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It's definitely worth reading OpenAI's statement, but I don't think speculation is out of bounds here either. The statement is reasonable on its own, but doesn'

It's definitely worth reading OpenAI's statement, but I don't think speculation is out of bounds here either. The statement is reasonable on its own, but doesn't acknowledge that the decision is a sharp break from OpenAI's entire founding ideology. Musk said in 2015 that the point of OpenAI was "to empower as many people as possible to have AI. If everyone has AI powers, then there's not any one person or a small set of individuals who can have AI superpower." Sikka argued that "openness" was the fundamental reason he supported the project. OpenAI was heavily criticized by other AI risk researchers for its public approach, and argued strongly that it was doing the right thing. It specifically invoked the threat of AI tools being abused by small groups of people in secret as more pressing than the threats from self-directed or public-use AI. But the closest the statement comes to addressing that is describing the restrictions as "an experiment", and mentioning that in 2018 OpenAI added a charter with a caveat saying it might publish less stuff. That caveat and the decision to invoke it here are essentially unexplained; since the charter almost certainly postdates some GPT-2 work it seems to be a circular argument. Frankly, GPT-2 seems like exactly the sort of work OpenAI was worried about in the first place. Ten thousand people can troll and spam ideas without any AI support, but with a GPT-2 equivalent it becomes possible to a government, company, or intelligence group to massively scale its impact on public debate. If OpenAI thinks state actors can't replicate their work, the fears invoked at its founding are called into question. If it instead thinks public access to such tools is dangerous and they need to be kept in select hands, the project's entire rationale is invalidated. If they simply hope to spark discussion and give people time to prepare (mentally or technologically) for the idea of compelling auto-generated text, that really ought to be said more clearly.

p1esk 7y ago
If they simply hope to spark discussion and give people time to prepare (mentally or technologically) for the idea of compelling auto-generated text, that really ought to be said more clearly. They have been pretty clear about this [1]: "We believe our release strategy limits the initial set of organizations who may choose to do this, and gives the AI community more time to have a discussion about the implications of such systems." [1] https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/ https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/
Veedrac 7y ago
Elon Musk isn't part of OpenAI any more. I don't think his stance should hold that much weight any more. > Sikka argued that "openness" was the fundamental reason he supported the project. I believe the relevant quote is this one > Sam asked me if I would be ok with the fact that such an endeavor would be untethered and would produce results generally in the greater interests of humanity, and he was somewhat surprised by my reaction, that indeed I would only support this venture if such an openness was a fundamental requirement! https://web.archive.org/web/20151222094518/http://www.infosysblogs.com/infytalk/2015/12/openai_ai_for_all.html https://web.archive.org/web/20151222094518/http://www.infosy... I'll leave this open to interpretation; I think there are multiple ways of taking it and I'm not convinced which are accurate. > OpenAI was heavily criticized by other AI risk researchers for its public approach, and argued strongly that it was doing the right thing. It specifically invoked the threat of AI tools being abused by small groups of people in secret as more pressing than the threats from self-directed or public-use AI. I'm not sure who you are referring to here. The only critics I've heard claiming OpenAI are too open are those who believe in Bostrom-style AGI risk, which is the idea that (far-term) AI is intrinsically dangerous, rather than being dangerous predominantly because of malicious use. > If OpenAI thinks state actors can't replicate their work, I don't believe OpenAI believes this.

p1esk 7y ago

If they simply hope to spark discussion and give people time to prepare (mentally or technologically) for the idea of compelling auto-generated text, that really ought to be said more clearly. They have been pretty clear about this [1]: "We believe our release strategy limits the initial set of organizations who may choose to do this, and gives the AI community more time to have a discussion about the implications of such systems." [1] https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/ https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/

Veedrac 7y ago

Elon Musk isn't part of OpenAI any more. I don't think his stance should hold that much weight any more. > Sikka argued that "openness" was the fundamental reason he supported the project. I believe the relevant quote is this one > Sam asked me if I would be ok with the fact that such an endeavor would be untethered and would produce results generally in the greater interests of humanity, and he was somewhat surprised by my reaction, that indeed I would only support this venture if such an openness was a fundamental requirement! https://web.archive.org/web/20151222094518/http://www.infosysblogs.com/infytalk/2015/12/openai_ai_for_all.html https://web.archive.org/web/20151222094518/http://www.infosy... I'll leave this open to interpretation; I think there are multiple ways of taking it and I'm not convinced which are accurate. > OpenAI was heavily criticized by other AI risk researchers for its public approach, and argued strongly that it was doing the right thing. It specifically invoked the threat of AI tools being abused by small groups of people in secret as more pressing than the threats from self-directed or public-use AI. I'm not sure who you are referring to here. The only critics I've heard claiming OpenAI are too open are those who believe in Bostrom-style AGI risk, which is the idea that (far-term) AI is intrinsically dangerous, rather than being dangerous predominantly because of malicious use. > If OpenAI thinks state actors can't replicate their work, I don't believe OpenAI believes this.