13 ms·

Insane in the abstract, but not exactly unfathomable. Who would make money off of that, and who else makes money off of it's absense?

culi 4y ago
Society as a whole. Exactly the kind of initiatives governments are supposed to be taking. Instead our governments are totally captured by the profit-seeking organizations and are hellbent on using their monopoly of violence to imprison activists working on these initiatives
- visarga 4y ago
  Interesting difference here between how YC reacts to Codex vs this library. Both are reusing copyrighted materials to help society.
  - khimaros 4y ago
    maybe it has something to do with the commercial nature of one of those two things.
    - visarga 4y ago
      In order to run Codex you need 4-8 large GPUs connected in the same box or cabinet. Such computers cost about $100k to buy. Then they use about 5..10kwh to run, that adds up to 50MW/year. The Codex model needs to be very low latency, means more expensive. This is just for one single replica of the model, you need many to serve all the requests. Not to mention the cost of development - for that they needed thousands of GPUs or TPUs and a large team of top AI talent which is very very expensive to hire. Regarding the open source copyrights - wasn't that code released to be "open"? This is actually a radical way to open the code, make it more useful for everyone. Open source devs can also use it to create projects. I think $10 per month for this whole process is justified. It's not like you could run it at home.
      - culi 4y ago
        I'm sorry but can you run a mirror for possibly the largest collection of written knowledge ever assembled in your home? What exactly is the point of this exercise?
  - hansword 4y ago
    Codex helps the shareholders of ClosedAI and Micro$oft. I guess YC reaction to codex would be substantially different if this was a free and open tool anyone could use....
SequoiaHope 4y ago
No one would make money off of it. That is the point. There are innumerable things which are worthwhile which are not profitable. The idea that we do not do a world library of free digital copies of every book ever written really highlights the problem with the thinking your comment has demonstrated. The idea that individual pursuits must make a profit to be justified leads to us doing terrible things like: not making a free world library of every book. Though in this particular case this also demonstrates a major problem with intellectual property concepts. Actually hosting the library isn't very expensive. But we have made doing so illegal. Of course, authors deserve to live a decent life just like everyone else. We currently do that by restricting all access to duplications of information they have produced so that they can charge a fee for access, and that fee provides for their survival. But we suffer an incalculable loss by making all this information restricted. In my view we would be MUCH better off as a society with respect to creativity, innovation, and other popular metrics for progress, if we actually made sure as a society that every person's survival was provided for with no need for them to pay for it. Then authors wouldn't need to get paid, engineers could do what they love to do and post all their work as open source, and we could have a free library for everyone. This extreme openness would in my mind lead to more rapid innovation, and markets would still function as first movers would maintain an advantage for new product releases, though they would have to keep moving as anything they've done that is worthwhile would be copied. But since no one's livelihood would be at stake, this is not a real issue. This can all be done in a voluntary, libertarian society as long as we have community ownership of the means of production, and promote these ideals of community support in this society. And I think we would be way better off. Doing this would allow us to offer every book ever recorded for free to every person on Earth. A big change, but one with obviously a very big benefit to humanity. One note though: people who want to own a lot for themselves really mess this up. So people would need to dissuade those people from acting that way. My preferred method of doing so is by starving them of workers and customers, though when it comes to control of land matters get more serious.
- rexpop 4y ago
  You're responding to a comment which aims to make your same point.
olkingcole 4y ago
Imagine for a split second an idea of value that doesn't start and end with private profit
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- permo-w 4y ago
  I get what you're saying by this, but I think OC is just being practical. This is the world we live in. It's shit and I hate it, but if you want something done, 9 times out of 10 you need to consider these questions
  - throwamon 4y ago
    Maybe if you read the right books you would cultivate a worldview where you don't "need to consider these questions" so much. Maybe if more people died that we would even help build a world like that.
    - permo-w 4y ago
      it's counterproductive to passive aggressively imply that people should cultivate a worldview that you think is correct. even if you are right, you seem not worth agreeing with. no one worth agreeing with starts a sentence with >Maybe if you read the right books
  - eMPee584 4y ago
    Uhm ok. And how about we establish a cooperative, open access economy and transcend this shit world most people hate to live in.
    - permo-w 4y ago
      how do you propose we do that
  - Brian_K_White 4y ago
rakoo 4y ago
Why should anyone make a profit ? Why is it important to guarantee individuals accumulating money belonging to others, instead of a common enrichment of everyone ?

culi 4y ago

Society as a whole. Exactly the kind of initiatives governments are supposed to be taking. Instead our governments are totally captured by the profit-seeking organizations and are hellbent on using their monopoly of violence to imprison activists working on these initiatives

visarga 4y ago
Interesting difference here between how YC reacts to Codex vs this library. Both are reusing copyrighted materials to help society.
- khimaros 4y ago
  maybe it has something to do with the commercial nature of one of those two things.
  - visarga 4y ago
    In order to run Codex you need 4-8 large GPUs connected in the same box or cabinet. Such computers cost about $100k to buy. Then they use about 5..10kwh to run, that adds up to 50MW/year. The Codex model needs to be very low latency, means more expensive. This is just for one single replica of the model, you need many to serve all the requests. Not to mention the cost of development - for that they needed thousands of GPUs or TPUs and a large team of top AI talent which is very very expensive to hire. Regarding the open source copyrights - wasn't that code released to be "open"? This is actually a radical way to open the code, make it more useful for everyone. Open source devs can also use it to create projects. I think $10 per month for this whole process is justified. It's not like you could run it at home.
    - culi 4y ago
      I'm sorry but can you run a mirror for possibly the largest collection of written knowledge ever assembled in your home? What exactly is the point of this exercise?
- hansword 4y ago
  Codex helps the shareholders of ClosedAI and Micro$oft. I guess YC reaction to codex would be substantially different if this was a free and open tool anyone could use....

SequoiaHope 4y ago

No one would make money off of it. That is the point. There are innumerable things which are worthwhile which are not profitable. The idea that we do not do a world library of free digital copies of every book ever written really highlights the problem with the thinking your comment has demonstrated. The idea that individual pursuits must make a profit to be justified leads to us doing terrible things like: not making a free world library of every book. Though in this particular case this also demonstrates a major problem with intellectual property concepts. Actually hosting the library isn't very expensive. But we have made doing so illegal. Of course, authors deserve to live a decent life just like everyone else. We currently do that by restricting all access to duplications of information they have produced so that they can charge a fee for access, and that fee provides for their survival. But we suffer an incalculable loss by making all this information restricted. In my view we would be MUCH better off as a society with respect to creativity, innovation, and other popular metrics for progress, if we actually made sure as a society that every person's survival was provided for with no need for them to pay for it. Then authors wouldn't need to get paid, engineers could do what they love to do and post all their work as open source, and we could have a free library for everyone. This extreme openness would in my mind lead to more rapid innovation, and markets would still function as first movers would maintain an advantage for new product releases, though they would have to keep moving as anything they've done that is worthwhile would be copied. But since no one's livelihood would be at stake, this is not a real issue. This can all be done in a voluntary, libertarian society as long as we have community ownership of the means of production, and promote these ideals of community support in this society. And I think we would be way better off. Doing this would allow us to offer every book ever recorded for free to every person on Earth. A big change, but one with obviously a very big benefit to humanity. One note though: people who want to own a lot for themselves really mess this up. So people would need to dissuade those people from acting that way. My preferred method of doing so is by starving them of workers and customers, though when it comes to control of land matters get more serious.

rexpop 4y ago
You're responding to a comment which aims to make your same point.

olkingcole 4y ago

Imagine for a split second an idea of value that doesn't start and end with private profit

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
permo-w 4y ago
I get what you're saying by this, but I think OC is just being practical. This is the world we live in. It's shit and I hate it, but if you want something done, 9 times out of 10 you need to consider these questions
- throwamon 4y ago
  Maybe if you read the right books you would cultivate a worldview where you don't "need to consider these questions" so much. Maybe if more people died that we would even help build a world like that.
  - permo-w 4y ago
    it's counterproductive to passive aggressively imply that people should cultivate a worldview that you think is correct. even if you are right, you seem not worth agreeing with. no one worth agreeing with starts a sentence with >Maybe if you read the right books
- eMPee584 4y ago
  Uhm ok. And how about we establish a cooperative, open access economy and transcend this shit world most people hate to live in.
  - permo-w 4y ago
    how do you propose we do that
- Brian_K_White 4y ago

rakoo 4y ago

Why should anyone make a profit ? Why is it important to guarantee individuals accumulating money belonging to others, instead of a common enrichment of everyone ?