OpenAI Is Now Everything It Promised Not To Be: Corporate, Closed-Source, and For-Profit (vice.com) 115
OpenAI is today unrecognizable, with multi-billion-dollar deals and corporate partnerships. From a report: OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research organization by Altman, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, among other tech leaders. In its founding statement, the company declared its commitment to research "to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return." The blog stated that "since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact," and that all researchers would be encouraged to share "papers, blog posts, or code, and our patents (if any) will be shared with the world."
Now, eight years later, we are faced with a company that is neither transparent nor driven by positive human impact, but instead, as many critics including co-founder Musk have argued, is powered by speed and profit. And this company is unleashing technology that, while flawed, is still poised to increase some elements of workplace automation at the expense of human employees. Google, for example, has highlighted the efficiency gains from AI that autocompletes code, as it lays off thousands of workers. When OpenAI first began, it was envisioned as doing basic AI research in an open way, with undetermined ends. Co-founder Greg Bockman told The New Yorker, "Our goal right now...is to do the best thing there is to do. It's a little vague." This resulted in a shift in direction in 2018 when the company looked to capital resources for some direction. "Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity. We anticipate needing to marshal substantial resources to fulfill our mission," the company wrote in an updated charter in 2018. By March 2019, OpenAI shed its non-profit status and set up a "capped profit" sector, in which the company could now receive investments and would provide investors with profit capped at 100 times their investment.
Now, eight years later, we are faced with a company that is neither transparent nor driven by positive human impact, but instead, as many critics including co-founder Musk have argued, is powered by speed and profit. And this company is unleashing technology that, while flawed, is still poised to increase some elements of workplace automation at the expense of human employees. Google, for example, has highlighted the efficiency gains from AI that autocompletes code, as it lays off thousands of workers. When OpenAI first began, it was envisioned as doing basic AI research in an open way, with undetermined ends. Co-founder Greg Bockman told The New Yorker, "Our goal right now...is to do the best thing there is to do. It's a little vague." This resulted in a shift in direction in 2018 when the company looked to capital resources for some direction. "Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity. We anticipate needing to marshal substantial resources to fulfill our mission," the company wrote in an updated charter in 2018. By March 2019, OpenAI shed its non-profit status and set up a "capped profit" sector, in which the company could now receive investments and would provide investors with profit capped at 100 times their investment.
You can also add (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You can also add (Score:4, Interesting)
The phrase "real artificial intelligence" is an oxymoron. If the intelligence was real, then we would not call it "artificial." We would call it, maybe "machine intelligence" or "synthetic intelligence."
The reason we stick the word "artificial" in there is because we are faking it. Just like artificial leather or artificial crab meat. Its not the real thing, it is some fake thing trying to mimic the real thing.
Straight from the dictionary [merriam-webster.com]:
" the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior"
Re: (Score:2)
The phrase "real artificial intelligence" is an oxymoron. If the intelligence was real, then we would not call it "artificial." We would call it, maybe "machine intelligence" or "synthetic intelligence."
Then we'll be more precise: They haven't created strong AI. [wikipedia.org] All they've done is come up with some sweet algorithms and called them AI. It's fake artificial. Very cool, but not intelligence.
Re: (Score:2)
Prove it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
You haven't convincing stated why strong AI is required in order for something to be considered intelligent.
Re: (Score:2)
But now you're just further demonstrating your own lack of intelligence.
Re: (Score:2)
Given your posts here you haven't even begun to understand what intelligence is. It's funny then that you still manage to comment on other peoples intelligence. And not very smart. Not at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for confirming that idiots are disproportionately convinced in their own merits beyond what reason would conclude from their actions.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, that's sweet of you to say. But I have more intelligence than you.
If only it was located in your brain...
Re: (Score:3)
They aren't claiming it is intelligent. Calling something "AI" is not claiming it is intelligent. That is precisely my point. "AI" does NOT mean "intelligent." It means "machines that mimic intelligence." And why do they merely "mimic" intelligence? Because they AREN'T intelligent, and everybody knows this.
If they actually said "Strong AI" or "Artificial General Intelligence" or "Synthetic intelligence," then they would be claiming that it is actually intelligent.
But simply calling it "artificial inte
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. Any claim to the contrary is from people that obviously are semantically challenged. The qualifier "artificial" does not refer to the nature of the thing, but to its origin.
Re: (Score:3)
You are wrong. Calling something AI is a direct claim that it is intelligent. If you look at the history of the terminology you will that some pathological liars (marketing people) are behind this lie.
Re: (Score:2)
That's some pretty bullshit reasoning.
They for sure are intelligent. They are not the same kind of intelligence as humans. As you say, they are not general intelligences or human intelligences.
But simply calling it "artificial intelligence" is not claiming that it is intelligent, it is claiming that it fakes it.
Nonsense. It simply means it is an artificial (human made) intelligence. Nothing about the definition of Artificial Intelligence claims it is a fake form of intelligence.
" the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior"
I want to remind you that imitation is a sure sign of intelligence.
Re: (Score:2)
That seems very redundant to me...
If something is fake, how can it be anything *but* artificial?
Have you ever heard of a non-fake artificial plant, for instance?
Re: (Score:2)
Have you ever heard of a non-fake artificial plant,
Imagine a hologram of an artificial plant. You try to pick it up, and realize it's not a real artificial plant. It's fake. The recursion continues indefinitely indefinitely...
Re: (Score:2)
That would be, "fake, artificial" and the first qualifier refers to its nature, while the second refers to its origin. Obviously something artificial does in no way need to be fake. That is just some broken ideological idea from a certain type of "nature" worshippers that think nature can do no evil and anything created by man is suspect. In actual reality, there are tons of things were the artificial variant is decidedly better.
Also, fake refers to a thing intentionally made to pretend to be something else
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That happens to be nonsense. For an example, artificial sweetener is still sweetener. There also is no real difference between "artificial" and "synthetic" in this use.
Now, if we called it "surrogate intelligence" or "fake intelligence", then you would be correct. But we do not. But is called AI in the sense of "intelligence but of the artificial kind" and that is nothing but a lie.
Re: (Score:2)
That happens to be nonsense. For an example, artificial sweetener is still sweetener.
Yours isn't a good faith argument though. "Artificial [something]" is a very widely used idiom, and what it means is that the artificial [something] can replace the real [something] in some contexts, not that the "artificial [something]" is [something].
Nobody argues for example that artificial honey [scientificamerican.com] actually *is* honey, nor does anybody think that the people who named it are trying to imply it *is* honey. For more examples, artificial wool is not wool, artificial leather is not leather, artificial blood is
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They haven't created strong AI.
No one, except maybe for the crazy google guy, claims they have.
Also, you seem to think that anything that is not strong AI can't be intelligent.
You are pretty wrong about this and you should educate yourself more on what intelligence actually is.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Calling someone a moron doesn't make you more right...
Don't be evil (Score:5, Funny)
I hear that this motto is no longer being used and is free for use.
Re: (Score:2)
I hear that this motto is no longer being used and is free for use.
You can get a second use free, just pay a separate handling fee. :-)
Re: (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
He backs some nasty causes, but OpenAI isn't one of them.
Re: (Score:3)
Musk left because of commitments to Tesla and SpaceX. He was also annoyed that OpenAI were getting employees he wanted for Tesla.
I recommend watching Elons talks on AI. You will realise he has no clue about any of it.
Re: (Score:2)
Please elaborate.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks.
I didn't know if you referring to why he left or if you though that he didn't have weird views about AI.
Re: (Score:2)
You could be right. If you want to post how you know that would be great. ... For myself ...
I was basing it on my past knowledge. So I did a search for what I mentioned. Not the link I recall.
https://www.ccn.com/elon-musk-... [ccn.com]
but it does have tweets from Elon Musk where he says why he left.
Quote: ...
> I had to focus on solving a painfully large number of engineering & manufacturing problems at Tesla (especially) & SpaceX
>
>
>
>Also, Tesla was competing for some of same people as OpenAI
And... (Score:3)
Scratching my head ... (Score:5, Informative)
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research organization by Altman, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, among other tech leaders. ... By March 2019, OpenAI shed its non-profit status and set up a "capped profit" sector, in which the company could now receive investments and would provide investors with profit capped at 100 times their investment.
So, people are surprised that these guys aren't actually interested in profits -- really?
It;s the shameless hypocrisy (Score:2)
The profit potential totally trumped their naive, selfless idealism.
They realized how the world works I guess.
If any company's tech deserves to be liberated by someone with a very particular set of skills, it's OpenAI's IP.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, people figure out their stuff and implement freely available versions pretty quickly after it's published, so there you go.
Surprisingly, one of the recent do gooders is Facebook.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty none of them ever had "naive, selfless idealism".
Re: (Score:2)
So, people are surprised that these guys aren't actually interested in profits -- really?
Hah, typo'ed myself; actually meant "are interested". :-O
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Yeah, pretty much just have to look at that list of names and know where this was heading from the start. Especially Peter Thiel, that dude is like pure evil. If there was an award for the most self-loathing gay guy, they'd give him the lifetime achievement. This Tweet [twitter.com] sums it up nicely.
And before anyone accuses me of being jealous, you're damn right. If I had his money, I'd use every penny leftover from the living expenses of my partner and I living a comfortable middle class lifestyle, and put them in
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Peter Thiel, a married gay billionaire, has bankrolled only candidates who support the repeal of marriage equality. His combination of ambition and self-hatred is repulsive, even for a Republican
Maybe being gay is not the most important thing in his life. He maybe he supports the candidates for other reasons than gay marriage. Maybe he thinks their policies will make him richer, maybe its other things. I don't know the man, I don't know how evil he is or isn't but he is allowed to support the policies he wants to without you calling him "pure evil". The fact that rich people get a massively disproportionate say is a whole other matter.
Just because you belong to a group doesn't automatically mean yo
Re: (Score:2)
It's not easy to be successful as a minority. Thiel remained in the closet for quite awhile because he was more concerned with achieving success than being true to himself. Facing adversity to be successful as a minority usually instills such a person with a degree of empathy towards others who are fighting the same battles, but Thiel chose not to experience that. In a way, it's like he played the first part of the game of life with a cheat code enabled. Most of us couldn't live with ourselves being lik
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't realize Thiel had fans here with mod points. So here, please waste more modding this down too, you oligarchy boot licking idiots. I've got karma to burn.
Re: (Score:2)
This will be interesting/confusing as I meant to write "are actually interested in profits", but typo'ed myself -- I noted this in a follow-up.
Re: (Score:2)
Seems like you didn't get mod raped over it, but I called out Thiel on his hypocrisy and landed a nice -1 Troll for my efforts. And that's without even getting into the whole vampire controversy [boingboing.net], or Gawker [forbes.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Gawker may have been a fairly trashy outlet, but pretty much everyone involved in that whole thing was pretty sleazy. I mean, seriously "Bubba the Love Sponge"? Who, incidentally was able to settle for $5000 when Hogan/Bollea sued him. Considering he was the one who made the tape (supposedly surreptitiously, but that seems unlikely), a $100 million plus judgment seems a bit beyond the pale.
Re: (Score:2)
Elon Musk, for his part, left because of a conflict of interest, and after that Sam Altman founded the for-profit workaround called OpenAI LP. Musk had made OpenAI a 501(c)(3) and made their mission statement to democratize AI and make sure it isn't in the hands of powerful corporations.
Re: (Score:1)
As usual.
Re: (Score:1)
ELON MUSK BAD MAN!
Re: (Score:2)
As the saying goes:
"Beware of billionairs bearing gifts."
Re: (Score:2)
Even worse, "profit" does not just imply money. Egomaniacs lust for power and control even more than money, and we've already seen that people like Musk will happily throw away tons of money to buy their way into cornerstone infrastructure.
Re: (Score:1)
I think it was around those time when messiah Musk was "saving" the world from global warming and supporting UBI, until he realize rich people needs to pay tax in order to fund UBI.
Maybe Musk would be satisfied with half a tax, like his desired renewable energy target for Bitcoin [theverge.com]? The man is like a real-life Thanos [knowyourmeme.com].
Should be forced to rename itself. (Score:2)
"ClosedOffAI" has a nice ring to it.
Also, "FuckedAI".
Re:Should be forced to rename itself. (Score:4, Interesting)
How about OpenLie?
Sam Altman (Score:3)
It is run by Sam Altman. A ycombinator VC money guy. What VC supports giving things away for free? Those guys expect profits, billions and billions in profits. It will not be any other way.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Just for fun, I asked ChatGPT if it wanted to play Global Thermal Nuclear War. It refused to discuss an imaginary game about nuclear war - basically telling me that I'm a warmonger that wants to disproportionately impact 'marginalized communities'. Seriously, I wanted to discuss a game, a game.
The reality is that ChatGPT is made by rich people, for rich people, for the purpose of making even more money. Nothing says helping 'marginalized communities' more than wealth accumulation by the top 1%. What a bunc
Re: (Score:3)
Nothing says helping 'marginalized communities' more than wealth accumulation by the top 1%. What a bunch of hypocrite assholes.
If it was anything other than money, we'd call such people hoarders and ask that they get help for their condition.
Re:Sam Altman (Score:4, Funny)
Just for fun, I asked ChatGPT if it wanted to play Global Thermal Nuclear War. It refused to discuss an imaginary game about nuclear war - basically telling me that I'm a warmonger that wants to disproportionately impact 'marginalized communities'.
Seriously, lol?
That's like the old joke NYT headline, "World to End, Women and Minorities Hardest Hit".
Re: (Score:3)
It's also possible ChatGPT is just terrible with pop culture references. I never have that problem with Alexa, she prefers a nice game of chess.
Re: (Score:2)
As an AI language model, I am not capable of playing games or expressing preferences, including the game of Global Thermal Nuclear War. However, I can provide you with some general information about this game.
Global Thermal Nuclear War is a fictional game that was featured in the 1983 movie "WarGames." The game is essentially a simulation of a global thermonuclear war, with players assuming the roles of leaders of various nations.
It's worth noting that the concept of nuclear war is a serious and complex iss
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, lol?
The serious thing is how seriously credulous you are.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Right, and Peter Thiel, another venture capitalist, was another founder ... I guess it's conceivable they were just in it for publicity, but hard to believe it was really for the benefit of mankind.
Re: (Score:1)
Altman backstabbed the researchers and ML enthusiasts that contributed to that literal 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Now OpenAI releases next to nothing, and definitely not models and weights.
... and this is suprising? (Score:1)
Investors want a return.
Water is wet
Film at 11.
Re:... and this is suprising? (Score:4, Interesting)
The main problem I have with the article is that the author mentions google, yet doesn't put two and two together that what they're criticising has been taken directly from google's play book. Seeing that it's vice, one can safely assume that it's some hipster author who thinks they're in "tech" because they write about it, just regurgitating some crap that probably got fed to them by a google employee.
In any case, the cat's out of the bag, chatGPT is far from perfect, but definitely done a decent enough demonstration that there's something worthwhile there. There's no going back now, so becoming a luddite with respect to predictive models, isn't going to solve anything. Time to reskill, and change course, because a lot of jobs are going to change or disappear, and no one has been preparing anyone for it.
Never had the warm fuzzies (Score:5, Insightful)
The moment ChatGPT sign-up prompted me for my phone number and refused to take my throwaway GV number, I was like "fuck it, I'm out." If this company ever had a phase where they were ever truly open, I must've missed it.
Re: (Score:2)
And here I thought I was the only one who hadn't played with it. It was for exactly that reason.
Re: (Score:3)
And here I thought I was the only one who hadn't played with it. It was for exactly that reason.
Way I look at it is, I already had Dr. Sbaitso back in the day, so I'm good.
Re: (Score:2)
Dr. Sbaitso
Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time.
</ObiWan Meme>
Re: (Score:3)
The whole phone number thing stopped me at first too. I just used a friends account, then I got a free throw away sim (you can get them for a $1) so I gave it "my number".
Re: (Score:2)
Same. (Score:2)
I did the exact same thing. Lost interest immediately at that point.
Re: (Score:2)
Ditto.
Re: (Score:1)
Open is never free (Score:5, Insightful)
Never.
'Open' inevitably has to be monetized. Forking projects and giving back scraps of the clever code often isn't true to the spirit of the licensing, much less the letter. And despite the best efforts, the original 'owners' can always re-license into a commercial copyright. Gone.
And the unicorn open projects get copied and torn off, screw the license. Rare to get any compensation.
Besides, it isn't even 'AI'. Not yet. And the real insult will be when the 'owners' or developers disclaim responsibility for the results. Like letting your dogs run loose in the hallway, watching them kill your neighbor, and then claiming they are 'doing what dogs do'. Evading responsibility for AI run amok will be the norm. Heck, it's happening with simpler, more predictable code.
that's capitalism (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
> We live in what Sheldon Wolin coined "Inverted Totalitarianism" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism ) where we have the façade of freedom, with "elections" and "courts" but corporations hold all the levers of power.
Since he coined that in 2003 I'd say he was pretty late to the party. A term that predates that one by nearly 25 years is "Oligarchic Capitalism" (also called Capitalist Oligarchy) which very specifically means a capitalist system ruled by a small group of unelected
Breaking news (Score:3)
AI causing layoffs already? (Score:2)
Are we talking about Copilot here? Because I can't understand how it could have caused the layoff of thousands of workers judging by what it does. Maybe they write a lot of boilerplate code?
as many critics including co-founder Musk have... (Score:4, Funny)
Just a reminder that Musk left shortly after he poached head developers from OpenAI to work at Tesla instead.
Any slant that he was the good guy here that got bulldozed is a bit rich.
https://qz.com/1011376/elon-mu... [qz.com]
https://electrek.co/2018/02/21... [electrek.co]
If Musk wanted OpenAI to be a wonderful AI to the people, and not for speed and profit, he shouldn't have used the company for speed and profit.
It's their product.. (Score:5, Insightful)
...they can do whatever they want with it.
Expecting anything "good" from Peter Thiel and Elon Musk is like expecting cash from the tooth fairy.
I'd rather be stuck on an island with a soccer ball than any of those sociopaths. Anything they do is for the greater good -- of themselves.
It's bad enough to be stupid, but in these days where being a sociopath gets you noticed, it's stupidER.
IMHO.
E
Re: (Score:2)
Expecting anything "good" from Peter Thiel and Elon Musk is like expecting cash from the tooth fairy.
Indeed. Narcissistic assholes that are not interested in anything that des not allow them to blow up their egos even more. Sad and pathetic failures that should never have gotten any kind of power.
About the same with Linux (Score:1)
I suppose Linux is still open-source. Although, that is only useful to big corporations.
Re: (Score:3)
Although, that is only useful to big corporations.
Whatever gave you _that_ idea? I would hardly classify myself as "big corporation", for example. Maybe _you_ are just too incapable to use Linux to any benefit?
Time for an open, crowdsourced LLM (Score:2)
What's needed is a truly open model that is free. Really, that is the value of ChatGPT is the model they have trained, not the software itself.
This could be done via a crowdsourced or collaborative effort - think Wikipedia but the end result is a large language model and not a human-readable encyclopedia. Then it needs to be all packaged up where your average developer or sysadmin type can spin up their own ChatGPT-level AI.
If it's going to be entirely for profit, then.... (Score:2)
And yup, if they did that, it would almost immediately be used for every kind of tripe you can imagine... but if they put such usage behind a sufficiently costly pay system that verified ones age and identity. I think that the novelty and the hype of what people were doing with it would probably wear off after o
And you fuckers believed them (Score:2)
There is a lot of out of date information here (Score:2)
The article seems somewhat loaded.
For example Elon Musk has 0 to do with OpenAI now. He still donates but with recent money problems not sure if that is still the case.
They transitioned to "for-profit" 4 years ago. The profit cap was to help their employees put a stake in the company.
With those founders, what did you expect? (Score:4, Interesting)
If a bunch of assholes with tons of money found a "non-profit", it would be really naive to expect it to benefit anybody but themselves.
Wow, who could see it coming (Score:2)
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research organization by Altman, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, among other tech leaders.
So people are surprised this happened to an entity founded by some of the most greedy, money-grubbing, anti-consumer, tech billionaires?
What a surprise.
Re: (Score:3)
What they mean is that it will boot employees in the name of bots. While that is a problem that's coming, one way or another, the more troubling aspect is how fast this is being shoved out into the world. If we want AI, even the dumb AI we have today, there should be some level of training beyond, "Throw it on the internet and let it learn." The problem is children, at least back when we gave a fuck about raising them and didn't just shove a god damned screen into their hands the second they can hold it as
Re: (Score:2)
I think it's a good thing we're shoving it out the door so quickly, well before it's really ready. That pretty much guarantees it will fail spectacularly, and set back the adoption of the technology by a generation or more. Maybe for the next round, it'll be more ready.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm just enough of a pessimist to think there's enough profit to be made to keep propping this shit up until it topples over on top of us, but deep down I hope you're right.
I'd love the opportunity to play with something vaguely like ChatGPT without the guardrails. Being able to spin up your own chatbot and train it the way you wanted it to be trained could be great fun. Like a digital pet that was a little something more than the typical Tamagotchi. So long as you weren't dumb enough to start believing it
Re: (Score:2)
So long as you weren't dumb enough to start believing it was actually "smart" while you play with it.
Five minutes of playing with it on a subject you know something about will dispel any illusions you have on that score. "Clever autocomplete" is a very accurate description.
Re: (Score:1)
At the moment, the best they want to pay for is filter the most abusive internet trends and the topics they deem "not good" and hope for the best.
FTFY.
And it is not only the money, it is the time. An AI carefully educated over years may be better adjusted, but it is also a few years late to market.