What other people are saying, but also because Amazon does not want to fuck around in this space. They don't want the legal fight or the reputational damage that would come with it.
To take an easy example that has actually had lawsuits I can link to, you must be unfamiliar with the lawsuits against Amazon for misusing sellers' data in order to undercut them with their own products... https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/13-bln-uk-lawsuit-acc...
There's zero reason to "trust" Amazon about anything. (And yes, I know the retail and AWS sides of the company are different, but it's still the same company. The same rot is always there, just shuffled around.)
this is not related to AWS, but merely to amazon's retail business and their sellers know and sign up for the deal when they sell via amazon.
every single retail company does this, they allow suppliers to sell the product using retails's infrastructure, and then retailer turns around and create private label products using sales data (Costco's Kirkland Signature, Walmart's Great Value, are just some examples)
Yes, but Kirkland's signature comes from the same factory. If I'm the factory owner and Costco vis going to guarantee me sales albeit at a slightly lower margin, so long as I slap a different sticker on it, that's different than from Amazon finding out which of my products sells best and then gets someone else to rip it off so I don't get paid anything.
First of all, we don't know which factory kirkland's products are coming from. Even if they are coming from the same factory, who guarantees the same ingredients and quality control was used???
everything from amazon is coming from China, I dont understand why does a random person who resells stuff from Chinese factories via Amazon FBA feels entitled for exclusivity arrangement with Amazon?
Was such exclusivity encoded in some form of legally enforceable agreement ?
In contrast to Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic, AWS has never done anything close to sneaking in unwanted training opt-outs after the fact.
They are the only ones I trust not to do that so far. And their terms are extremely clear on that, no fuzzy language. Exactly what we want to see. So we use Bedrock.
Laws and rules don’t hold anyone accountable. Anyone can say anything and then break that trust the next second.
Instead you trust your best friend because you have known them for 15 years and seen them in enough situations. It’s long term observation and predictability they ultimately gives trust.
AWS has been around 20 years and has never once shown a sign that that they would sell customer data. Could they still try? Sure, in the same way they my friend who hates seafood his entire life could suddenly flip 180 and love it. Yeah I guess it’s possible.
Actually yes, when it’s other huge corporations holding them accountable. It’s only when politicians who are much more cheaply bought get involved that creates problems. When the other side has a significant war chest to combat you with, suddenly behavior improves
Having worked with lots of companies, I can say that trust is there. But true test is competitors of Amazon. Does Walmart use them? Ebay? Although not in exact same business.
Contractual obligation, external third party audits, and above all, AWS’s reputation.
AWS isn’t going to risk their reputation, and thus huge chunks of their business, just so a few AI labs can get some extra training data. That’s an insane risk with zero upside for AWS. AWS knows full well they will make insane quantities of cash without breaking legal contracts with companies who pay them billions each year for infra.
they’re crap on a lot dimensions of how they treat customers but data privacy/security is one thats taken pretty seriously at AWS, perhaps owing to the massive reputational damage that would result if they played loose with it.
What other people are saying, but also because Amazon does not want to fuck around in this space. They don't want the legal fight or the reputational damage that would come with it.
They also don't really stand to benefit from doing so, unlike basically everyone else in this space.
They have access to a ridiculous amount of private customer data and so far have not shown any predilection to misusing that access.
To take an easy example that has actually had lawsuits I can link to, you must be unfamiliar with the lawsuits against Amazon for misusing sellers' data in order to undercut them with their own products... https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/13-bln-uk-lawsuit-acc...
There's zero reason to "trust" Amazon about anything. (And yes, I know the retail and AWS sides of the company are different, but it's still the same company. The same rot is always there, just shuffled around.)
this is not related to AWS, but merely to amazon's retail business and their sellers know and sign up for the deal when they sell via amazon.
every single retail company does this, they allow suppliers to sell the product using retails's infrastructure, and then retailer turns around and create private label products using sales data (Costco's Kirkland Signature, Walmart's Great Value, are just some examples)
Yes, but Kirkland's signature comes from the same factory. If I'm the factory owner and Costco vis going to guarantee me sales albeit at a slightly lower margin, so long as I slap a different sticker on it, that's different than from Amazon finding out which of my products sells best and then gets someone else to rip it off so I don't get paid anything.
First of all, we don't know which factory kirkland's products are coming from. Even if they are coming from the same factory, who guarantees the same ingredients and quality control was used???
everything from amazon is coming from China, I dont understand why does a random person who resells stuff from Chinese factories via Amazon FBA feels entitled for exclusivity arrangement with Amazon?
Was such exclusivity encoded in some form of legally enforceable agreement ?
The retail side is completely different from AWS.
They have very little to gain and a hell of a lot to lose.
In contrast to Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic, AWS has never done anything close to sneaking in unwanted training opt-outs after the fact.
They are the only ones I trust not to do that so far. And their terms are extremely clear on that, no fuzzy language. Exactly what we want to see. So we use Bedrock.
Contracts and the force of law?
Which notoriously are always holding the largest corporations accountable /s
Laws and rules don’t hold anyone accountable. Anyone can say anything and then break that trust the next second.
Instead you trust your best friend because you have known them for 15 years and seen them in enough situations. It’s long term observation and predictability they ultimately gives trust.
AWS has been around 20 years and has never once shown a sign that that they would sell customer data. Could they still try? Sure, in the same way they my friend who hates seafood his entire life could suddenly flip 180 and love it. Yeah I guess it’s possible.
Any sufficiently large company will be prepared to fight this out in court where Amazon would eventually lose.
Actually yes, when it’s other huge corporations holding them accountable. It’s only when politicians who are much more cheaply bought get involved that creates problems. When the other side has a significant war chest to combat you with, suddenly behavior improves
Having worked with lots of companies, I can say that trust is there. But true test is competitors of Amazon. Does Walmart use them? Ebay? Although not in exact same business.
Bezos and Altman pinky-promised and are super trustworthy.
Seems like trusting AWS with your data has been a good bet for a long time. They wouldn’t have the size/scale otherwise.
Bezos is not in AI gold rush. AWS is shovel rental.
Also unlike Altman they are trustworthy - a lot of Amazon competitors do run on AWS for decades.
Contractual obligation, external third party audits, and above all, AWS’s reputation.
AWS isn’t going to risk their reputation, and thus huge chunks of their business, just so a few AI labs can get some extra training data. That’s an insane risk with zero upside for AWS. AWS knows full well they will make insane quantities of cash without breaking legal contracts with companies who pay them billions each year for infra.
They could be lying with all this:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/data-pr...
But it seems tremendously unlikely with how explicit they are being with it. It is clearly one of the top selling features for the service.
they’re crap on a lot dimensions of how they treat customers but data privacy/security is one thats taken pretty seriously at AWS, perhaps owing to the massive reputational damage that would result if they played loose with it.