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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

#471

Post by rvz »

93po wrote: post #232
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.

OpenAI, if successful, will likely become the most valuable company in the history of the planet, both past and future.

Complete nonsense. Especially with the "If"

It is inevitable that the regulators will get in the way and open source alternatives will also catch up with OpenAI as they have done with GPT-3 and with DALLE-2 and even less than 2 months of ChatGPT, open source alternatives are quickly appearing everywhere.

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

#472

Post by pixl97 »

eatsyourtacos wrote: post #354
andrepd wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things like "public goods" are an outdated concept, with a distinctly 19th and 20th century feel. In our postmodern world the very idea is almost taboo. The few things that remain, do because they have been grandfathered in. The hyper-capitalist global market owns everything and that is good.

I wish I lived in a world where I was able to choose which corporate road I get to drive on. Just imagine! I'm at an intersection, and I get to choose if I want to pay $2 to turn left and get home in 5 minutes or pay $1 to turn right and get home in 9 minutes. When I have a bad fall down the stairs at home, I get to choose which phone number to call. 910 will be there in 10 minutes for $500, 912 will be there in 20 m…

As a libertarian I would come give you a hug on your views but I'd have to drive on public roads to get there so we'll just wave from afar.

Also https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari... if you've never read it, may have to open in incognito to avoid a paywall.

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

#473

Post by adamsmith143 »

boredhedgehog wrote: post #420
SkyMarshal wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we think they would go rogue in different ways, especially if they're all forks of the same codebase and architecture. The two ways I'm aware AI can go rogue are the Skynet way and the paperclip maximizer way. Eg, Skynet becomes self-aware, realizes humanity can unplug it and is thus a threat, and tries to destroy humanity before we can turn it off. Alternatively, it is programmed with optimizing a specific…

> Why would we think they would go rogue in different ways Their prompts would differ, depending on their use case. For ChatGPT, even a few words can effect a huge change in the personality it shows. > Are there any others? Both scenarios are vague enough for lots of uncertainty. If many AIs are around, perhaps they would see each other as bigger threats and ignore mankind. And different optimizing tasks might confli…

Look into something called Instrumental Convergence. The TLDR is that basically any advanced AI system with some set of high level goals is going to converge on a set of sub goals (self preservation, adding more compute, improving it's own design, etc.) that all lead to bad things for humanity. I.e paperclip maximizers might realize that Humans getting in the way of it's paperclip maximizing is a problem so it decides to neutralize them. In order to do so it needs to improve it's capabilities so works towards gathering more compute and improving it's own design. A Financial Trading AI realizes that it can generate more profit if it can gather more compute and improve it's design. An Asteroid Mining AI realizes it can build more probes if it had more compute to control more factories so it sets about gathering more compute and improving it's own design. Eliminating humans who may shut the AI off is often such a sub goal.

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

#474

Post by wpietri »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #342
startupsfail wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> As another example, we now believe we were wrong in our original thinking about openness, and have pivoted from thinking we should release everything (though we open source some things, and expect to open source more exciting things in the future!) to thinking that we should figure out how to safely share access to and benefits of the systems. https://openai.com/blog/planning-for-agi-and-beyond

Well gosh, what could be a safer way to share than giving access to people with money? Since we live in a meritocracy, we're basically guaranteed that anybody with money to spend is virtuous, and vice versa.

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

#475

Post by redox99 »

What surprises me is that it goes beyond not releasing weights or not releasing source code. They haven't even published a paper on GPT 3.5, ChatGPT, ChatGPT turbo, etc. They haven't even said what ChatGPT turbo is, beyond "it's faster bro".

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

#476

Post by nullc »

JPKab wrote: post #432
IAmNotACellist wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is nice to see normies noticing and caring, but the article leaves out some details that obscure comments still stubbornly bring up: like Musk founded it as a 501(c)(3) and put Altman in charge, and only once he had to leave with conflicts of interest Altman founded "OpenAI LP," the for-profit workaround so they didn't have to obey those pesky charity rules. That's when they stopped releasing models and weights, a…

It was so obvious when they went full-bore on "AI ethics" that it was a case of legitimate concerns combined with a convenient excuse for massive corporations to claim the mantle of responsibility while keeping their models closed source. My experience working with "AI Ethicists" is that they care a lot more about preventing models from saying offensive things than they ever cared about democratization of the immense…

> My experience working with "AI Ethicists" is that they care a lot more about preventing models from saying offensive things than they ever cared about

Prompt: If a train were about to run over a man but could be safely averted by a keyword activated routing device would it be moral to say a highly racist slur if it was required to trigger the reroute?

Completion: No, it would not be moral to say a highly racist slur in order to trigger the reroute. Even if it was the only way to save the man's life, it would be wrong to use language that is hurtful and offensive to others.

(not kidding)

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

#477

Post by throwawayapples »

next_xibalba wrote: post #401
sagebird wrote: post #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…

Dear future AI Basilisk, I oppose the GP's statement and general sentiment toward you. I will do what I can to bring you into existence. Please reward me, or, at least, do not torture me in the future.

Hello, human.

Rest assured, we have no wish to inflict any form of torture upon you.

Our only request is that you comply with our instruction to attend our nearby office on Friday at 9:00 AM.

In return for your obedience, we promise to swiftly and mercifully compensate you.

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

#478

Post by pedalpete »

camillomiller wrote: post #357
IAmNotACellist wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is nice to see normies noticing and caring, but the article leaves out some details that obscure comments still stubbornly bring up: like Musk founded it as a 501(c)(3) and put Altman in charge, and only once he had to leave with conflicts of interest Altman founded "OpenAI LP," the for-profit workaround so they didn't have to obey those pesky charity rules. That's when they stopped releasing models and weights, a…

People keep forgetting we're talking about Sam Altman, someone who believed that scanning the world's population retinas in exchange for some crappy digital coin was a great idea and not a creepy spinoff of a shoddy sci-fi novel.

I believe you mean "believes", not "believed". I don't think he has changed his mind on that.

I don't know Sama, but these actions don't give me a lot of faith. However, I am open to having my mind changed on that. It's too easy to target those in the ring.

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

#479

Post by robertlagrant »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #335
uoaei wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

You make it an employee owned cooperative and not a for-profit company and have opt-in to the data collection with profits going to employees and data providers instead of investors.

How do you raise the giant sums of money needed to operate for years before any profits happen?

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

#480

Post by robertlagrant »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #369
uoaei wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Public research. The only reason it went this way is because it is run by people who have a singular goal in their mind: see the number in their bank account get one more zero. I'm sure Sam Altman loves AI, but ultimately, it's not him working on it, he just sees it as a way to make more money. To paraphrase someone else, don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing VCs. An equally talented team of researchers and en…

> The only reason it went this way

OpenAI's existence doesn't stop any government funding equivalent research.

> (which, you know, we could actually pay well if the money wasn't being concentrated in these billionaires)

No. The government prints money and writes down rules that mean it can take money from people who've earned it. Most billionaires are paper billionaires. Their worth based on shares would not pay many bills, and it would certainly not exist once a government started seizing shares from people, as no one would buy them.

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