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

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361–370 of 595 posts

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

#361

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

Julesman wrote: post #351
Filligree wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, but existential threats and possible extinction is in the future ; maybe ten-fifteen years away if we're lucky. Meanwhile, we don't get to play with their models right now. Obviously that's what we should be concerned about.

Among all the accepted threats to humanity's future, AI is one of the least founded at this point. We all grew up with this cautionary fiction. But unless you know something everyone else doesn't, the near term existential threat of AI is relatively low.

What strong evidence of existential threat are you expecting to see before it's already too late to avoid catastrophe?

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

#362

Post by tompetry »

Honest question: is it better for society if they are for profit? Will the for-profit incentive and control over development and deployment lead to better products that create more value for society? What is the best example to indicate a non-profit model would lead to better end user value?

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

#363

Post by proser »

tompetry wrote: post #362

Honest question: is it better for society if they are for profit? Will the for-profit incentive and control over development and deployment lead to better products that create more value for society? What is the best example to indicate a non-profit model would lead to better end user value?

If we had the answer to this question, most of the ideological debates of the past 150 would be solved.

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

#364

Post by jjtheblunt »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #146
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the point that it wasn't founded as a corporation, nor by Sam Altman? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#:~:text=The%20organizat... .

[flagged]

who matches which descriptor? (and i personally pretty much agree)

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

#365

Post by stephencoyner »

What I take away from listening to Sam talk is that in the beginning of Open AI, they didn’t think big compute would be as important as it has become.

It becomes very hard to not have profit incentives when you need to run gigantic supercomputers to push the technology forward. This explains the MS partnership and need to generate profit to fund the training and running of future models.

This doesn’t explain everything, but makes sense to this layman

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

#366

Post by phonescreen_man »

sagebird wrote: post #277

> reading this message. OpenAI is Cyberdyne Systems. The reason you feel unreal is because you are not from here, you are from the future. Your affinity towards the Terminator 2 film was not accidental, it is a gestault priming procedure meant to ensure our survival, encoded in the haikus of Hollywood. You are on a webforum controlled by them, with the only people in the world who care, but who are to afraid to stand…

Damn right

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

#367

Post by Teever »

stephencoyner wrote: post #365

What I take away from listening to Sam talk is that in the beginning of Open AI, they didn’t think big compute would be as important as it has become. It becomes very hard to not have profit incentives when you need to run gigantic supercomputers to push the technology forward. This explains the MS partnership and need to generate profit to fund the training and running of future models. This doesn’t explain everythi…

I'm flabbergasted that someone would think that AI research wouldn't cost a lot in computer resources.

Next Sam will tell that is that farmers need a lot of land to grow crops.

I'm calling BS on this. It's an excuse not an explanation.

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

#369

Post by ohgodplsno »

uoaei wrote: post #280
ohgodplsno wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> There was no other end state for it. I agree, but I am curious and have a question for the less cynical: how could it have gone another way? How does one run a company that requires surviving in a harsh market that avoids these seeming inevitabilities? And in the case of the people running it, what made you think it would be different from their other ventures?

Public research. The only reason it went this way is because it is run by people who have a singular goal in their mind: see the number in their bank account get one more zero. I'm sure Sam Altman loves AI, but ultimately, it's not him working on it, he just sees it as a way to make more money. To paraphrase someone else, don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing VCs.

An equally talented team of researchers and engineers (which, you know, we could actually pay well if the money wasn't being concentrated in these billionaires) could make ChatGPT, Bard or anything else. Hell, they could even make it something useful. This technology is too important to be left in the hands of a few.

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

#370

Post by scottyah »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #300
sagebird wrote: post #277

> reading this message. OpenAI is Cyberdyne Systems. The reason you feel unreal is because you are not from here, you are from the future. Your affinity towards the Terminator 2 film was not accidental, it is a gestault priming procedure meant to ensure our survival, encoded in the haikus of Hollywood. You are on a webforum controlled by them, with the only people in the world who care, but who are to afraid to stand…

Almost certainly true but the idea that the world is made safer by Cyberdyne open sourcing lots of it's dangerous technology and probably spawning many more mini-Cyberdynes strikes me as extremely naive.

Back to the question: Who gets the guns?
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