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OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

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Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#301

Post by mananaysiempre »

zirgs wrote: post #160
mananaysiempre wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stable Diffusion is accessible at no charge, but is neither free (libre) software nor open source, as their “don’t use for bad things” clauses run afoul of “freedom 0” aka “no discrimination against fields of endeavour” fundamental to both notions.

They have no way to enforce that "no bad things" clause. In practice they provide a product with no restrictions. Unlike other AI image generators - there's no keyword filter - you can input whatever you want in there.

Is that a “copyright law is unsalvageable, screw it, do crimes” that I’m hearing? I am not ... unsympathetic to that viewpoint. Until I come across any evidence at all that the SD license was written with it in mind, though, I can only believe that they meant what they wrote (or others did at their behest), and that they really did want to prohibit uses they don’t like on pain of civil and criminal prosecution. That’s a stance the current legal realities permit, but I cannot with a straight face associate it with FOSS.

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#302

Post by croes »

tapoxi wrote: post #202
bradleyjg wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They technically didn’t get rid of the non profit but instead formed a partially owned for profit subsidiary. In theory non profits are subject to oversight by the state of incorporation’s attorney general. In practice it’s mostly a free for all.

This is the loophole. It's what Mozilla did (Foundation created Corporation, and moved employees there), and even IKEA is technically owned by a nonprofit (Stichting INGKA Foundation).

Or Bertelsmann

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertelsmann_Stiftung

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#303

Post by gitgud »

AlexandrB wrote: post #181

> It is "hard for anyone except larger companies to benefit from the underlying technology," OpenAI stated. Ugh. This is the part of the recent AI advancement that annoys me the most. The web, at least in its infancy, was pretty accessible to individual hobbyists. You could run a web server on your own computer. AI technology seems highly centralized from the start.

> You could run a web server on your own computer. AI technology seems highly centralized from the start.

I compare the current AI hype to the mainframes of the past. Highly centralised systems that people logged into with a lightweight terminal to send commands.

Hopefully just like Personal Computers revolutionized computing, Personal AI models in the future will not run in the cloud...

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#304

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

college_physics wrote: post #14

"Open" as in "Open for Big Business"? The main reason to worry, though, is not the proprietary monetization of "AI" algorithms: Just like it was not an algorithm (pagerank) but the invention of adtech that spawned surveillance capitalism, here too the main question is what sort of "disruption" can this tech facilitate , as in which social contract will be violated in order to "create value". "Success" in "tech" has f…

I suppose the next step beyond surveillance capitalism, given the application of language models to robotic actuators [1], but also as a general trend, will be jobless capitalism.

Nowadays, companies and politicians, if one could make such a distinction just for the sake of the argument, will always tout the "job creation" aspect of a certain capitalistic endeavour. Give it a few months/years and we will hear the phrase "job elimination" more and more, from cashiers becoming "consultants" to the elimination of 90+% of interface jobs and beyond: does there really need to be a human hand to push the button for espresso? does there really need to be a bipedal human to move a package from A to B in a warehouse?

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/robot...

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#305

Post by fragsworth »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #293
mellosouls wrote: post #20

This seems an important article, if for no other reason than it brings the betrayal of its foundational claim still brazenly present in OpenAI's name from the obscurity of HN comments going back years into the public light and the mainstream. They've achieved marvellous things, OpenAI, but the pivot and long-standing refusal to deal with it honestly leaves an unpleasant taste, and doesn't bode well for the future, es…

>This seems an important article, if for no other reason than it brings the betrayal of its foundational claim still brazenly present in OpenAI's name from the obscurity of HN comments going back years into the public light and the mainstream. The thing is, it's probably a good thing. The "Open" part of OpenAI was always an almost suicidal bad mistake. The point of starting the company was to try and reduce p(doom) o…

I'm curious what you think makes them dangerous?

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#306

Post by gorbypark »

kgwgk wrote: post #234
nulbyte wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't. In the U.S., the assets of charity must be permanently dedicated to an exempt purpose. https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz... OpenAI is still a nonprofit. Their Financials are public. A lot of folks use "profit" in a hand-wavey sense to describe something they don't like, like an organization sitting on cash or paying key employees more than they expect. The organization may not be…

> OpenAI is still a nonprofit. But OpenAI isn’t a nonprofit. It all depends on what do you mean by OpenAI - and what you call OpenAI is not what they call OpenAI. https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp > Going forward (in this post and elsewhere), “OpenAI” refers to OpenAI LP (which now employs most of our staff), and the original entity is referred to as “OpenAI Nonprofit.”

Doesn't OpenAI Nonprofit own (maybe only 51% now that Microsoft owns the other 49%) OpenAI? I don't know how these things work, but it's kinda like how there's the Mozilla Foundation (non-profit) and the Mozilla Corporation. As described on Wikipedia, "the Mozilla Corporation is a tax-paying entity, which gives it much greater freedom in the revenue and business activities it can pursue".

I think it's all quite shady, but it seems like the parent company, which in theory holds 51% of the "profit-capped" company, is still a non-profit.

I wish someone, ideally from OpenAI, would clarify the situation.

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#307

Post by paintman252 »

JeremyNT wrote: post #261
narag wrote: post #163

Earlier 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."

That's just not true. I've been in many very online leftist communities and they also freely use it.

it's just general internet speak at this point

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#308

Post by numbers_guy »

JeremyNT wrote: post #297
numbers_guy wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing about language is that it isn't static, it changes over time. Sometimes a previously dominant usage will become eclipsed by a new one that emerges. There's nuance to the etymology of any word of course. In fact I sometimes see the extremely online left try to (ironically?) appropriate "based." But I think in the context we can all figure out which connotation Elon was using.

Yes I get that. My argument is, when some group you don't like starts adopting a word, your reaction should not be to politicize the word and shun it and pretend they stole it. Just keep using the word as you intend it and who cares about what some other dumbfucks think.

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#309

Post by startupsfail »

djyaz1200 wrote: post #286
rippercushions wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To quote Spaceballs, they're not doing it for money, they're doing it for a shitload of money.

They are following the Residential Real Estate Developer Playbook, always name your for profit exploitation project after the beautiful organic thing you destroyed to pave the way for it... Examples Whispering pines, Blue Heron Bay, OpenAI

Hadn’t OpenAI published all the key research results to repro ChatGPT? And made their model available to literally everyone? And contributed more than anyone else to AI alignment/safety?

To me it looks like nearly every other player, including open source projects are there for short term fame and profit, while it’s the OpenAI that is playing the long game of AI alignment.

Re: OpenAI is now everything it promised not to be: closed-source and for-profit

#310

Post by JohnFen »

stingraycharles wrote: post #166
olalonde wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird to me that this is even possible legally (turning a nonprofit into a for-profit).

It’s not difficult. I suspect it’s not as much as turning a non-profit into a for-profit, as it is about starting a new company and somehow transferring/licensing the IP from the old into the new.

Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe
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