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OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

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181–190 of 595 posts

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#181
> It is "hard for anyone except larger companies to benefit from the underlying technology," OpenAI stated.

Ugh. This is the part of the recent AI advancement that annoys me the most. The web, at least in its infancy, was pretty accessible to individual hobbyists. You could run a web server on your own computer. AI technology seems highly centralized from the start.

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#182
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stability straight up proved that OpenAIs ideas around the importance of locking the tech up and guard railing it is all a big waste of time. The world didn’t end when anyone could run Dall-E 2 level image gen on gamer hardware and without guardrails. Instead we got to integrate that power into tools like Blender, Photoshop, Krita etc for free. First company to democratize ChatGPT tech in the same way will own this s…

That's like saying: > Ford straight up proved that Béla Barényi (of Mercedes Benz) ideas around crumple zones is all a big waste of time. The world didn't end with the 1938 Ford Prefect[0]. The world won't end overnight with an open fork of ChatGPT. But it will mean the signal-to-noise ratio rapidly shifts, that spammers and scammers will be much more effective, and that even minor special interest groups (or individ…

That car analogy doesn't work because Mercedes Benz didn't actively work against other cars from existing.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7nby/researchers-think-ai-...

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and think of all the talks he is going to do in the future about "hard work" and "ethics" and "innovation"

I'm sure they did work hard and the product is innovative from my understanding of the definition of the word but oh boy does the whole "ethics" theater manage to infuriate me...

The worst part is that Altman had nothing to do with the success of Open AI. He simply failed upwards into this job, thanks to his Paul Graham friendship and YC connection.

We will see Altman all over the place while all the hardwork was done by actual scientists at Open AI who have barely spoken.

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#184
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the problem in my view with people that use social media to post everything too much, who overshare. Elon could have been this guy that was doing cool stuff, super smart and doing some good stuff for the world, but now most people think he is a jerk. People that get known for their work, it's not really a good look for them to wade into politics or controversial topics they have no expertise or right to start…

Ahh but it gets attention and that is addictive.

This sub thread is a joke in of itself: reading on things people are so eagerly offended by.

Has no one thought that "following" Elon on Twiiter shouldn't be automagically assumed to be his fans or uniformly align with his ethos?

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#185
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stable Diffusion is free and open source and can be run locally. I see no reason why we can't have free and open source ChatGPT too.

How does Stability.ai make money? If their business plan is just "burning VC's money" for now, you can bet they'll be as close as OpenAI soon.

They offer an open base model and then offer fine tuning to companies e.g. apparently they're creating finetuned models for movie companies.

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#186
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AGPL (also) does this explicitly, but really there should be a general OSS license that forbids commercial use. That way the software stays where it is most needed and doesn't get abused to make profit. Is there such a license?

I recall the FSF being pretty adamant that a license restricting commercial use would be a non-free license by default.

I kind of see their point. Freedom 0 is about the freedom to run software how you wish[1] and "commercial use" can encompass everything from FAANG down to one-man, niche businesses.

[1] The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0). https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#187
post #154

Can anyone comment on how the actual structure is setup? I was under the impression that there was still an OpenAI non-profit that controls the OpenAI "capped profit" company. Microsoft has/is acquiring 49% of the capped profit company, so doesn't that leave 51% in control of the non-profit? Am I way off on their structure?

The few people that know the actual nitty gritty details are probably not inclined, incentivized, or permitted to reveal them, so speculation is all we have. The 10,000ft view: they are capped profit at 100x investment; Microsoft has invested $10 billion; 100x $10 billion = $1 trillion; therefore, OpenAI is a for-profit company until they earn a trillion dollars for Microsoft, and then they’re a non-profit after that…

They went for profit back in 2019.

The capped profit was so their employees could invest in the company.

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#189
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of non-OSI open source licenses are ironically motivated by other forms of bad corporate behavior: take open source, SaaSify it, make massive profits, give nothing back. In some cases they go so far as to rebrand it and give no credit. Licenses like the SSPL try to restrict this behavior.

The AGPL (also) does this explicitly, but really there should be a general OSS license that forbids commercial use. That way the software stays where it is most needed and doesn't get abused to make profit. Is there such a license?

> there should be a general OSS license that forbids commercial use

I think the problem is that if you restrict corporate use then you’re not open. And there’s lots of complexity that comes from being non-open, like what’s commercial? Do governments and NGOs and universities count? Do you have to be a 501c3 charity (or international equivalent)? Do you have revenue thresholds? Profit thresholds? Etc etc

I think at that point, as a user, I’d rather just have a clear license I can pay for along with a copy of the source to see. But as a contributor, I don’t want to do unpaid labor for companies. I think it’s actually exploitative to accept contribs from users without compensation and then turn around and sell. So what’s the point of showing code if people can’t contribute to it.

It’s already possible to do this given a standard copyright. Just publish your code with no license and a copyright and issue some statement how you won’t prosecute small firms or something. So then students can use it, but no companies.

“Open core” and whatnot is silly marketing blarg to try to be cool like open source people while still selling licenses. RedHat came up with a decent model decades ago while using and supporting GPL and I think they were honest and improved the community.

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