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Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

openai.com

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Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#161

I'm struggling to think of a federal job in which having ChatGPT would make them more productive. I can think of many ways to generate more bullshit and emails, however. Can someone help me out?

The government has a lot of text to process, and LLMs are good at processing text, and they can be implemented pretty safely in these roles. An obvious example might be: Someone who is trying to accomplish a task, but needs to verify the legal authorization/justification/guidelines etc to do that task. If they don't have the specific regulation memorized (e.g. the one person who was doing this esoteric task for 20 ye…

But does the job of verifying that LLM output outweigh the job of just doing the search the old fashioned way? Probably, but we'll skip verification, just like always. This is the scariest feature of LLMs; Failure is built into the design of the system, but people just laugh and call the failures "hallucinations" and move on.

The efficiency gains from AI come entirely from trusting a system that can't be trusted

Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#162

$1 for the next year and once you are embedded, jack up prices. That’s not exactly a new trick. Lots of cool training data to collect too.

I will admit i thought the same initially. But the article does say > ChatGPT Enterprise already does not use business data, including inputs or outputs, to train or improve OpenAI models. The same safeguards will apply to federal use.

Just trust me bro.

Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#163
post #30

Right now AI is in the grow at all costs phase. So for the most part access to AI is way cheaper than it will be in the next 5-10 years. All these companies will eventually have to turn a profit. Once that happens, they'll be forced to monetize in whatever way they can. Enterprise will obviously have higher subscriptions. But I'm predicting for non-enterprise that eventually ads will be added in some way. What's scar…

> Ads will be added in some way

I can think of a far more effective way of delivering ads than the old-school ad boxes..

"The ads for this request are: x,y,z. Subtly weave them into your response to the user"

I mean this is obviously the way they'll go right?

Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes to all of the above.

Interesting! Care to share literally any details about their capex and build out so we can understand the amount of compute that's being made available or is the burden of evidence on people who are trying to remain grounded?

Google reported an estimated 2025 AI CapEx of around $85 billion. I don’t know how much is inference vs training (or shared), and Google is quite proud of using a whole bunch of their own chips. Much of the data on how much money is spent where is public.

In any event, one can make some generalizations about the companies involved. Nvidia makes excellent hardware that everyone wants and charges large enough markups that their margins are around 90%. AMD is chasing the big buyers to sell their products. Google spends a lot and is a mature company, and they seem uninterested in selling chips that compete with Nvidia, but they certainly care about revenue and profit. OpenAI, Anthropic, etc and, perhaps oddly, Meta don’t seem to care too much about profit, but they certainly spend enough money that it would help them to get more bang for their buck. Alibaba, etc buy whatever Nvidia gear they can get, but they have a lot of incentive to find a domestic supplier, and Huawei seems quite interested in becoming that supplier. And there are plenty of US startups (Cerebras and others) going after the inference market.

Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this scenario, are you in the country illegally? If so, how is this any different than an immigration court serving you for a hearing? I get that immigration law enforcement is all the rage to rage about right now, but is this a threat of AI? I think the argument you might be trying to make is that based on Kroger submitting you grocery bill and VISA with your totals everywhere else, and the tickets you bought for…

In this scenario, are you in the country illegally? If so, how is this any different than an immigration court serving you for a hearing? The US and most other countries have a legal concept called presumption of innocence, where you're not guilty of illegal actions until you've been through due process. A hearing would be the beginning of due process. An officer showing up at your door is not due process, so you als…

True, but beside the point. Presumption of innocence applies to criminal proceedings, and only to criminal proceedings. If a public prosecutor is trying to land you in jail. No other cases. It does not apply to immigration proceedings, juveniles, tax law, family law, contract law, administrative law ...

A judge is allowed to take the IRS's word, without evidence, that you've violated tax law.

A judge is allowed to take anyone's word, without evidence, or even without a complaint at all, to lock any minor in juvie (which "is not prison"), or take them away from their parents.

A judge is allowed to take the word of a business that someone violated a clause in a contract, without evidence, even if the other party denies it.

The ONLY thing a judge is not allowed to do is to take ONLY the word of a public prosecutor that you've committed a crime. A police testimony or some other form of proof is required to make the difference between guilty and innocent. But nothing else. A judge can add to a sentence because the prosecutor says, without any proof, "he almost hit a girl in the street with his after the robbery", for example.

Of course, a judge, including an immigration judge is ALSO allowed to require proof anyway for any proceeding. However, immigration judges are appointed and fired at will by the state department. So if an immigration judge actually does that, it'll stand, but it'll probably be the his last act as a judge. In other words, if you want this, it needs to be bad enough that the judge is willing to risk/sacrifice their career over it.

Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#166

OK, so every agentic prompt injection concern and/or data access concern basically immediately becomes worst case scenario with this, right? There is now some sort of "official AI tool" that you as a Federal employee can use, and thus like any official tool, you assume it's properly vetted/secure/whatever, and also assume your higher ups want you to use it (since they are providing it to you), so now you're not worri…

This high scope argument already existed with aws style providers and palantir and in practice is a bit of a nothingburger. I doubt openai would do retention or training on purpose, too much to lose.

Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#168
post #30

Right now AI is in the grow at all costs phase. So for the most part access to AI is way cheaper than it will be in the next 5-10 years. All these companies will eventually have to turn a profit. Once that happens, they'll be forced to monetize in whatever way they can. Enterprise will obviously have higher subscriptions. But I'm predicting for non-enterprise that eventually ads will be added in some way. What's scar…

Except that LLMs doesn't benefit from economies of scale. And they don't have that much brand uniqueness, to retain customers, except some hearsay and "vibes". So if a lot of new free tier customers join it is net negative, because each of their queries has the same load as paid users. And company can't degrade LLM too much, because there is no uniqueness and free customers will just flee to the competitor.

I'm thinking that this ClosedAI strategy is not primarily focused on acquiring new independent users, but more focused at making itself deeply entrenched everywhere. So when the "payday" comes and the immense debt will be due, Sam will just ask ask government to bail them out because they would depend on them a lot, and it will. Maybe not directly bail, but provide new investments with favorable terms, etc.

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