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Reflections on OpenAI

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81–90 of 446 posts

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#81
Thanks for sharing.

One thing I was interested to read but didn't find in your post is: does everyone believe in the vision that the leadership has shared publicly, e.g. [1]? Is there some skepticism that the current path leads to AGI, or has everyone drunk the Kool-Aid? If there is some dissent, how is it handled internally?

[1]: https://blog.samaltman.com/the-gentle-singularity

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#82
> As often as OpenAI is maligned in the press, everyone I met there is actually trying to do the right thing.

I appreciate where the author is coming from, but I would have just left this part out. If there is anything I've learned during my time in tech (ESPECIALLY in the Bay Area) it's that the people you didn't meet are absolutely angling to do the wrong thing(TM).

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#84
post #50

> The thing that I appreciate most is that the company is that it "walks the walk" in terms of distributing the benefits of AI. Cutting edge models aren't reserved for some enterprise-grade tier with an annual agreement. Anybody in the world can jump onto ChatGPT and get an answer, even if they aren't logged in. There's an API you can sign up and use–and most of the models (even if SOTA or proprietary) tend to quickl…

[dead]

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#85

Maybe I’m paranoid but this sounds too good to be true. Almost like something planted to help with recruiting after meta poached their best guys.

> It's hard to imagine building anything as impactful as AGI, and LLMs are easily the technological innovation of the decade.

I really can't see a person with at least minimal self-awareness talking their own work up this much. Give me a break dude. Plus, you haven't built AGI yet.

Can't believe there's so little critique of this post here. It's incredibly self-serving.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#86

> As often as OpenAI is maligned in the press, everyone I met there is actually trying to do the right thing. I appreciate where the author is coming from, but I would have just left this part out. If there is anything I've learned during my time in tech (ESPECIALLY in the Bay Area) it's that the people you didn't meet are absolutely angling to do the wrong thing(TM).

When your work provides lunch in a variety of different cafeterias all neatly designed to look like standalone restaurants, directly across from which is an on-campus bank that will assist you with all of your financial needs before you take your company-operated Uber-equivalent to the next building over and have your meeting either in that building's ballpit, or on the tree-covered rooftop that - for some reason - has foxes on top, it's easy to focus only on the tiny "good" thing you're working on and not the steaming hot pile of garbage that the executives at your company are focused on but would rather you not see.

Edit: And that's to say nothing of the very generous pay...

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#87
> An unusual part of OpenAI is that everything, and I mean everything, runs on Slack.

Not that unusual nowadays. I'd wager every tech company founded in the last ~10 years works this way. And many of the older ones have moved off email as well.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#88

> As often as OpenAI is maligned in the press, everyone I met there is actually trying to do the right thing. I appreciate where the author is coming from, but I would have just left this part out. If there is anything I've learned during my time in tech (ESPECIALLY in the Bay Area) it's that the people you didn't meet are absolutely angling to do the wrong thing(TM).

I've been in circles with very rich and somewhat influential tech people and it's a lot of talk about helping others, but somehow beneath the veneer of the talk of helping others you notice that many of them are just ripping people off, doing coke and engaging in self-centered spiritual practices (especially crypto people).

I also don't trust that people within the system can assess if what they're doing is good or not. I've talked with higher ups in fashion companies who genuinely believe their company is actually doing so much great work for the environment when they basically invented fast-fashion. I've felt it first hand personally how my mind slowly warped itself into believing that ad-tech isn't so bad for the world when I worked for an ad-tech company, and only after leaving did I realize how wrong I was.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#89
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish your parent comment didn't get downvoted, because this is an important conversation point. "PRECISELY BECAUSE AI cannot be applied in an ethical way, since human beings en masse will inevitably have a sufficient number of bad actors" I think this is vibes based on bad headlines and no actual numbers (and tbf, founders/CEO's talking outta their a**). In my real-life experience the advantages of specifically gen…

> I think this (esp the sufficient number of bad actors) is vibes based on bad headlines and no actual numbers. In my real-life experience the advantages of specifically generative AI far outweighs the disadvantages, by like a really large margin. We define bad actors in different ways. I also include people like tech workers, CEOs who program systems that take away large numbers of jobs. I already know people whose…

I think we'll have to wait and see here, because all the layoffs can be easily attributed to leadership making crappy over-hiring decisions over COVID and now not being able to admit to that and giving hand-wavy answers over "I'm firing people because AI" to drive different headline narratives (see: founders/CEO's talking outta their a**).

It may also be the narrative fed to actual employees, saying "You're losing your job because AI" is an easy way to direct anger away from your bad business decisions. If a business is shrinking, it's shrinking, AI was inconsequential. If a business is growing AI can only help. Whether it's growing or shrinking doesn't depend on AI, it depends on the market and leadership decision-making.

You and I both know none of this generative AI is good enough unsupervised (and realistically, with deep human edits). But they're still massive productivity boosts which have always been huge economic boosts to the middle-class.

Do I wish this tech could also be applied to real middle-class shortages (housing, supply-chain etc.), sure. And I think it will come.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#90
> On the other hand, you're trying to build a product that hundreds of millions of users leverage for everything from medical advice to therapy.

... then the next paragraph

> As often as OpenAI is maligned in the press, everyone I met there is actually trying to do the right thing.

not if you're trying to replace therapists with chatbots, sorry

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