10 ms·

Is it just me or is OpenAI the exact opposite of open? They may as well just call it ClosedAI at this point, seems like every interesting thing they do is kept

by arsome 4y ago

Is it just me or is OpenAI the exact opposite of open? They may as well just call it ClosedAI at this point, seems like every interesting thing they do is kept under wraps.

gwern 4y ago
How much does it matter? Everyone's practically forgotten that compviz and Midjourney were just in the past few months, Sberbank has ruDALL-E which largest model is somewhere between DALL-E 1 and 2, FB has Make-A-Scene which is somewhat below GLIDE/DALL-E 2, and Tsinghua's Cogview2 paper was released just days ago and is claiming roughly DALL-E 2 parity. AI capabilities are advancing fast enough that whether or not OA releases something, there will be competitors soon. (Heck, you want a GPT-3 competitor? There's like a dozen of them of similar or better quality, several of which are public or API - BigScience, Aleph Alpha, & AI2 come to mind.)
sva_ 4y ago
I feel like their initial mission of "democratizing AI" was just a way to recruit people. They're everything but "open".
- moffkalast 4y ago
  They're as open as microsoft is micro.
  - nkozyra 4y ago
    Pretty sure Microsoft still makes `soft`ware for `micro`computers
    - danuker 4y ago
      Based on the constant pushes I get in Windows to use MS services, I believe the software is just an advertising platform, and the actual moneymakers are cloud services and selling users' data.
    - imwillofficial 4y ago
      It’s a grey area, but I’d say they haven’t made software for microcomputers for some time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcomputer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcomputer
      - nkozyra 4y ago
        I think that's a stretch, but even if you use that definition Windows IoT core fits the bill.
- bspear 4y ago
  Ya sounds about right. Also curious if DALL-E 2 allows people to request edits to the generated images, or just one-shot attempts
  - gisely 4y ago
    You can use it to infill subregions. Or you could add a “but <your requested edit>“ to your and run again. It’s not super robust to prompts involving complicated composition though so that might not be a reliable strategy.
- gitgud 4y ago
  Democratising AI... through our opaque proprietary API...
  - zmmmmm 4y ago
    > ... through our opaque proprietary API... after you get approved on their wait list of course
- webmaven 4y ago
  Right. The switch away from openness coincided with their conversion to a for-profit and the Microsoft investment.
buzzwords 4y ago
Im not in this space...do you mind explaining more please? I'm really curious.
- jorgemf 4y ago
  They were suppose to be a non-profit company that will help to develop AI. AI community is very open, and here you have someone different from OpenAI releasing an open source code from a research from OpenAI (because they didn't release their code)
mark_l_watson 4y ago
I would say that they are not as open as when they formed as a non-profit. That said, their commercial APIs for GPT-3, etc. are very good and my monthly bill for using them seems like very good value.
- ludamad 4y ago
  Isn't that common for startups that want to gain users anyway? (Not charging entirety of what market will bear, anyway)
- dataangel 4y ago
  What do you use the API for? I've not really seen any interesting commercial uses other than customer support bots that are sightly more convincing but not something consumers actually want (they actually want the human that can solve their problem).
  - anaganisk 4y ago
    Github copilot?
arriu 4y ago
I agree; perhaps they are afraid of negative impacts of releasing their work to the public. Either way, I’m not sure I understand the name choice at this point.
- sva_ 4y ago
  Honestly, I think the main problem is, that training large models like this, or GPT-any, or anything like that costs a lot of compute power - which costs a lot of money. So if you're just investing a lot of compute but give everything away for free, that isn't a strategy which can be maintained. So what we really need, are ways to train models in a distributed fashion. Their initial goal was to 'democratize AI'. But democratizing these models doesn't just mean giving everyone access to your trained parameters, it also means that everyone should be able to spend an effort on improving it. I think a good solution for this would be huge.
  - emilsedgh 4y ago
    So when they formed OpenAI and thought "we are gonna hire the most brilliant scientists in the field" they forgot to account for hardware costs? At this point it's more like doublespeak.
    - moffkalast 4y ago
      They just announced they'll be rebranding as OpenYourWallet
      - texasbigdata 4y ago
        Do they have a revenue model? I thought it was a non-profit / public benefit company.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    > So what we really need, are ways to train models in a distributed fashion. How is the replication effort for this project handling that? They have over 600 people on their Discord right now, do they have some way for them to cooperate on training a single model?
ShannonLimiter 4y ago
This uses OpenAI’s CLIP model which is open source: https://github.com/openai/clip https://github.com/openai/clip
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choppaface 4y ago
It’s important to recognize the definition of “open” that sama and team embrace versus the definition of open source and “free as in beer.” The early team gathered around the idea of achieving lift (as in marketing lift) of the idea of sharing research results and building upon open source. They do that really well, relative to MS Research and Deepmind. OpenAI was never going to focus primarily on open source or “free as in beer”—- their goal was to market themselves such to draw attention away from that. Well, I’m sure some of the team wanted that, but I’m also sure sama was more than willing to embrace his own definition of success versus that if the dev community. ClosedAI is a bit harsh, but they have definitely both divided the community somewhat on the definition of “Open” and been very comfortable with focusing on their toys and ignoring the conversation. I mean sama, especially when it comes to Worldcoin, has been very direct about ignoring criticism in general.
FeepingCreature 4y ago
I still think what happens is that they started out on a mission of "we're going to democratize AGI access!" and then shortly thereafter, the not-crazy people managed to convince them what an astoundingly terrible idea that would be.
- andai 4y ago
  Doesn't AGI fall under the first amendment? ;)
krm01 4y ago
It seems like it started open, but then they might have switched directions

by arsome 4y ago

Is it just me or is OpenAI the exact opposite of open? They may as well just call it ClosedAI at this point, seems like every interesting thing they do is kept under wraps.

gwern 4y ago

How much does it matter? Everyone's practically forgotten that compviz and Midjourney were just in the past few months, Sberbank has ruDALL-E which largest model is somewhere between DALL-E 1 and 2, FB has Make-A-Scene which is somewhat below GLIDE/DALL-E 2, and Tsinghua's Cogview2 paper was released just days ago and is claiming roughly DALL-E 2 parity. AI capabilities are advancing fast enough that whether or not OA releases something, there will be competitors soon. (Heck, you want a GPT-3 competitor? There's like a dozen of them of similar or better quality, several of which are public or API - BigScience, Aleph Alpha, & AI2 come to mind.)

sva_ 4y ago

I feel like their initial mission of "democratizing AI" was just a way to recruit people. They're everything but "open".

moffkalast 4y ago
They're as open as microsoft is micro.
- nkozyra 4y ago
  Pretty sure Microsoft still makes `soft`ware for `micro`computers
  - danuker 4y ago
    Based on the constant pushes I get in Windows to use MS services, I believe the software is just an advertising platform, and the actual moneymakers are cloud services and selling users' data.
  - imwillofficial 4y ago
    It’s a grey area, but I’d say they haven’t made software for microcomputers for some time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcomputer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcomputer
    - nkozyra 4y ago
      I think that's a stretch, but even if you use that definition Windows IoT core fits the bill.
bspear 4y ago
Ya sounds about right. Also curious if DALL-E 2 allows people to request edits to the generated images, or just one-shot attempts
- gisely 4y ago
  You can use it to infill subregions. Or you could add a “but <your requested edit>“ to your and run again. It’s not super robust to prompts involving complicated composition though so that might not be a reliable strategy.
gitgud 4y ago
Democratising AI... through our opaque proprietary API...
- zmmmmm 4y ago
  > ... through our opaque proprietary API... after you get approved on their wait list of course
webmaven 4y ago
Right. The switch away from openness coincided with their conversion to a for-profit and the Microsoft investment.

buzzwords 4y ago

Im not in this space...do you mind explaining more please? I'm really curious.

jorgemf 4y ago
They were suppose to be a non-profit company that will help to develop AI. AI community is very open, and here you have someone different from OpenAI releasing an open source code from a research from OpenAI (because they didn't release their code)

mark_l_watson 4y ago

I would say that they are not as open as when they formed as a non-profit. That said, their commercial APIs for GPT-3, etc. are very good and my monthly bill for using them seems like very good value.

ludamad 4y ago
Isn't that common for startups that want to gain users anyway? (Not charging entirety of what market will bear, anyway)
dataangel 4y ago
What do you use the API for? I've not really seen any interesting commercial uses other than customer support bots that are sightly more convincing but not something consumers actually want (they actually want the human that can solve their problem).
- anaganisk 4y ago
  Github copilot?

arriu 4y ago

I agree; perhaps they are afraid of negative impacts of releasing their work to the public. Either way, I’m not sure I understand the name choice at this point.

sva_ 4y ago
Honestly, I think the main problem is, that training large models like this, or GPT-any, or anything like that costs a lot of compute power - which costs a lot of money. So if you're just investing a lot of compute but give everything away for free, that isn't a strategy which can be maintained. So what we really need, are ways to train models in a distributed fashion. Their initial goal was to 'democratize AI'. But democratizing these models doesn't just mean giving everyone access to your trained parameters, it also means that everyone should be able to spend an effort on improving it. I think a good solution for this would be huge.
- emilsedgh 4y ago
  So when they formed OpenAI and thought "we are gonna hire the most brilliant scientists in the field" they forgot to account for hardware costs? At this point it's more like doublespeak.
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    They just announced they'll be rebranding as OpenYourWallet
    - texasbigdata 4y ago
      Do they have a revenue model? I thought it was a non-profit / public benefit company.
- leereeves 4y ago
  > So what we really need, are ways to train models in a distributed fashion. How is the replication effort for this project handling that? They have over 600 people on their Discord right now, do they have some way for them to cooperate on training a single model?

ShannonLimiter 4y ago

This uses OpenAI’s CLIP model which is open source: https://github.com/openai/clip https://github.com/openai/clip

deleted 4y ago

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deleted 4y ago

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choppaface 4y ago

It’s important to recognize the definition of “open” that sama and team embrace versus the definition of open source and “free as in beer.” The early team gathered around the idea of achieving lift (as in marketing lift) of the idea of sharing research results and building upon open source. They do that really well, relative to MS Research and Deepmind. OpenAI was never going to focus primarily on open source or “free as in beer”—- their goal was to market themselves such to draw attention away from that. Well, I’m sure some of the team wanted that, but I’m also sure sama was more than willing to embrace his own definition of success versus that if the dev community. ClosedAI is a bit harsh, but they have definitely both divided the community somewhat on the definition of “Open” and been very comfortable with focusing on their toys and ignoring the conversation. I mean sama, especially when it comes to Worldcoin, has been very direct about ignoring criticism in general.

FeepingCreature 4y ago

I still think what happens is that they started out on a mission of "we're going to democratize AGI access!" and then shortly thereafter, the not-crazy people managed to convince them what an astoundingly terrible idea that would be.

andai 4y ago
Doesn't AGI fall under the first amendment? ;)

krm01 4y ago

It seems like it started open, but then they might have switched directions