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OpenAI’s policies hinder reproducible research on language models

aisnakeoil.substack.com

211–220 of 394 posts

Re: OpenAI’s policies hinder reproducible research on language models

#211
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most of those individuals have absolutely nothing commercial to gain from stopping AI research. There are always financial incentives. Like it or not, there's a lot of money on the line in the "AI" industry; if someone wants that industry to go a certain way, they definitely have something to gain or lose financially. In particular, it's obvious to anyone who's been paying attention that the west halting/ceding AI r…

> There are always financial incentives. A useful question to ask yourself is, "How would I know if I were wrong? What kind of evidence would convince me that a decision was not driven primarily by financial incentives?" If your "model" is equally compatible with all possible observations -- if anything that happens actually confirms the model rather than disproving it -- then it's not actually that useful as a model…

You sound rational. Do you not agree with the possibility of AI doom soon?

Re: OpenAI’s policies hinder reproducible research on language models

#212
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those suggestions would be very in-line with the original purpose of OpenAI. A purpose they are now actively hindering in the name of profit.

I think what most of the people here are missing is how big, how paranoid, and how influential the "AI alignment" movement is. To you it looks like they're being overly careful and paranoid, perhaps as an excuse to set up a monopoly silo to extract money. But a lot of the people the OpenAI researchers work closely with -- people deep in the "AI alignment" community -- are telling them that they're being wantonly reck…

I guess this doesn't really make sense to me becuase if they are trying to take it seriously/be careful, and are not necessarily profit-driven, why release the models at all? Like if they are acknowledging there is any "risk" at all, why is it rational to go ahead and release it anyway and aggressively market it?

Do you really think this theory is compatible with what we have observed as OpenAI's behavior? Can you really think of no other reason why they hold back a newer better model for a few months, while there was an ongoing hype cycle around 3.5?

Re: OpenAI’s policies hinder reproducible research on language models

#213
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please name the competitors to Microsoft that use self hosted GitHub.

OS: linux,fedora, bsd Cloud: They're all closed-source. Doesn't seem black and white since they have their hand in so many pies, but name a real competitor to Microsoft that uses github.com?

Linux doesn't use github. They use git, not github. The question was if a competitor buys the self hosted github, not whether they use some other git solution.

Re: OpenAI’s policies hinder reproducible research on language models

#214
post #190

I understand any individual's company anti-competitive measures. OpenAI looks at Google the same way Apple looked at IBM in the 80s. What I'm worried about is a lot of the talk about guarding models, public safety and misuse of models will end up leading every big company to pull public access of their APIs. We might look at 2022-2023 as a brief golden age when regular people could use stuff like GPT-4 before it was…

I think what most of the people here are missing is how big, how paranoid, and how influential the "AI alignment" movement is. From everything I've heard and seen, the actual researchers at OpenAI are trying to take seriously the risk that a super-intelligent AI might destroy the human race. To you it looks like they're being overly careful and paranoid, perhaps as an excuse to set up a monopoly silo to extract money…

What a bunch of BS. The only reason they are keeping it private is for commercial gain .

Re: OpenAI’s policies hinder reproducible research on language models

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT-4 is definitely slower than GPT-3.5 (and way slower than 3.5-turbo). What could be the reason for that other than much larger parameter count? I agree that the capabilities seem overhyped. In my subjective experience, 4 seems a little better than 3.5 but not by a huge amount. We just have OpenAI’s cherry-picked word that it‘s this incredible advance.

Runs on cheaper but slower compute maybe? Given all the hype and little competition, I'm sure they're willing to make it slower if it reduces cost.

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI’s policies hinder reproducible research on language models

#217
post #211
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are always financial incentives. A useful question to ask yourself is, "How would I know if I were wrong? What kind of evidence would convince me that a decision was not driven primarily by financial incentives?" If your "model" is equally compatible with all possible observations -- if anything that happens actually confirms the model rather than disproving it -- then it's not actually that useful as a model…

You sound rational. Do you not agree with the possibility of AI doom soon?

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI’s policies hinder reproducible research on language models

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> attractiveness is not an inherent property of a person This is like saying "value is not an inherent property of an object" - which is true in a philosophical sense, all value and beauty is a subjective, and depend on the opinions of people. But how would you then explain the existence of objects that have value to almost everyone in society (e.g. a car)? Similarly, how would you explain the existence of widely-rec…

The value of a thing to someone is also subjective. Ask two people (or even the same person twice in one day) how much they'd pay for a sandwich and you'll get different results. But "what's the value of a sandwich" has a very simple objective answer if you're at a sandwich shop. Maybe a slightly less objective answer if you're talking about the average price of a sandwich in all sandwich shops in the country, but it…

Sure, I understand and acknowledge your point.

All I'm saying is that there is an objective fact: There are things which are almost universally recognized as attractive/valuable in the current society. That indicates that there must be something inherent to those things that make them appeal to such a huge number of people.

In other words, subjective != arbitrary. A ball falling in a maze of obstacles may follow an unpredictable path, but a million balls falling will have a predictable distribution of paths. At scale, human experience still follows some rules and patterns. If a person/thing is almost universally recognizable as beautiful/valuable, at point we may recognize some of its qualities as "inherently desirable".

Re: OpenAI’s policies hinder reproducible research on language models

#219
post #190

I understand any individual's company anti-competitive measures. OpenAI looks at Google the same way Apple looked at IBM in the 80s. What I'm worried about is a lot of the talk about guarding models, public safety and misuse of models will end up leading every big company to pull public access of their APIs. We might look at 2022-2023 as a brief golden age when regular people could use stuff like GPT-4 before it was…

I think what most of the people here are missing is how big, how paranoid, and how influential the "AI alignment" movement is. From everything I've heard and seen, the actual researchers at OpenAI are trying to take seriously the risk that a super-intelligent AI might destroy the human race. To you it looks like they're being overly careful and paranoid, perhaps as an excuse to set up a monopoly silo to extract money…

> with -- people deep in the "AI alignment" community -- are telling them that they're being wantonly reckless, helping set the human race on a path for certain doom.

There is a term of art in politics for such people: useful idiots.

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