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Sam Altman Won in Court Against Elon Musk. But, We All Lost

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Re: Sam Altman Won in Court Against Elon Musk. But, We All Lost

#111

Post by nightski »

root_axis wrote: post #97
nightski wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too valuable of a tech to remain in the control of any corporation. Open models will find a way. Compute requirements will go down and there will be many of us making it a priority to transform the tech into something open like the Linux kernel vs a closed cloud tech. Nvidia has 75% profit margins right now. That won't continue forever. It may take quite some time but it will normalize.

Unfortunately, there's really no clear path to viable local models for the common folk, the hardware requirements are just too extreme. I say this as someone with a pair of A100s that is absolutely delighted by what the open source models are capable of, but even with the best harnesses, tiny quantized models are just not even close to the same league as something like Kimi-k2. Of course, here on HN it's easy to find…

Right now, yes but I am fairly confident this will change. Not only do I truly believe we will see massive efficiency gains in inference, I also believe the cost of hardware will come down. Again Nvidia's getting a 75% margin on this hardware. Usually hardware margins are significantly smaller. More supply will come online even if that takes years.

Re: Sam Altman Won in Court Against Elon Musk. But, We All Lost

#112

Post by stalfie »

Keyframe wrote: post #71
stalfie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sentence could easily be applied to the human baseline.

Yes, if you're equating same rights to soulless corporations and humans as well as their motives.

I'd say both are equally soulless, dualism is a little bit of a philosophical dead end.

Frankly, I don't particularly care much for the moral panic around capitalism. Capitalism has it's downsides for sure, but it's the system our society has chosen to motivate people, and it seems to work okay for many things. Does it matter if the AI model that solves your diagnosis, creates a life saving drug or solves an Erdös problem is made by a corporation or not? It bothers me none, progress is progress. As long as the authors of Textbooks everywhere wouldn't have otherwise invented LLMs a decade ago if they only had been given a little bit more money, then I'd say the money is going to the right place.

Re: Sam Altman Won in Court Against Elon Musk. But, We All Lost

#113

Post by pdonis »

danaris wrote: post #99
pdonis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that the hypothetical I described requires that the open source part was sincere. The article focuses on Altman's belief that someone was going to develop AI and he thought it would be bad if Google did it first--meaning, by implication, that it would be good if an organization that he started did it first. But what if it turns out to be bad no matter who did it first?

To the extent that that's true, it's true because Sam Altman did it at all . It is not that hard to construct a scenario wherein an alternative version of Sam Altman pushed really hard for a genuinely ethical LLM—one trained only on data that he had full unclouded rights to, either because it was public domain or because he had bought or otherwise explicitly received the rights, among other measures—and had then made…

I'm not sure I agree that Altman has made the AI situation worse. I think Altman was right that Google, and Microsoft and others for that matter, were going to pursue AI no matter what. Even if OpenAI had never existed and Altman had never pursued AI at all, we'd still have much the same situation we have now.

Even if it's true that, if OpenAI had never existed and Altman had never pursued AI at all, we wouldn't have had the spectacle of a supposed nonprofit trying to do "ethical" AI and then pivoting to a for-profit company, that actually might be something that was worth learning: that it's not possible to do AI as a private nonprofit with an explicit commitment not to do certain things.

Re: Sam Altman Won in Court Against Elon Musk. But, We All Lost

#114

Post by pdonis »

watwut wrote: post #62
pdonis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I have a great deal of sympathy for this point of view, I think the article makes an interesting observation that suggests it actually doesn't matter whether these people are intentionally trying to screw everybody or not--the actual problem is much bigger even than that: To claim that OpenAI’s mission of cultivating beneficial A.I. was compromised by Sam Altman is to let the entire industry off the hook. Yes,…

> But it is far more interesting, complicated, and useful to take his self-defense at face value—to interpret the many sins of OpenAI, and its competitors, as the result of a good-faith exercise in futility. What if we imagined that he did in fact set out to do good? And discovered—or, perhaps better, failed to discover—along the way that this was structurally impossible? But that is not what happened. It is neither…

> A people interested in good faith attempt to do good dont end up in Sam Altman position.

I strongly disagree. Human history is full of examples of people who made good faith attempts to do good that backfired tremendously. A good faith desire to do good isn't enough: you also need to be in a domain where your beliefs and intuitions about what doing good actually is are reasonably trustworthy. And you need to have some way of getting feedback from reality that pushes back on you if you start crossing certain lines.

None of this proves that Altman was making a genuine good faith attempt to do good. That wasn't my point. My point was that, in a domain like AI, it doesn't matter whether the people involved have good faith intentions to do good or not, because this domain is not one where any human has reasonably trustworthy beliefs and intuitions about what doing good actually is. And the current AI bubble shows that it's also a domain where nobody can get feedback from reality that pushes back when they start crossing certain lines. In other words, just as the article says, it's "structurally impossible" to do good in this domain, no matter what your intentions are, at least with the humans we have now.

Re: Sam Altman Won in Court Against Elon Musk. But, We All Lost

#115

Post by tjsquared »

pj_mukh wrote: post #19

This is a weird fantasy among the literati that AI is a "scam", that we can "expose" them with lots of palace intrigue coverage and SBF or Elizabeth Holmes them away and then everything will be right in the world. Some of the best models are Chinese and Open-source and so-so good and Sam Altman is wholly irrelevant to them. Some folks are in for a very rude awakening.

I've noticed the disconnect between tech moguls and enthusiasts and the rest of the media in AI coverage.

AI can invoke existential dread for writers, educators, and artists just as much as for software developers and engineers, although on perhaps a more delayed schedule.

I think public sentiment among journalists will eventually catch up with the pros and cons of AI in a nuanced way, but it's a bit harder to appreciate how impactful it already is if you're not using it to write software every day.

This is a point made by Andrej Karpathy.

Re: Sam Altman Won in Court Against Elon Musk. But, We All Lost

#116

Post by Tangurena2 »

lokar wrote: post #16
vlucas wrote: post #8

Sam didn't "win" the case in the sense that most people will think of when reading this headline. In the 20th paragraph of the linked article, finally getting to the actual reason: > On Monday, the jury took only two hours to reach its verdict. Musk’s complaint, the panel found, had indeed exceeded the statute of limitations Musk is appealing. This fight is far from over.

What is the substance of the appeal? IANAL, but AIUI, it's pretty hard to appeal a finding of fact from a jury.

The word used will be toll. Basically the clock measuring the statute of limitations can be stopped/paused for certain things. It could be that the victim was under the age of 18 and therefore couldn't sue until they hit 18. Or the incident was concealed, so the victim couldn't take action until the concealment was gone.

0 - https://www.trustwelllaw.com/resources/legal-term-faq/statut...

Re: Sam Altman Won in Court Against Elon Musk. But, We All Lost

#117

Post by danaris »

pdonis wrote: post #113
danaris wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the extent that that's true, it's true because Sam Altman did it at all . It is not that hard to construct a scenario wherein an alternative version of Sam Altman pushed really hard for a genuinely ethical LLM—one trained only on data that he had full unclouded rights to, either because it was public domain or because he had bought or otherwise explicitly received the rights, among other measures—and had then made…

I'm not sure I agree that Altman has made the AI situation worse. I think Altman was right that Google, and Microsoft and others for that matter, were going to pursue AI no matter what. Even if OpenAI had never existed and Altman had never pursued AI at all, we'd still have much the same situation we have now. Even if it's true that, if OpenAI had never existed and Altman had never pursued AI at all, we wouldn't have…

Sorry, my phrasing there was kind of poor: I didn't mean that he had made the overall AI situation worse, but rather that the AI he made was worse for the public than a hypothetical AI that was made with a deliberate eye to ethical or at least neutral behavior.

Re: Sam Altman Won in Court Against Elon Musk. But, We All Lost

#118

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

pj_mukh wrote: post #19

This is a weird fantasy among the literati that AI is a "scam", that we can "expose" them with lots of palace intrigue coverage and SBF or Elizabeth Holmes them away and then everything will be right in the world. Some of the best models are Chinese and Open-source and so-so good and Sam Altman is wholly irrelevant to them. Some folks are in for a very rude awakening.

"This is a fantasy among the literati that AI is a "scam", that we can "expose" them..."

Who is "them"

Is it "AI" that the literati are trying to "expose" or is it certain individuals

"Some of the best models are Chinese and Open-source and so-so good and Sam Altman is wholly irrelevant ot them."

Made with a small fraction of the budget available to Altman

But is this article about "AI" models. Or is it about Altman

"Some folks are in for a very rude awakening."

Who are the folks and what is the awakening

Is it "AI" investors

Once Altman starts taking the public's money, then it is possible he could end up like Holmes or SBF

If that happens, journalists ("literati") will publish stories about it, these stories will be submitted to HN and HN commenters ("??????") will complain

Re: Sam Altman Won in Court Against Elon Musk. But, We All Lost

#119

Post by BobbyJo »

hallway_monitor wrote: post #101
BobbyJo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anyway to build intelligence that doesn't meet the definition of plagiarism you are using here? I remember when IP laws were looked at like a form of oppression in the tech community...

Yes, it is called paying for the use of copyrighted material which people put a lot of time and money into creating. Is this not obvious?

That would mean that the A.I. is no longer "plagiarizing" in your view?

Re: Sam Altman Won in Court Against Elon Musk. But, We All Lost

#120

Post by pdonis »

danaris wrote: post #117
pdonis wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I agree that Altman has made the AI situation worse. I think Altman was right that Google, and Microsoft and others for that matter, were going to pursue AI no matter what. Even if OpenAI had never existed and Altman had never pursued AI at all, we'd still have much the same situation we have now. Even if it's true that, if OpenAI had never existed and Altman had never pursued AI at all, we wouldn't have…

Sorry, my phrasing there was kind of poor: I didn't mean that he had made the overall AI situation worse, but rather that the AI he made was worse for the public than a hypothetical AI that was made with a deliberate eye to ethical or at least neutral behavior.

Ah, ok. I certainly agree with that. My question would be whether it's even possible for we humans as we are now to make an AI with a deliberate eye to ethical behavior. Sam Altman clearly is not someone who can do that (nor is Elon Musk, for that matter). But I'm not sure I know of anyone who is.
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