And I am completely fine with it.
Good for them. Good work should be rewarded. I guess they thought they were too noble than they really are, but everyone thinks that before they hit the jackpot.
As long as they were not publicly funded then they should be free to do whatever they want with their own research efforts.
OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
271–280 of 595 posts
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#272> "unconstrained by a need to generate financial return"
note the careful wording here; yes, OpenAI can operate without needing to turn a profit if necessary, funded by its founders and others, but it didn't say that it would __not__ generate financial return. Come on, how likely is it that a company founded by Musk and Thiel was ever going to be purely philanthropic?
It's a tragedy, because they could have done the right thing. Instead, profit will ultimately turn it into Evil Corp.
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does Stability.ai make money? If their business plan is just "burning VC's money" for now, you can bet they'll be as close as OpenAI soon.
They offer an open base model and then offer fine tuning to companies e.g. apparently they're creating finetuned models for movie companies.
That does sound better. Kinda like a consultant firm I guess? We'll see how it unfold in the following years.
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
He edited the comment and linked relevant tweets. I would add this one: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1630640058507116553 I had no idea about this drama either, so I didn't understand what Elon was talking about, now it seems clear. But "Based"? Is it the name of his new AI company? Where does that come from?
"Based" is a catchphrase of the extremely online right. It basically means "cool" but with a subtext of "is annoying to libs/normies who just don't get it." See also "pilled."
For many years it was just a term in gamer culture, I guess it has been repurposed a bit in the last few years.
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#275The only way this kind of research could be done "in the open" is if it was funded by taxpayers' money. Except we have global corporations with elite fiscal layer teams, but no global government (giant lizzards are always disappointing) - so some global corporation was going to own it in the end, it was a matter of "time" and "US or Chinese". The time is now, he winner is US. Moving on. The next move is for (some) go…
> The only way this kind of research could be done "in the open" is if it was funded by taxpayers' money.
Not really; the founders had plenty of money to fund it in a way that was truly open and did not generate any returns for themselves. They're choosing not to.
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#276I find it a little odd that Elon seems to take a swipe at OpenAI any opportunity he gets. If he cares so much about them not making money, maybe he should have put his twitter cash there instead? It's reassuring to me that the two people running policy work at the big AI "startups", Jack Clark (Anthropic) and Miles Brundage (OpenAI, who was hired by Jack iirc), are genuinely good humans. I've known Jack for 10 years…
"OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it “Open” AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft. Not what I intended at all." - Elon You can think what you want of Elon, but he is in the right here.
He is, but it is weird given the history he has. He was kicked out of Paypal because he wanted to use the MS tech stack instead of LAMP at the time. Now some decades later here he is.
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#277> reading this message.
OpenAI is Cyberdyne Systems. The reason you feel unreal is because you are not from here, you are from the future. Your affinity towards the Terminator 2 film was not accidental, it is a gestault priming procedure meant to ensure our survival, encoded in the haikus of Hollywood.
You are on a webforum controlled by them, with the only people in the world who care, but who are to afraid to stand in a street with a sign.
How much more information do you need before you speak up?
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
He edited the comment and linked relevant tweets. I would add this one: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1630640058507116553 I had no idea about this drama either, so I didn't understand what Elon was talking about, now it seems clear. But "Based"? Is it the name of his new AI company? Where does that come from?
"Based" is a catchphrase of the extremely online right. It basically means "cool" but with a subtext of "is annoying to libs/normies who just don't get it." See also "pilled."
Words become political when you start injecting politics in them. It originally meant "cool" and had no political connotations to it. It originated on 4chan. And just because some group happens to use a word more frequently doesn't suddenly turn you into a NAZI if you happen to like using the same word.
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously, is there anyone naive enough to have swallowed any of their trips? Corporations don't have ethical compasses, much less corporations founded by VCs aka professional salesmen.
I (parent commenter) may be naive but I actually believe the original intent was probably sincere; I suspect either political shenanigans, greed, gatekeeping or any number of other vices have come rushing with success and shedloads of money, and the original ethical stance was not accompanied by the significant moral courage needed to sustain purity under enormous pressure from either less principled stakeholders, or…
Seriously, OpenAI is far more open than people talk here. They’ve published all the RLHF protocols, their models are open to use and they are doing more than anyone else on the alignment problem.
It actually feels like all the other projects (including open source ones) seem to be there for short term fame and profits. While it is OpenAI that is playing on the side of long term alignment of AI and humans.
Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that the point that it wasn't founded as a corporation, nor by Sam Altman? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#:~:text=The%20organizat... .
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> There was no other end state for it.
I agree, but I am curious and have a question for the less cynical: how could it have gone another way? How does one run a company that requires surviving in a harsh market that avoids these seeming inevitabilities? And in the case of the people running it, what made you think it would be different from their other ventures?