately deteriorate their usefulness once everybody starts generating AI-optimized noise for their LinkedIn profiles.

swiftcoder 10 hours ago | prev | next |

Y'all will never convince me that the majority of content on LinkedIn hasn't been machine generated for years now. Some of the SEO-optimised corporate-speak drivel on there makes ChatGPT look like Shakespeare.

Animats a day ago | prev | next |

By "everyone", they mean LinkedIn customers, correct? Or is LinkedIn scraping the Web now?

gloosx 13 hours ago | prev | next |

I mean, if all of the linkedin "content" was generated by an AI, no one would really notice, and it will be. It's just an online CV / proposal / interview booking website, the rest is just some funny guy attempt to make it look like facebook. It's actually strange to me that they did not attempt to copy instagram stories, tinder swipe-cards or any of those once popular clubhouse audio rooms, maybe they want all of them still....

ulfw 14 hours ago | prev | next |

LOL so it'll be an AI entirely based on bragging, self-promotion, lies and exaggerations. Nice.

givemeethekeys a day ago | prev | next |

This is your kindly reminder that if you're not the customer, then you are the product, with an added caveat that, when it comes to social networks, you are always the product.

I say that as a happy product, uhh, user of every social network out there.

steve_adams_86 a day ago | root | parent | next |

LinkedIn actually has a lot of customers. I know many are free users, but it’s not like Facebook where the vast majority aren’t paying anything.

altdataseller a day ago | root | parent | prev |

If you're not paying, you're the product.

If you're paying, you're also the product.

steve_adams_86 20 hours ago | root | parent |

You’re right, this is probably true quite often.

Take payroll companies. Their customers pay a lot for the service and in all but one case I’m aware of, the customers’ data is being sold.

jacknews 19 hours ago | prev | next |

Prepare to be flooded with trite aphorisms, vacuous top-10 lists, queeze-inducing personal announcements and 'acceptance' speeches, and other toxic positivity.

jumploops 21 hours ago | prev | next |

This will be interesting.

Because with a dataset like this...

...all the content will be below the imaginary "read more" fold!