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Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

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Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#531
post #365
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process? Yes, frequently and loudly. When Altman was collecting the award at Cambridge the other year, protesters dropped in on the after-award public talk/Q&A session, and he actively empathised with the protestors . > So far we are multiple years in with much investment and little return, and no obvious large-scale product-market fit, much l…

> he actively empathised with the protestors. I have significant doubt that Sam is capable of empathy, period. It seems like what he's capable of is an extremely convincing caricature of it which he has practiced for many years.

I mean, one could say the same about basically every human (and indeed, some AI systems).

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the fastest product to 100m users ever. Even if they never update their models from here on out, they have an insanely popular and useful product. It’s better at search than Google. Students use it universally. And programmers are dependent on it. Inference is cheap — only training is expensive. To say they don’t have PMF is nuts.

> It’s better at search than Google. That’s hardly a high bar now. > And programmers are dependent on it. Entry level ones, perhaps.

I mean, these models are super useful for small defined tasks where you can check their output.

They're also useful for new libraries or things that you're not an expert in (which obviously varies by domain and person, but is generally a lot of stuff).

I'm a data person and have been using them to generate scraping code and web front-ends and have found them very useful.

But I wouldn't trust them to fit and interpret a statistical model (they make really stupid beginner mistakes all the time), but I don't need help with that.

Like, in a bunch of cases (particularly the scraping one) the code was bad, but it did what I needed it to do (after a bunch of tedious re-prompting). So it definitely impacts my productivity on side projects at least. If I was doing more consulting then it would be even more useful, but for longer term engagements it's basically just a better Google.

So yeah, definitely helpful but I wouldn't say I'm dependent on it (but I'd definitely have made less progress on a bunch of side projects without it).

Note: it's good for python but much, much less good at SQL or R, and hallucinates wildly for Emacs Lisp.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't he fired for questionable reasons? I thought everyone wanted him back, and that's why he was able to return. It was, as I remember, just the board that wanted him out. I imagine if he was doing something truly nefarious, opinions might have been different, but I have no idea what kind of cult of personality he has at that company, so I might be wrong here.

> I thought everyone wanted him back, Ilyia Sutskever who was the chief Scientist of the company and honestly irreplacable in terms of AI knowledge left after Altman returned.

He also apologized and said he was wrong.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#534
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an assumption that a lot of people make about people with power is that they say what they actually believe. In my experience, they do not. Public speech is a means to an end, and they will say whatever is the strongest possible argument that will lead them to what they actually want. In this case, OpenAI wants look like they're going to save the world and do it in a noble way. It's Google's "don't be evil" a…

I'll sleep easier tonight after reading this! I know other people know what you say there, but at times reading HN one would suspect that it's not that commonly known around these parts. Maybe public figures were "saying what they meant" in, I don't know, the mid-1800s. People who grew up with "modern" communications and media infrastructure (smartphones, brain rot, streaming garbage 24/7, ads everywhere, etc) do not…

It's human nature to assume honesty and good will. Societies couldn't function if that wasn't the case. Lies and deception are only common in interactions outside of our immediate tribe and community. They're the primary tools of scammers, politicians, and general psychopaths, who seek to exploit this assumption of honesty that most people have, and they're very successful at it. The problem is that technology has blurred the line between close communities and the rest of the world, and forced everyone to accept living in a global village. So while some of us would want the world to function with honesty first, the reality is that humans are genetically programmed to be tribal and deceitful, and that can't change in a few generations.

It's hilariously easy to be "successful" in the modern world. It's so easy that a dumb person following a playbook of "deny, divert, discredit" can become president.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#535
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I would certainly expect a radical change to economics even from a middling IQ AI — or indeed a low IQ, as I have previously used the example of IQ 85 because that's 15.9% of the population that would become permanently unable to be economically useful — I don't think it's quite as you say. Increasing IQ scores seem to allow increasingly difficult tasks to be performed competently — not just the same tasks fast…

I think this trend of using IQ as a primary measuring stick is flawed. Human minds and AI minds have radically different architectures, and therefore have different strengths and weaknesses. IQ is only one component of what allows a typical worker to do their job. Even just comparing humans, the fact that one person with, say, a 120 IQ can do a particular job—say they are an excellent doctor—obviously does not mean t…

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Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#536

For-profit isn't the problem. Lying about being non-profit to raise funds, and _then_ become for-profit, that's the underlying concern.

>For-profit isn't the problem

It was a problem around 2014 - 2022. Even the lying part isn't new. It has always been there. But somehow most were blind to it during the same period.

Something changed and I dont know what it is. But the pendulum is definitely swinging back.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-driving won't take over by just being available in the new cars people are buying anyway. It'll take over when people find it cheaper to ride robotaxis than to own a vehicle at all. That's potentially a much quicker transition, requiring significantly fewer new vehicles.

Nobody is going to sit and wait for a robo uber in the suburbs for ten minutes to go to the grocery store ten miles down the road. This is the main problem, America has suburbanised itself to hell and no amount of robo taxis will create the world you are suggesting. And elsewhere in the world there’s no need because most places have adequate public transit which solves the problem way more efficiently than robo taxis…

Public transport doesn't compare to robotaxis. If robotaxis become a reality I expect a significant drop in car ownership and public transport use. The price will be competitive with the price of public transport, at least for single fare prices.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is going to sit and wait for a robo uber in the suburbs for ten minutes to go to the grocery store ten miles down the road. This is the main problem, America has suburbanised itself to hell and no amount of robo taxis will create the world you are suggesting. And elsewhere in the world there’s no need because most places have adequate public transit which solves the problem way more efficiently than robo taxis…

Public transport doesn't compare to robotaxis. If robotaxis become a reality I expect a significant drop in car ownership and public transport use. The price will be competitive with the price of public transport, at least for single fare prices.

I can catch a bus every five minutes a one minute walk from my house in Utrecht. Those buses go anywhere. In Oslo I could ride the T-bane to the forest or to downtown. In Tokyo it was obvious public transit is the only way to go. All the places I lived outside the USA I would never take a taxi much less a robot one in lieu of Public transit.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transport doesn't compare to robotaxis. If robotaxis become a reality I expect a significant drop in car ownership and public transport use. The price will be competitive with the price of public transport, at least for single fare prices.

I can catch a bus every five minutes a one minute walk from my house in Utrecht. Those buses go anywhere. In Oslo I could ride the T-bane to the forest or to downtown. In Tokyo it was obvious public transit is the only way to go. All the places I lived outside the USA I would never take a taxi much less a robot one in lieu of Public transit.

Because taxis are not cheap enough. Once they become cheap enough, by not having a driver, the equation changes. Travel becomes more convenient.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#540
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I would certainly expect a radical change to economics even from a middling IQ AI — or indeed a low IQ, as I have previously used the example of IQ 85 because that's 15.9% of the population that would become permanently unable to be economically useful — I don't think it's quite as you say. Increasing IQ scores seem to allow increasingly difficult tasks to be performed competently — not just the same tasks fast…

I think this trend of using IQ as a primary measuring stick is flawed. Human minds and AI minds have radically different architectures, and therefore have different strengths and weaknesses. IQ is only one component of what allows a typical worker to do their job. Even just comparing humans, the fact that one person with, say, a 120 IQ can do a particular job—say they are an excellent doctor—obviously does not mean t…

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