Ask HN: Why would a company ban ChatGPT?

Posted by zw123456 on Friday March 24, 2023 @05:08AM
from the ask-hn dept.

I work for a large corporation, that I don't feel comfortable naming, but they sent out an email to all 160K employees forbidding anyone from using Bing, any ChatGPT, GPT of any kind on company computers for security reasons. They provided no explanation other than saying "for security reasons". Does anyone have any idea what it is they are worried about? I don’t see where it could be an issue. How would it be any less secure than a regular search engine?

( 9 comments | 2 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Why would a company ban ChatGPT? by mytailorisrich on Friday March 24, 2023 @05:31AM (#35286882)

It is possible that a company could choose to block access to certain websites or applications, including ChatGPT, for a variety of reasons, such as concerns over security, productivity, or inappropriate content. It is important to note that such decisions are typically made by the company's IT department or management and may vary based on the specific policies and regulations in place.

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Re:Ask HN: Why would a company ban ChatGPT? by spacejunky on Friday March 24, 2023 @05:42AM (#35286937)

meta!!

well done ...

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Re:Ask HN: Why would a company ban ChatGPT? by Hackersnews on Friday March 24, 2023 @05:39AM (#35286918)

https://Hackersnews.co.uk

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Re:Ask HN: Why would a company ban ChatGPT? by adamquek on Friday March 24, 2023 @05:23AM (#35286829)

They are afraid that you will share personal or proprietary data with OpenAI. Not everyone is trained in handling with sensitive information, and it may be tempting for new tech users to just put in data and ask ChatGPT to do analytics for them, which can be a potential threat.

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Re:Ask HN: Why would a company ban ChatGPT? by dschuessler on Friday March 24, 2023 @06:20AM (#35287171)

There are interesting technical solutions for preventing sensitive informations from leaking that could probably enable a somewhat safe use of ChatGPT and the likes in a corporate context.[0]

[0]: https://www.cloudflare.com/products/zero-trust/dlp/

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Re:Ask HN: Why would a company ban ChatGPT? by verdverm on Friday March 24, 2023 @06:36AM (#35287277)

How is ChatGPT going to provide a response? It has to read the plain text.

Corporations are worried that OpenAI will use their proprietary data at some point, which might end up being memorized and regurgitated later.

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Re:Ask HN: Why would a company ban ChatGPT? by dschuessler on Friday March 24, 2023 @06:42AM (#35287326)

I think the idea behind these products is that network requests and responses containing sensitive data never reach their target in the first place. So if someone tries to tell ChatGPT sensitive data, the outgoing request is simply blocked. Harmless content goes through, though.

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Re:Ask HN: Why would a company ban ChatGPT? by verdverm on Friday March 24, 2023 @07:04AM (#35287464)

> Cloudflare Data Loss Prevention (DLP) secures sensitive data in transit.

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Re:Ask HN: Why would a company ban ChatGPT? by mdmglr on Friday March 24, 2023 @05:13AM (#35286757)

An abundance of caution?

If employees start sharing proprietary data. Could even be data you consider harmless like quarterly results before the earnings meeting. Could be a legal issue.

I think from an OpSec perspective band the use then come up with a policy.

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