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OpenAI's comment to the NTIA on open model weights

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Re: OpenAI's comment to the NTIA on open model weights

#31

Post by chefandy »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #20

Closed weight LLMs are unethical forms of theft that will privatize profits on a work that includes virtually all of humanity’s digital written work and serve to ultimately heighten wealth inequality as they get more sophisticated and start eliminating jobs. The only path forward is open model weights, Sam Altman is on the wrong side of history here, and I hope he fails to convince regulators.

Sure, but we should avoid talking about open access as a self-evidently beneficial end rather than a means to make things that benefit society. Coming from a an academic library background, I saw numerous open access arguments fall flat in front of decision makers because their champions didn't have any existing analog to point at, and hadn't bothered to consider concrete ways an inaccessible data set stopped them from improving society.

While open data is very important to me, personally, as someone who knows how to use raw data to do cool things, I'll be able to connect a lot of the loose wires I see sticking out of the for the benefit of humanity angle once we start making genuinely end-user-friendly applications that require neither payment nor understanding python module dependencies to install. I've got some sketches kicking around but I'm tapped for time for at least a couple of months.

Re: OpenAI's comment to the NTIA on open model weights

#32

Post by benreesman »

elicksaur wrote: post #25
benreesman wrote: post #9

This is just getting to be a wedge issue for me: this isn’t ok and it has to stop. It’s weekly if not daily some new godawful thing comes up. I just found about the revoked “GPT Detector” thing, that was a non-ridiculous case that the real safety people have some pull, but they took it down with precision and recall numbers you don’t take it down at. These are the villains in the story, and it’s not, like a credible…

Your understanding of society’s use of AI is not in line with reality. Your opinion that a 23% true positive rate with a 9% false positive rate is ok is not in line with general principles (not even just Western-centric) of the burden of proof of guilt. Only 23% of US adults have tried ChatGPT,[1] so to say that we live “in a world where so much AI in human writing” as you do in another comment is simply false. Even…

You can just have different standards for when you apply it: I want this thing on political ads.

Don’t fire people or accuse them of plagiarism because of it. That would be stupid no matter how good it was.

Re: OpenAI's comment to the NTIA on open model weights

#33

Post by saintfire »

I was immediately reminded of Gavin Belson from Silicon Valley saying:

"I don't know about you people, but I don't want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do."

Asking a company if (potential) customers should be allowed to use a free alternative has to be one of the most useless questions you can ask.

Re: OpenAI's comment to the NTIA on open model weights

#34

Post by CuriouslyC »

chefandy wrote: post #30
error9348 wrote: post #14

Q3-7 & Q3-5d get to the workability. I don't think OpenAI responds to that part of the RFC. Meta's comment on that issue seems to be fairly clear, they oppose the proposed rules on KYC for IaaS and are "not aware of technical capabilities that could not be overcome by determined, well-resourced, and capable actors". https://www.ntia.gov/sites/default/files/publications/open_m... https://about.fb.com/wp-content/upload…

The fact is though, every corporate actor in this entire landscape is just playing their hand. Anybody's stance on anything at any given moment doesn't mean they're more or less ethical-- the moment they perceive a strategic benefit to walling everything off which would surpass the PR cost, they will. They've probably already got PR folks workshopping angles for the press release.

This is true to a degree though there are high profile actors such as Yann LeCunn who have ethical boundaries. Yann wants AI to be open source and available to all, and he's straight up said that he won't work for a company that doesn't follow this principle. Zuck might not have a hand to play in terms of AI products, but even if he did he'd have to tread carefully because the guy that sets his whole AI direction and stewards all their research would 100% walk if he wasn't happy with the ethical direction of the company.

Re: OpenAI's comment to the NTIA on open model weights

#35

Post by simonw »

benreesman wrote: post #22
drngdds wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those seem like really bad numbers to me, considering the base rate fallacy. Most of what people test with something like that is probably not going to be AI-generated, which could mean getting massive numbers of false positives.

Then watermark the output and say if they wrote it. Between a binary classifier in the age of adversarial training, and any level of watermarking, you’d be able to say which minor version printed it.

I don't think it's possible to watermark AI generated text in a way that can't be easily removed by someone who simply switches a word around or adds a typo.

Re: OpenAI's comment to the NTIA on open model weights

#36

Post by simonw »

benreesman wrote: post #15
simonw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you're saying about GPT detectors. Are you angry that people are promoting detectors that don't work, or are you angry that OpenAI used to offer one and no longer do?

The latter, in the context of the justification. It was pulled because while it caught on the order of 25 of pure AI output, it missed the rest. But I’m cool with that number, in a world where so much AI in human writing? That’s a total win on low-effort propaganda. Anyone should be cool with that number. Unfortunately they had to pull it because something like 9% of human authored text got hit with the AI flag. Agai…

A great deal of harm is being caused by "AI detectors" today.

There is an endless stream of stories about students who have their work flagged as "AI generated" by a detector when it wasn't - and then get failing grades, from teachers who don't understand that AI detectors are inherently inaccurate.

Here's a paper about how unreliable they are from last year: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.11156

OpenAI shutting down theirs was the right call.

Re: OpenAI's comment to the NTIA on open model weights

#37

Post by [deleted] »

not2b wrote: post #8
threeseed wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you think they would voluntarily disclose this to the public ? Companies are typically required to keep this information private.

I think that they are trying to scare regulators into banning truly open LLMs as too dangerous and instead trusting "responsible" people like Altman to keep things safe.

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI's comment to the NTIA on open model weights

#40

Post by lolinder »

sadeshmukh wrote: post #38

I'm a little confused why everybody seems to want to mandate open weights. Maybe a system similar to copyright, but by mandating open weights on a system they developed, it somewhat stifles creativity.

Sorry, who's the "everybody" who wants to mandate open weights? The only discussion I'm familiar with is that some people and governments want to ban open weights. Where are you seeing people argue for mandating them?
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