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OpenAI and Elon Musk

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Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#891

Post by Gunnerhead »

ben_w wrote: post #880
boringg wrote: post #833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question. Does anyone trust Sam Altman at all anymore? My perspective from the outside is his public reputation is in tatters except that he's tied to Open AI. Im curious what the internal rep is and the greater community?

Yes, me. At least, I trust him as much as any other foreign[0] CEO. For all the stuff people complain about him doing, almost none of it matters to me, except for the stuff which isn't proven (such as his sister's allegation) where I would change my mind if evidence was presented. What I don't trust is that Californian ethics don't map well enough onto my ethics, which also applies to basically all of Big Tech… …but…

Curious why “foreign” was worth mentioning? Do you trust your countrymen CEOs more or less?

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#892

Post by smoldesu »

qarl wrote: post #889
smoldesu wrote: post #887

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the problem-in-question is Adjusted Gross Income, I don't think you're talking about a well-defined issue in the first place. That's kinda the problem; even half-definitions like "meets or exceeds human performance in all tasks" doesn't specify what those tasks are or what human performance represents. In other words, targeting "AGI" is a ill-defined goalpost that you can move anywhere you want, and shareholde…

GOOD GRIEF. You're right, AGI is not well defined. But it is perfectly well defined for the purposes of this conversation. Working in this space (however you want to say it) costs a lot of money. Everyone knows this. You nitpicking definitions does not change that.

> Working in this space (however you want to say it) costs a lot of money.

Not necessarily? OpenAI deliberately chooses to scale their models vertically, which incumbents like Google and Meta had largely avoided. Their "big innovation" was GPT-4, an LLM of unprecedented scale that brute-forced it's way to the top. The Open Source 72b+ models of today generally give it a run for it's money, the party trick is over.

Nitpicking the definitions is important, because for OpenAI it's unclear what comes next. Consumers don't know what to expect, portions of the board appear to be in open rebellion, and our goal of AGI remains yet-undefined. I simply don't trust OpenAI (or Elon, for that matter) to do the right thing here.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#893

Post by KoolKat23 »

philwelch wrote: post #826
KoolKat23 wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your limited definition of advance. Chilling in a Matrix-esque wasteland with my fancy-futuristic-gadget isn't my idea of advanced-level-humanity. May help with technological advancement, but not social or ethical advancement.

It’s been known to happen that environmental regulations turn out to be ill-considered, counterproductive, entirely corrupt instances of regulatory capture by politically dominant industries, or simply poor cost-benefit tradeoffs. Gigantic pickups are a consequence of poorly considered environmental regulations in the United States, for instance.

True, at their core though, those aren't environmental at their heart but rather something else green-washed, be it corruption, subsidisation or something else.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#894

Post by gitaarik »

pests wrote: post #859
gitaarik wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you said it made them look bad. Or did you mean that they aren't doing anything bad but are only making it look bad for each other? Edit: sorry, I meant the parent said that. But I guess you understand it now. Edit 2: To be clear, the bad stuff: - OpenAI not really being "open" in any way. - Elon not really caring about that but just wanting to take revenge because they became successful without him.

That's not really "bad stuff" the public would care about IMO, just some internal drama.

From all the comments in this threat it seems a lot of people care about it. Of course HN public is specially tech/nerd oriented, but from the popularity here I think it's not crazy to think that non-HN audience would also care.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#895

Post by bbor »

boringuser2 wrote: post #192
bbor wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the Manhattan project springs to mind. They truly thought they were laboring for the public good, and even if the government let them wouldn’t have wanted to publish their progress. Personally I find the comparison of this whole saga (deepmind -> google —> openai —> anthropic —-> mistral —-> ?) to the Manhattan project very enlightening, both of this project and our society. Instead of a centralized government…

They literally created weapons of mass destruction. Do you think they thought they were good guys because you watched a Hollywood movie?

Hmm do you have some sources? That sounds interesting. Obviously there’s always doubt, but yeah I was under the impression everyone at the Manhattan project truly believed that the Axis powers were objectively evil, so any action is justified. Obviously that sorta thinking falls apart on deeper analysis, but it’s very common during full war, no?

EDIT: tried to take the onus off you, but as usual history is more complicated than I expected. Clearly I know nothing because I had no idea of the scope:

  At its peak, it employed over 125,000 direct staff members, and probably a larger number of additional people were involved through the subcontracted labor that fed raw resources into the project. Because of the high rate of labor turnover on the project, some 500,000 Americans worked on some aspect of the sprawling Manhattan Project, almost 1% of the entire US civilian labor force during World War II.
Sooo unless you choose an arbitrary group of scientists, it seems hard. I haven’t seen Oppenheimer but I understand it carries on the narrative that he “focused on the science” until the end of the war when his conscience took over. I’ll mostly look into that…

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#896

Post by matheusmoreira »

> Elon understood the mission did not imply open-sourcing AGI.

> As Ilya told Elon: “As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open.

> The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science...”

> to which Elon replied: “Yup”.

That's honestly pretty disgusting.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#897

Post by bbor »

hef19898 wrote: post #426
leereeves wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The war against Germany was over before the bomb was finished. And it was clear long before then that Germany was not building a bomb. The scientists who continued after that (not all did) must have had some other motivation at that point.

I kind of understand that motivation, it is a once in a lifetime project, you are part of it, you want to finish it. Morals are hard in real life, and sometimes really fuzzy.

In this note: HIGHLY recommend “Rigor of Angels”, which (in part) details Heisenbergs life and his moral qualms about building a bomb. He just wanted to be left alone and perfect his science, and it’s really interesting to see how such a laudable motivation can be turned to such deplorable, unforgivable (IMO) ends.

Long story short they claim they thought the bomb was impossible, but it was still a large matter of concern for him as he worked on nuclear power. The most interesting tidbit was that Heisenberg was in a small way responsible for (west) Germany’s ongoing ban on nuclear weapons, which is a slight redemption arc.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#898

Post by ben_w »

Gunnerhead wrote: post #891
ben_w wrote: post #880

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, me. At least, I trust him as much as any other foreign[0] CEO. For all the stuff people complain about him doing, almost none of it matters to me, except for the stuff which isn't proven (such as his sister's allegation) where I would change my mind if evidence was presented. What I don't trust is that Californian ethics don't map well enough onto my ethics, which also applies to basically all of Big Tech… …but…

Curious why “foreign” was worth mentioning? Do you trust your countrymen CEOs more or less?

Closer alignment with my world view. Due to having grown up in the same milieu for the home country, due to choosing the country in part for its idea of what "good" looks like for the one I moved to.

Also, it tickles me to tell Americans that they are foreign. :P

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#899

Post by chankstein38 »

hef19898 wrote: post #827
chankstein38 wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your other comment is nested too deeply to reply to. I edited my comment reply with my response but will reiterate. Educate yourself. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. The discussion is about LLMs not AI in general. The question stated "LLMs" which are not equal to all of AI. Please stop spreading misinformation. You can say "fact" all you want but that doesn't make you correct lol

You a seriously denying that generative AI is used to create fake images, videos and scam / spam texts? Really?

No. I'm declaring that you either can't read or don't understand that there's a difference between "gen AI" and LLMs. LLMs generate text. They don't generate images. Are you just a troll or not actually reading my messages? The question you're replying to asked about LLMs. I don't understand what's so difficult about this.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#900

Post by pests »

gitaarik wrote: post #894
pests wrote: post #859

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really "bad stuff" the public would care about IMO, just some internal drama.

From all the comments in this threat it seems a lot of people care about it. Of course HN public is specially tech/nerd oriented, but from the popularity here I think it's not crazy to think that non-HN audience would also care.

I really think everyone is over estimating how much people know or care about OpenAI or any of the people involved.

Half the country doesn't even understand Instagram is owned by Meta.

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