Although I am disappointed that OpenAI is not all gratis and open-source, I don’t think they ever promised to release everything open-source. In my recollection, their purpose is to prevent monopolization of advanced AI in the biggest tech giants and make it available to smaller businesses, and their “capped-profit” model is consistent with that. There is a spectrum of ways to release technology to preventing monopol…
OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
461–470 of 595 posts
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If the doomsday scenario is one AI going rogue because of misaligned goals, then having lots of AIs going rogue in various different ways seems indeed preferable, because the AIs will compete with each other and neutralize each other to some extent.
>because the AIs will compete with each other and neutralize each other to some extent.
I wonder if the people in Vietnam or Afghanistan thought like this when the US and USSR fought proxy wars on their soil...
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#463Earlier quoted context omitted.
What strong evidence of existential threat are you expecting to see before it's already too late to avoid catastrophe?
Once-in-a-century weather patterns happening multiple times per decade, that sort of thing.
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#464This seems an important article, if for no other reason than it brings the betrayal of its foundational claim still brazenly present in OpenAI's name from the obscurity of HN comments going back years into the public light and the mainstream. They've achieved marvellous things, OpenAI, but the pivot and long-standing refusal to deal with it honestly leaves an unpleasant taste, and doesn't bode well for the future, es…
I feel betrayed whenever these organizations initially toot their own horns on how they are open or they are a charity, but then later on, change their goals or corporate structure with a vague press release. They then continue to keep the same name, allowing them to ride on their goodwill.
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#465Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's the difference between spending 10's of millions and a billion on computing resources. When he started OpenAI, no one was spending anywhere near that much on compute. He should have listened to gwern.
Exactly. The idea that massive compute would lead to massive improvement was non-obvious. It was quite reasonable to think that there would be rapidly diminishing returns in model size. Wrong, in hindsight, but that's how hindsight is.
Honestly no, it was obvious, but only if you listened to those pie in the sky singularity people. It was quite common for them to say, add lots of nodes and transistors and a bunch of layers and stir in some math and intelligence will pop out.
The groups talking about minimal data and processing have not had any breakthroughs in, like forever.
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#467Although I am disappointed that OpenAI is not all gratis and open-source, I don’t think they ever promised to release everything open-source. In my recollection, their purpose is to prevent monopolization of advanced AI in the biggest tech giants and make it available to smaller businesses, and their “capped-profit” model is consistent with that. There is a spectrum of ways to release technology to preventing monopol…
> Because of AI’s surprising history, it’s hard to predict when human-level AI might come within reach. When it does, it’ll be important to have a leading research institution which can prioritize a good outcome for all over its own self-interest.
> As a non-profit, our aim is to build value for everyone rather than shareholders. Researchers will be strongly encouraged to publish their work, whether as papers, blog posts, or code, and our patents (if any) will be shared with the world. We’ll freely collaborate with others across many institutions and expect to work with companies to research and deploy new technologies. [1]
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Coding as we know it might get obsolete. And it is a trillion dollar industry. freeing up that many knowledge workers to do other things will grow the economy, not shrink it, a new industrial revolution
That's an excellent point that I don't think is made enough. The great pay and relative freedom software engineering provides the technically-minded people of the world is great for us, yet starves many other important fields from more technical innovation because of not enough workers in those fields.
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#469The only way this kind of research could be done "in the open" is if it was funded by taxpayers' money. Except we have global corporations with elite fiscal layer teams, but no global government (giant lizzards are always disappointing) - so some global corporation was going to own it in the end, it was a matter of "time" and "US or Chinese". The time is now, he winner is US. Moving on. The next move is for (some) go…
> funded by taxpayers' money. In this industry, a contract with MS is as close to directly having a DOD contract as you can get. Remember when MS bought Skype, turned off end to end encryption and got rid of the P2P mechanisms, to eventually appear in the leaks about PRISM? Likely Bing integration of ChatGPT is the more innocuous use of the technology. Once they have gotten input from the AI experts at OpenAI on how…
In a bit of historical irony, the mathematics underpinning the development of early stealth aircraft was based on published research by a Soviet scientist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Ufimtsev
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
Things like "public goods" are an outdated concept, with a distinctly 19th and 20th century feel. In our postmodern world the very idea is almost taboo. The few things that remain, do because they have been grandfathered in. The hyper-capitalist global market owns everything and that is good.
I wish I lived in a world where I was able to choose which corporate road I get to drive on. Just imagine! I'm at an intersection, and I get to choose if I want to pay $2 to turn left and get home in 5 minutes or pay $1 to turn right and get home in 9 minutes. When I have a bad fall down the stairs at home, I get to choose which phone number to call. 910 will be there in 10 minutes for $500, 912 will be there in 20 m…
This exists in all countries with public emergency channels and private transport.