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OpenAI should now change their name to ClosedAI

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Re: OpenAI should now change their name to ClosedAI

#61

Post by foldr »

SaltyLemonZest wrote: post #59
foldr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't demonstrate comprehension in any interesting sense. You don't necessarily have to comprehend a text in order to generate a plausible nonsense continuation of it.

Sure you do. If I hand you a few sentences in a language you can't comprehend at all, you won't be able to create a plausible continuation.

Never mind that - I wouldn't even be able to take on the role of the Emacs doctor in German (as I don't speak any German). It doesn't follow from that that the Emacs doctor does understand German.

Re: OpenAI should now change their name to ClosedAI

#62

Post by jayparth »

ChefboyOG wrote: post #58
screye wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hugging face and the Spacy team have done some incredible work. Huge fan of both for my NLP projects.

I think this illustrates just how complex the topic is, though. Hugging Face is awesome, and Transformers has done so much to democratize NLP, but does it exists without labs like OpenAI releasing models like GPT-2? The ecosystem is still young and fluid, and as a result, it's super complex. I completely understand the critique of what OpenAI is now vs. what they positioned themselves as early on, but I think it is a…

Hugging Face is also a for-profit startup. I wonder how betrayed this guy is going to feel betrayed when they launch a paid service...

Re: OpenAI should now change their name to ClosedAI

#63

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Donthatme wrote: post #25
csomar wrote: post #20

I believe, having worked a little bit with GPT-2, that OpenAI is intentionally sabotaging access to their AI algorithm and data. They have started this sabotage with GPT-2 and with GPT-3 they simply didn't open source it. For GPT-2, their repository ( https://github.com/openai/gpt-2 ) is archived. Which is as good as saying that the project is abandoned and will receive no updates. The project already doesn't compile…

I am not remotely in this field, and have not been following this closely at all. With that being said, what obligation do they have in maintaining GPT-2? Did they have some stated commitment that they walked back, or am I missing something else?

Well, do they want to be taken seriously as an open institutuon and a Charity?

Re: OpenAI should now change their name to ClosedAI

#64

Post by carapace »

throwaway743 wrote: post #27
csomar wrote: post #20

I believe, having worked a little bit with GPT-2, that OpenAI is intentionally sabotaging access to their AI algorithm and data. They have started this sabotage with GPT-2 and with GPT-3 they simply didn't open source it. For GPT-2, their repository ( https://github.com/openai/gpt-2 ) is archived. Which is as good as saying that the project is abandoned and will receive no updates. The project already doesn't compile…

> "This AI stuff is dangerous to world" Replace "AI" with "fire" and it sounds even more ridiculous as a reason.

Fire is dangerous though. Fire gut-punched California three summers running. The power company cut power to whole regions out of respect for fire.

Re: OpenAI should now change their name to ClosedAI

#65

Post by obmelvin »

joelg wrote: post #43
steev wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how this is a nuanced perspective - it seems to restate the same complaints/arguments just about every comment makes in these discussions. A nuanced perspective would look at the arguments as to why OpenAI is doing the things they are doing. For example: * OpenAI publishes in closed journals (actually conference proceedings) because that is where all the cutting edge research is published and reviewed. I…

> At some point a company needs to make money :-/ OpenAI started as a non-profit.

Yes, but the computing they are trying to do is expensive, so it makes sense to then try and get some self-sustaining revenue by leveraging their research into a software service. I must admit I don't know about their current status of funding from large companies etc, but I do think it makes sense to try and make a bit of their own money to be more independent.

Re: OpenAI should now change their name to ClosedAI

#66

Post by minhazm »

One of the early stated goals of OpenAI was to advance AI but do so safely. Can you imagine if scammers and "bad actors" got access to GPT-3? You could create such sophisticated and targeted scams. Things could get extremely ugly fast. The choice to limit access to this seems to be completely in line with their original values.

Re: OpenAI should now change their name to ClosedAI

#67

Post by sudosysgen »

albntomat0 wrote: post #33
timkam wrote: post #2

Can anyone point to a more nuanced perspective on this? Ideally not only with regards to OpenAI; it is still quite common that research published in some of the "top" venues does not disclose the underlying source code. Anecdote: I once pushed researchers to publish their code when I was peer-reviewing and it turned out that the code was super slow in comparison to the benchmark algorithms they compared with (compari…

Here's my alternative view: If OpenAI had open sourced GPT-3, there would be an equivalently angry thread about how they were endangering democracy/social order/etc, and not being responsible with the powerful tool they had created (see other threads on HN regarding those working in facial recognition). Both that group, and the one posting here have valid points, and there would be strong, valid critique of their dec…

But we do realize that sooner or later a model even more powerful will be released to the public, right?

And as far as protecting democracy, I assure you that the geopolitical enemies of your nation either have similar models, or will have them very soon. There is very significant investment on ML models for text manipulation going on behind closed doors, funded by States.

Re: OpenAI should now change their name to ClosedAI

#68

Post by albntomat0 »

mtgp1000 wrote: post #56
albntomat0 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a stronger opinion about their views than necessarily is true. Based on their actions, OpenAI seems to (rightly, in my opinion) view that some people would misuse GPT-3/etc, even if the majority would not.

Define misuse.

For example, convincing and hard to detect fake content generation on Facebook/reddit/etc

Re: OpenAI should now change their name to ClosedAI

#69

Post by AlexandrB »

albntomat0 wrote: post #36
csomar wrote: post #20

I believe, having worked a little bit with GPT-2, that OpenAI is intentionally sabotaging access to their AI algorithm and data. They have started this sabotage with GPT-2 and with GPT-3 they simply didn't open source it. For GPT-2, their repository ( https://github.com/openai/gpt-2 ) is archived. Which is as good as saying that the project is abandoned and will receive no updates. The project already doesn't compile…

> Oh, and by the way, I believe saying "This AI stuff is dangerous to world", the same as politicians saying "We need to check your web history for pedophilia stuff". It's funny how some people don't see the irony in how they oppose one thing and support another that is practically the same. Some AI/ML applications are clearly dangerous to the world. See other HN comment sections when facial recognition comes up.

> Some AI/ML applications are clearly dangerous to the world. See other HN comment sections when facial recognition comes up.

I'm pretty ignorant on the background of what's being discussed (what did OpenAI change/do to become more closed?). But if OpenAI really believed this, the right thing to do would be to shut down and spend the money on advocacy. As it is, it seems that they're still releasing machine learning code/models, just not to everyone.

Re: OpenAI should now change their name to ClosedAI

#70

Post by JamesBarney »

steev wrote: post #40
gas9S9zw3P9c wrote: post #11

Someone asked for a more nuanced perspective, so here we go. For a lot of AI researchers, OpenAI has been a huge disappointment. We had hope that OpenAI would be the company to democratize AI with good open source work, transparency, no PR bullshit (aka DeepMind), and evangelism. That they would develop in the open, and perhaps even do research in the open. You know, kind of like the name says. It all started out oka…

I don't see how this is a nuanced perspective - it seems to restate the same complaints/arguments just about every comment makes in these discussions. A nuanced perspective would look at the arguments as to why OpenAI is doing the things they are doing. For example: * OpenAI publishes in closed journals (actually conference proceedings) because that is where all the cutting edge research is published and reviewed. I…

It seems like there are a lot of good reasons for every choice they made.

Organizations are constantly making decisions that are trading off certain values for others, i.e. openness vs safety/expediency/funding. But if they use the word open in their name, signalling to people that is one of their foundational values, people will expect them to pick openness even when it's not necessarily the easiest, safest, most expedient, or most profitable choice. They expect them to pick openness when it's hard.

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