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Evolving OpenAI's Structure

openai.com

101–110 of 746 posts

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#101
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless China handicaps the their progress as well (which they won’t, see made in China 2025), all you’re doing is handing the future to deepseek et al.

What kind of a future is that? If China marches towards a dystopia, why should Europe dutifully follow? We can selectively ban uses without banning the technology wholesale; e.g., nuclear power generation is permitted, while nuclear weapons are strictly controlled.

> If China marches towards a dystopia, why should Europe dutifully follow?

I think the more relevant question is: Do you want to live in a Chinese dystopia, or a European one?

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#103
post #72
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of a future is that? If China marches towards a dystopia, why should Europe dutifully follow? We can selectively ban uses without banning the technology wholesale; e.g., nuclear power generation is permitted, while nuclear weapons are strictly controlled.

We don't know whether pushing towards AGI is marching towards a dystopia. If it's winner takes all for the first company/nation to have AGI (presuming we can control it), then slowing down progress of any kind with regulation is a risk. I don't think there's a good enough analogy to be made, like your nuclear power/weapons example. The hypothetical benefits of an aligned AGI outweigh those of any other technology by…

> We don't know whether pushing towards AGI is marching towards a dystopia.

We do know that. By literally looking at China.

> The hypothetical benefits of an aligned AGI outweigh those of any other technology by orders of magnitude.

AGI aligned with whom?

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#104

I see OpenAI's original form as the last gasp of a kind of liberal tech; in a world where "doing good" was seen as very important, the non-profit approach made sense and got a lot of people on board. These days the Altmans and the pmarcas of the world are much more comfortable expressing their authoritarian, self-centered world views; the "evolving" structure of Open AI is fully in line with that. They want to be the…

> They want to be the kings they always thought of themselves as, and now they get to do so without couching it in "doing good".

You mean, AGI will benefit all of humanity like War on Terror spread democracy?

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#107
SamA is in a hurry because he's set to lose the race. We're at peak valuation and he needs to convert something now.

If the entrenched giants (Google, Microsoft and Apple) catch up - and Google 100% has, if not surpassed - they have a thousand levers to pull and OpenAI is done for. Microsoft has realized this, hence why they're breaking up with them - Google and Anthropic have shown they don't need OpenAI. Galaxy phones will get a Gemini button, Chrome will get it built into the browser. MS can either develop their own thing , use opensource models, or just ask every frontier model provider (and there's already 3-4 as we speak) how cheaply they're willing to deliver. Then chuck it right in the OS and Office first-class. Which half the white collar world spends their entire day staring at. Apple devices too will get an AI button (or gesture, given it's Apple) and just like MS they'll do it inhouse or have the providers bid against each other.

The only way OpenAI David was ever going to beat the Goliaths GMA in the long run was if it were near-impossible to catch up to them, á la TSMC/ASML. But they did catch up.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to me it sounds like an admission that AGI is bullshit! AGI would be so disruptive to the current economic regime that "winner takes all" barely covers it, I think. Admitting they will be in normal competition with other AI companies implies specializations and niches to compete, which means Artificial Specialized Intelligence, NOT general intelligence! and that makes complete sense if you don't have a lay person's u…

AGI is matter of when, not if. It will likely require research breakthroughs, significant hardware advancement, and anything from a few years to a few decades. But it's coming. ChatGPT was released 2.5 years ago, and look at all the crazy progress that has been made in that time. That doesn't mean that the progress has to continue, we'll probably see a stall. But AIs that are on a level with humans for many common ta…

Progress is not just a function of technical possibility( even if it exists) it is also economics.

It has taken tens to hundred of billions of dollars without equivalent economic justification(yet) before to reach here. I am not saying economic justification doesn't exist or wont come in the future, just that the upfront investment and risk is already in order of magnitude of what the largest tech companies can expend.

If the the next generation requires hundreds of billions or trillions [2] upfront and a very long time to make returns, no one company (or even country) could allocate that kind of resources.

Many cases of such economically limited innovations[1], nuclear fusion is the classic always 20 years away example. Another close one is anything space related, we cannot replicate in next 5 years what we already achieved from 50 years ago of say landing on the moon and so on.

From a just a economic perspective it is a definitely a "If", without even going into the technology challenges.

[1]Innovations in cost of key components can reshape economics equation, it does happen (as with spaceX) but it also not guaranteed like in fusion.

[2] The next gen may not be close enough to AGI. AGI could require 2-3 more generations ( and equivalent orders of magnitude of resources), which is something the world is unlikely to expend resources on even if it had them.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#109
Matt Levine on OpenAI's weird capped return structure in November 2023:

And the investors wailed and gnashed their teeth but it’s true, that is what they agreed to, and they had no legal recourse. And OpenAI’s new CEO, and its nonprofit board, cut them a check for their capped return and said “bye” and went back to running OpenAI for the benefit of humanity. It turned out that a benign, carefully governed artificial superintelligence is really good for humanity, and OpenAI quickly solved all of humanity’s problems and ushered in an age of peace and abundance in which nobody wanted for anything or needed any Microsoft products. And capitalism came to an end.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-20/who-co...

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI is winning in a similar way that Apple is winning in smartphones. OpenAI is capturing most of the value in the space (generic LLM models), even though they have competitors who are beating them on price or capabilities. I think OpenAI may be able to maintain this position at least for the medium term because of their name recognition/prominence and they are still a fast mover. I also think the US is going to b…

> ban all non-US LLM providers What do you consider an "LLM provider"? Is it a website where you interact with a language model by uploading text or images? That definition might become too broad too quickly. Hard to ban.

I don't have to imagine. There are various US bills trying to achieve this ban. Here is one of them:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/03/us_senator_download_c...

One of them will eventually pass given that OpenAI is also pushing for protection:

https://futurism.com/openai-ban-chinese-ai-deepseek

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