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OpenAI's plans according to Sam Altman

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Re: OpenAI's plans according to Sam Altman

#11

Post by skilled »

I think there's zero chance that OpenAI won't create a full-scale vector solution in the near future. The market is too big for them to ignore the need for people to upload and query their own data. Which, as others pointed out, might be the reason they wanted to remove this because Sam said, "We have no plans to expand beyond the UI.".

If you look at Pinecone, their Standard plan is $70 a month. Like, OpenAI already does some memory management in the interface - it makes no sense to ignore the earnings potential with this, which would give them more runway to spend on training future models.

Re: OpenAI's plans according to Sam Altman

#12

Post by runsWphotons »

jstummbillig wrote: post #8
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #5

I’ve seen parts of the Congress testimony of Sam Altman amd it felt like the guy was on a power trip with his regulation ideas. What he accomplished with OpenAI is for the history books, but wanting monopoly over AI development in the US makes him look like an up and coming villain.

Nothing that he said in Congress supports the claim that he wants monopoly over AI development. I find it fascinating how people are so happy to turn argumentation on it's head, and pretend it's the same thing. Surely you must know you are doing it? But what is to gain, I do not know.

Asking for regulation soon after your company has gained a substantial (but probably transient) lead in a market sets off people's villain detectors, especially people who have seen the same things before. Sam may not be a villain and may believe in everything he is advocating for pure reasons, but it is right for people to be critical and skeptical. Sam will be okay, he can handle some haters.

Re: OpenAI's plans according to Sam Altman

#13

Post by YetAnotherNick »

usrbinbash wrote: post #9

Whether scaling laws hold or not, is up for debate. What isn't up for debate, is that: 1) Giant serverfarms are expensive 2) People want on premises/on machine solutions 3) LoRA Tuning of small models continues to excel 4) Thus specialized models continue to evolve at a fast pace 5) Open source foundation models on which tuning can be done are accelerating by the week 6) Performance doesn't matter once a model is "go…

> And they want to have it local, private, and as cheap as possible.

Most people don't care about local and private. They care about cheap and free ChatGPT is the cheapest they could get, which is better than all open access models.

> Open source foundation models on which tuning can be done are accelerating by the week

Based on the (unverified)information I have been hearing in the research circle is that OpenAI invested heavily in data collection. One thing I heard is that they have hired experts to label lot of codes with information like complexity, correctness etc. Also the questions and RLHF data they get from real users is something open access models can't match.

Palm 2 chat is significantly worse than ChatGPT(free), even though it is larger and trained by experts in the field.

Re: OpenAI's plans according to Sam Altman

#14

Post by mr_mitm »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #13
usrbinbash wrote: post #9

Whether scaling laws hold or not, is up for debate. What isn't up for debate, is that: 1) Giant serverfarms are expensive 2) People want on premises/on machine solutions 3) LoRA Tuning of small models continues to excel 4) Thus specialized models continue to evolve at a fast pace 5) Open source foundation models on which tuning can be done are accelerating by the week 6) Performance doesn't matter once a model is "go…

> And they want to have it local, private, and as cheap as possible. Most people don't care about local and private. They care about cheap and free ChatGPT is the cheapest they could get, which is better than all open access models. > Open source foundation models on which tuning can be done are accelerating by the week Based on the (unverified)information I have been hearing in the research circle is that OpenAI inv…

> Most people don't care about local and private.

Right, but corporations do. And AI is a revolution because it makes workers substantially more efficient, not because it makes for a slightly better Google. If corporations want to leverage AI to make their workforce more efficient, it must be local and private in many cases. OpenAI is already experiencing friction in the EU.

Re: OpenAI's plans according to Sam Altman

#15

Post by jstummbillig »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #10
jstummbillig wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing that he said in Congress supports the claim that he wants monopoly over AI development. I find it fascinating how people are so happy to turn argumentation on it's head, and pretend it's the same thing. Surely you must know you are doing it? But what is to gain, I do not know.

As I understand it, most people's objection to the calls for regulation are based on the fact that regulation raises the barriers to entry for competition. Regulatory compliance can be expensive and favors those with deep pockets. The more AI startups one can prevent from starting/growing now, the fewer competitors there will be in the future.

All of which is entirely reasonable and so is considering all of Samas possible motivations.

But just declaring another parties intentions as you see fit is such an incredibly bad style in any discourse. When filling the gaps of your knowledge, there has to be a world in which Sama is in fact a good human being – in addition to the world where he is not – when that assumption does not logically conflict with anything that he is proposing.

His argumentation for regulation is coherent. The concept of regulation is not complicated or new, it requires no good faith, it makes obvious sense for obvious reasons.

This does not mean that those reasons are what Sama motivated to make this proposal. But when being able to string together an argument is all that is required to forgo any other possible arguments, we are in deep trouble. We need to be able to consider intentions with uncertainty and stay attentive to what is being said and done.

Re: OpenAI's plans according to Sam Altman

#16

Post by yyyk »

usrbinbash wrote: post #9

Whether scaling laws hold or not, is up for debate. What isn't up for debate, is that: 1) Giant serverfarms are expensive 2) People want on premises/on machine solutions 3) LoRA Tuning of small models continues to excel 4) Thus specialized models continue to evolve at a fast pace 5) Open source foundation models on which tuning can be done are accelerating by the week 6) Performance doesn't matter once a model is "go…

1) Giant serverfarms are expensive, but Microsoft has money and savings on scale. This can compare favourably to running locally.

2) People use what LLMs software makers give them and don't care at all about on premise. Software makers want something reliable they can deploy at scale, and not end up debugging problems on a client 4GB machine with an iGPU and multitude of OSs. The actually deciding people want to delegate to an API, and the only offerings available right now are from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic (aka Google again) etc..

3) Open source LLM products and APIs are at the zero point and remain so by the week. "Download from GitHub and compile" is not going to fly.

4) Right now the question is whether the Closed Source and Propriety product people will actually use will be provided by a web API (openAI or maybe Meta) or by the OS (Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.). Either way it will be controlled by giant corporations. Unless 3) ever changes, but doing product is icky for OSS people for some reason so that will never happen.

[EDIT: Note that the Stable Diffusion area is in way better shape. There's a one-click installer for Auto111! There are some products and sites using SD! There are some usecases important commercial interests don't want! These OSS people also don't engage in triumphalism much less unearned triumphalism! They are probably still going to lose to Adobe and Midjourney but at least it will be a fight.]

Re: OpenAI's plans according to Sam Altman

#17

Post by yyyk »

mr_mitm wrote: post #14
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they want to have it local, private, and as cheap as possible. Most people don't care about local and private. They care about cheap and free ChatGPT is the cheapest they could get, which is better than all open access models. > Open source foundation models on which tuning can be done are accelerating by the week Based on the (unverified)information I have been hearing in the research circle is that OpenAI inv…

> Most people don't care about local and private. Right, but corporations do. And AI is a revolution because it makes workers substantially more efficient, not because it makes for a slightly better Google. If corporations want to leverage AI to make their workforce more efficient, it must be local and private in many cases. OpenAI is already experiencing friction in the EU.

Same corporations happily use Office 365 and GSuite for all their documents rather than a local and private solution. I'm sure they'll come to a similar arrangement with regard to AI.

Re: OpenAI's plans according to Sam Altman

#18

Post by yyyk »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #5

I’ve seen parts of the Congress testimony of Sam Altman amd it felt like the guy was on a power trip with his regulation ideas. What he accomplished with OpenAI is for the history books, but wanting monopoly over AI development in the US makes him look like an up and coming villain.

There's a good chance you're right about Altman's motivations. This doesn't make the case for regulation weaker (or stronger). There are bigger things at play than OpenAI's financial forecasts, even if Altman's motivations are selfish and narrow.

Re: OpenAI's plans according to Sam Altman

#19

Post by cgio »

jstummbillig wrote: post #15
devoutsalsa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, most people's objection to the calls for regulation are based on the fact that regulation raises the barriers to entry for competition. Regulatory compliance can be expensive and favors those with deep pockets. The more AI startups one can prevent from starting/growing now, the fewer competitors there will be in the future.

All of which is entirely reasonable and so is considering all of Samas possible motivations. But just declaring another parties intentions as you see fit is such an incredibly bad style in any discourse. When filling the gaps of your knowledge, there has to be a world in which Sama is in fact a good human being – in addition to the world where he is not – when that assumption does not logically conflict with anything…

The GP does not say anything about Sam Altman’s motivation specifically, but rather addresses the argument about regulation. The intent is irrelevant in this context and therefore there would be no need to superimpose intents to address the argument, which is that regulation impedes competition. This is already a very fecund discussion topic.
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