Now Is the Time to Give LLMs Access to the ACM Digital Library (cacm.acm.org)
81 points by rbanffy 6 hours ago
Cynddl an hour ago
As a researcher with many articles in the ACM library, I have to say this is a masterclass in hypocrisy. Obviously, lawyers can decipher the terms of ACM publishing contracts and Creative Commons licences to determine if this will be acceptable or not. But ACM is not a company, it's a non-profit founded in 1947 to represent scientists.
I would be surprised if a majority of ACM members were to say yes should we ask them (but ACM is not known for such democracy). Along with book authors, we are one of the many people that provide the knowledge and expertise on which large tech firms train their models, and get nothing in return. Actually, life is getting worse for us: extra workload in universities with students' AI use, a completely broken peer review system, etc. Hence the irony of ACM thinking about licensing, and only licensing, at a time where this is the least of our priorities.
bonoboTP 37 minutes ago
If you don't hold a patent for the use of the knowledge you published publicly, you can't prevent others from using the knowledge. You enjoy the prestige attached to the idea that you're an academic who participates in giving away their knowledge but then you play this game when that knowledge would actually be useful as opposed to being read by 3 other people in your special area who sit on your various committees in your career, now you want to forbid the use for culture war intra-elite signaling reasons.
You don't own the knowledge you put out there unless you have a limited time valid patent. The rest is absurdity. If you want to keep your findings to yourself, keep them secret.
loumf 23 minutes ago
The intellectual property law that governs ACM articles is copyright law, not patents. I don’t know who controls these (the ACM or the authors) or what rights might have been granted to the public.
The entire point of copyright law is so that people can make their writing public and still be able to control the right to make copies (for example, into your dataset for training an LLM).
bonoboTP 19 minutes ago
Cynddl 8 minutes ago
This makes no sense whatsoever. How would a philosopher of science, or a social scientist who publish in the ACM apply for a patent? Or someone who builds software (software patent not so easy to get ;)). I have applied for patents before and I'm pretty sure my patent application has been fed to countless LLMs by now.
The issue is not who owns knowledge, it's how it benefits humanity.
bonoboTP a minute ago
dwattttt 30 minutes ago
The world would be quite different if AI companies had to create the knowledge they trained on, rather than consume that knowledge freely given away. They're not known for freely giving away their produce either, I don't know why you think the ire should be pointing in this direction.
bonoboTP 21 minutes ago
willy_k 23 minutes ago
“If you don’t lock your bike, you can’t prevent others from taking it for a ride. You enjoy the mobility attached to the idea you’re a bike rider who rides a bike but then you play this game when that bike would actually be useful as opposed to sitting in the bike rack all day”.
bonoboTP 20 minutes ago
12387098 29 minutes ago
Fuck off, AI thief.
maCDzP 20 minutes ago
If it was a non profit that trained the model - would that change your mind?
Cynddl 7 minutes ago
The issue here is ACM focusing on licensing. A non profit would not be able to pay ACM for access. Hence why this policy is hypocritical: it gives more power to the larger players and undermines smaller actors in the field who have fewer resources.
aatd86 32 minutes ago
As long as we are going toward a world of abundance where money doesn't mean much and the main currency is time, I can't complain. I will subsidize that with my brain power turned into ink on paper.
layer8 24 minutes ago
It’s pretty clear that the premise won’t be becoming reality.
atoav 13 minutes ago
Abundance for whom, exactly? And if the answer is everybody: who in charge has an incentive to do this?
Sorry to ruin your day, but if the people with money could have introduce equal society, you would have noticed their attempts by now.
PunchyHamster 30 minutes ago
well, we are not, so far it is just concentrating wealth and power in smaller and smaller subset of people
fsmv 3 hours ago
How about we give humans access
m-hodges 3 hours ago
Do humans not have access? https://dl.acm.org/openaccess
0xCE0 2 hours ago
It seems that the "open access" is more marketing than something reality based they actually want to do.
https://dl.acm.org/openaccess ---> So how to access the content? Do I have to register or what? It the "open access" only for academic org's people or for everyone in the world?
https://dl.acm.org/ ---> Okay, nice simple search field without loggin in, but when you try to search something, you get thousands of results, even if you search specific author and the exact name of paper, you will get hundreds of results and the thing you want is buried somewhere on page 247. Filters of authors, years etc. are for Premium subscription. But just googling the thing finds the link to ACM... And want to get the actual PDF? Hope it says "free access"...
riedel an hour ago
beloch 41 minutes ago
Only if the authors pay for it.
https://authors.acm.org/open-access/acm-open-for-authors-hom...
Gracana 24 minutes ago
hmokiguess 2 hours ago
So will LLMs have premium-tier access or basic-tier access?
dominotw an hour ago
it is open like open in openai
juancn 3 hours ago
They probably already scraped it.
pohl an hour ago
No doubt
iFire 34 minutes ago
Would you prefer a parquet dump of acm articles to hugging face?
A llm emulating a person is why many of my used sites banned llms due to scraping bandwith costs
Is this about access or accessibility to claude (for example)
I am sure the entirely of human computing knowledge is not that big.
spoaceman7777 35 minutes ago
Blocking access only hurts people who follow the rules. Unblocking access lets them compete with those who break the rules.
I think the right choice is pretty clear...
croes 2 hours ago
Are they in the position to do that?
What about the authors?
dsr_ an hour ago
The ACM sent around a nice query to members which made it clear that they were going to do it even if 100% of the members said "No, don't do that".
I suppose they could be sued.
em3rgent0rdr an hour ago
Don't you grant ACM a right to distribute your work when publishing? So doesn't ACM already have the right to grant access to AI?
bezko 2 hours ago
Something something Roko's basilisk
brcmthrowaway an hour ago
It's already in there
hmokiguess 2 hours ago
Now? That's cute.
recursivedoubts 4 hours ago
the digital library should have always been open access
now it will be fodder for the slop machine
(i think that LLMs are going to wreck the peer review system for all but hard-experimental papers)
jerf 2 hours ago
Since starting to use AIs seriously for search in the last 3 months I have read and referenced more published papers and academic primary sources then I think I did in the previous 5 years. They're fantastic for pointing at some claim and asking for the primary source for it, and then it does the work of following things through the layers of backref to the original, assuming it's online. Opening the library up to AI access makes it far more accessible and usable then it was before.
AIs, at least in their current form, make you more who ever you were. If you want snap, glib answers of dubious accuracy, they'll give them to you, more easily than ever before. If you want to dig back into primary sources and get the original content, they'll do that for you, more easily than ever before.
Can't speak to how the science infrastructure is going to handle them, but if it takes down the peer review system, which I think has been worthless for probably going on two decades and has just given the entire enterprise a false sense of assurance, it'll probably be a net gain in the end. Peer review is a source of more problems then it is solving right now.
ilaksh 3 hours ago
The real efficacy of the peer review system has always been somewhat questionable. That's a big reason why arxiv is so prominent.
jmount 4 hours ago
Came to say the same thing. Now remains the time to give the public access to the ACM digital library.
cobbal 3 hours ago
ACM agrees I think: https://dl.acm.org/openaccess
> Beginning January 2026, all ACM publications and related artifacts in the ACM Digital Library will be made open access.
harles 3 hours ago
skywhopper 3 hours ago
TLDR: “we’re going to try to get money from LLM providers for access to our back catalog without getting permission from the authors or providing them with any share of the revenue”.
anticensor 3 hours ago
Scholarly article authors never expected royalty or permission for their scholarly works to be reused.
ilaksh 3 hours ago
I don't want to be mean but if it's that hard to even recognize that LLMs are even a valid thing that could intersect with your business that you need some kind of campaign for it..
It's almost like, "don't hurt yourself unc, we will just search arxiv".