3 ms·

Here's my alternative view: If OpenAI had open sourced GPT-3, there would be an equivalently angry thread about how they were endangering democracy/social orde

Here's my alternative view: If OpenAI had open sourced GPT-3, there would be an equivalently angry thread about how they were endangering democracy/social order/etc, and not being responsible with the powerful tool they had created (see other threads on HN regarding those working in facial recognition). Both that group, and the one posting here have valid points, and there would be strong, valid critique of their decision no matter which way they chose.

sudosysgen 6y ago
But we do realize that sooner or later a model even more powerful will be released to the public, right? And as far as protecting democracy, I assure you that the geopolitical enemies of your nation either have similar models, or will have them very soon. There is very significant investment on ML models for text manipulation going on behind closed doors, funded by States.
- albntomat0 6y ago
  > But we do realize that sooner or later a model even more powerful will be released to the public, right? And at that time, we can equally criticize whomever releases it. > And as far as protecting democracy, I assure you that the geopolitical enemies of your nation either have similar models, or will have them very soon. There is very significant investment on ML models for text manipulation going on behind closed doors, funded by States. True, but it's a good idea to keep a high bar for developing and using it. There's a large difference between the resources of a nation state and various criminal enterprises. Per [0], GPT-3 took $12 million to train. That does not include the people with the relevant skills need to train it, and access to the compute hardware. [0]: https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/01/ai-machine-learning-openai-gpt-3-size-isnt-everything/ https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/01/ai-machine-learning-opena...
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    I mean, I don't really see the benefit of limiting such a model to such famously reliable and disinterested actors as nation-states and multinational corporations. The kind of criminals that are going to threaten "democracy/social order/etc..." aren't going to be stopped by a price tag of 12 million dollars, or 120 million dollars for that matter. Just a single Mexican cartel would have the resources to pay for that, to say nothing of criminal groups that work in lockstep with states. The proceeds of crime are 900 billion dollars per year. Training GPT-3 is well within the means of dozens of criminal enterprises. But sure, we can praise OpenAI for protecting us from small enterprises and individuals, known to democracy, and instead reserving it for the use of megacorps and states, that are known not to threaten democracy or social order.
    - albntomat0 6y ago
      Said Mexican cartel would also have to find the appropriately skilled engineers and compute. There's a gap between having the money available, and actually executing the project. This discussion hinges on what level of unpleasantness comes from groups who don't have $12 million in compute resources and the skills to run large scale distributed ML training, but could `git pull` a publicly available model, and hook it up to some Twitter bots.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        In this world, if you have money you have access. If a cartel wanted access to compute they can just pay for it. If they want experts, trust me they can pay for it.

sudosysgen 6y ago

But we do realize that sooner or later a model even more powerful will be released to the public, right? And as far as protecting democracy, I assure you that the geopolitical enemies of your nation either have similar models, or will have them very soon. There is very significant investment on ML models for text manipulation going on behind closed doors, funded by States.

albntomat0 6y ago
> But we do realize that sooner or later a model even more powerful will be released to the public, right? And at that time, we can equally criticize whomever releases it. > And as far as protecting democracy, I assure you that the geopolitical enemies of your nation either have similar models, or will have them very soon. There is very significant investment on ML models for text manipulation going on behind closed doors, funded by States. True, but it's a good idea to keep a high bar for developing and using it. There's a large difference between the resources of a nation state and various criminal enterprises. Per [0], GPT-3 took $12 million to train. That does not include the people with the relevant skills need to train it, and access to the compute hardware. [0]: https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/01/ai-machine-learning-openai-gpt-3-size-isnt-everything/ https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/01/ai-machine-learning-opena...
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  I mean, I don't really see the benefit of limiting such a model to such famously reliable and disinterested actors as nation-states and multinational corporations. The kind of criminals that are going to threaten "democracy/social order/etc..." aren't going to be stopped by a price tag of 12 million dollars, or 120 million dollars for that matter. Just a single Mexican cartel would have the resources to pay for that, to say nothing of criminal groups that work in lockstep with states. The proceeds of crime are 900 billion dollars per year. Training GPT-3 is well within the means of dozens of criminal enterprises. But sure, we can praise OpenAI for protecting us from small enterprises and individuals, known to democracy, and instead reserving it for the use of megacorps and states, that are known not to threaten democracy or social order.
  - albntomat0 6y ago
    Said Mexican cartel would also have to find the appropriately skilled engineers and compute. There's a gap between having the money available, and actually executing the project. This discussion hinges on what level of unpleasantness comes from groups who don't have $12 million in compute resources and the skills to run large scale distributed ML training, but could `git pull` a publicly available model, and hook it up to some Twitter bots.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      In this world, if you have money you have access. If a cartel wanted access to compute they can just pay for it. If they want experts, trust me they can pay for it.