Proxies and Artificial Intelligence: How Developers Train Neural Networks Using Big Data
The field of artificial intelligence (AI) is currently developing at an incredible pace. Neural networks are already capable of writing text, generating stunning images, translating languages and even helping doctors make diagnoses. But have you ever wondered how an ordinary computer programme becomes so intelligent?
The secret is simple: neural networks learn in exactly the same way as humans do — through examples. For an algorithm to understand what a cat looks like, it needs to be shown millions of photographs of cats. For it to learn how to hold a conversation, it needs to read billions of pages of human text. Developers gather all this vast amount of information (or, as they say in the IT world, ‘big data’) from across the internet.
However, it is impossible to collect terabytes of information manually — special bot programmes are used for this. And this is where developers face a serious problem: websites do not like bots and constantly block them. In this article, we’ll discuss how ordinary proxy servers come to the rescue of artificial intelligence developers and help train neural networks.
- Where Do Neural Networks Get Their Knowledge From?
- Why Do Websites Block Neural Network Developers?
- How Proxy Servers Help Train AI
Where do neural networks get their knowledge from?
Before releasing a neural network, developers feed it with massive databases. The process of gathering this information online is called data scraping or data parsing. Bots continuously crawl millions of websites and collect material for training:
- For text-based bots (such as ChatGPT): the programme downloads open-source libraries, articles, forum posts, news websites and encyclopaedias.
- For image generators (such as Midjourney): bots collect millions of photographs, drawings and captions from across the internet.
- For financial systems: historical data on share price movements, exchange rates and economic reports from the last thirty years is downloaded.
- For artificial intelligence to be of high quality, there needs to be a vast amount of data. But when a developer’s programme starts downloading a website at breakneck speed, that site’s security systems sound the alarm.
Why do websites block neural network developers?
Website owners protect their content not just out of spite — a flood of data-scraping bots creates real technical and financial problems. When an ordinary person visits a page, they read it calmly for a couple of minutes. But when a bot program visits, it attempts to download the entire site instantly and opens thousands of pages in a single second. Such activity places an enormous load on the servers. The site starts to slow down significantly or crashes altogether, preventing real people and potential customers from accessing it, and the business loses revenue.
Furthermore, many authors, major media groups and photographers rightly regard such data collection as outright theft of their intellectual property. They spend huge sums on creating unique texts and images, whilst AI developers take this work for free to train their algorithms. To protect servers from overload and prevent content from being copied, website owners install intelligent security systems. As soon as these algorithms detect suspicious activity from a single IP address, they mistake the bot for malware and activate protective barriers:
- IP-based blocking. The site completely blocks access for the developer’s computer, displaying a system access error.
- Endless CAPTCHA. Verification windows appear asking you to ‘select all traffic lights or buses’. Ordinary bots cannot pass such tests, so the data-collection script stumbles and stops working.
- Geographical barrier. Much important and valuable data (for example, restricted US scientific research or European statistics) is only accessible to residents of those specific regions. A developer from another country simply won’t be able to view it, as the website will block the visitor based on their foreign IP address.
- Information substitution. Sometimes security systems do not block the bot, but instead deliberately feed it fake pages with incorrect data to confuse and corrupt the neural network’s training data.
To successfully bypass these strict barriers, avoid crashing other people’s servers and collect clean data, a web crawler must perfectly disguise itself as ordinary people accessing the site from various countries around the world at short intervals. It is precisely to create such a secure and undetectable disguise that artificial intelligence developers need high-quality proxies.
How proxy servers help train AI
A proxy server is a reliable intermediary between the developer’s computer and the target website. When a data-collection programme accesses a competitor’s website or an open library, it does so not directly, but via a proxy. The website sees the proxy server’s address and assumes that a regular person has visited the page.
Working without being blocked by changing addresses
If you send a million requests from a single computer, you’ll be blocked in a second. But if a developer has a pool of several thousand different proxy addresses, the programme can constantly switch between them (this is called rotation). As a result, each individual address makes just a couple of clicks. To the website, it looks as though thousands of ordinary users from all over the world have visited it at the same time. No suspicion and no bans.
Collecting clean data from different countries
For a neural network to understand English well, it needs to be trained using websites from the UK or the US. By using a proxy from the relevant country, developers can bypass any geographical restrictions. The bot accesses foreign websites ‘through the eyes of a local resident’ and downloads the most accurate, unabridged local information.
Incredible training speed
The faster developers can gather data, the faster they can train and launch their neural network. Proxies allow downloads to be run across hundreds of concurrent streams. Whilst one address is downloading the first page, a second is downloading the hundredth, and a third the thousandth. The time taken to build databases is reduced from months to just a few days.
Any modern artificial intelligence is only as smart as the data it was trained on. Without high-quality information, even the most advanced neural network remains a useless line of code, which is why proxy servers have become an unobtrusive yet essential tool in the IT industry. To ensure your software runs stably and without glitches, use professional dedicated proxies from the trusted service Proxy Stores. They provide fast and clean IP addresses exclusively to a single user, guaranteeing uninterrupted data collection and complete security for your network infrastructure.
