5 ms·

>contrary to their initial openness goals Their goals were never about openness at all though. From the beginning I’ve felt like they should’ve called themselv

>contrary to their initial openness goals Their goals were never about openness at all though. From the beginning I’ve felt like they should’ve called themselves something like “SafeAI”, since their stated goal was basically to develop advanced AI first, then keep a lid on it until they could somehow ensure it was “safe” or would only be used by “good” people. Sure, OpenAI might sound nicer, but it also drags this contradiction into the foreground whenever someone says their name.

ryanmcbride 4y ago
For real it's insane to me how much I bump up against their community guidelines. For example, you'll get a community guidelines block if you enter a prompt like "An illustration of a computer in the style of Henry Vandyke Carter". removing "Vandyke" from the prompt lets it go through[1], but doesn't result in the style I want. Because there's no artist that I'm aware of that goes by "Henry Carter". The middle name is important. It reminds me of the old 2D Runescape days where the language filter would convert "dictionary" to "**tionary". [1]https://ibb.co/4106mfF https://ibb.co/4106mfF
- Blahah 4y ago
  H V Carter
  - ryanmcbride 4y ago
    I'm out of credits but I'll try that later
- msoucy 4y ago
  My favorite example of an issue like this (the Scunthorpe problem) is from the mobile game Kingdom Hearts Unchained X. In it, players used Medals based around Disney characters, including experiment 626. However, for a long time after the game's release, players were unable to say that name in chat, because it got rendered as s***ch
- wyldfire 4y ago
  Scunthorpe prob [1]. Apparently they couldn't just unleash a model to fix this [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem [2] https://www.techdirt.com/2018/08/31/scunthorpe-problem-why-ai-is-not-silver-bullet-moderating-platform-content-scale/ https://www.techdirt.com/2018/08/31/scunthorpe-problem-why-a...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - solidasparagus 4y ago
    If only there existed some tool that understood language deeper than substrings! (That second link describing how AI can't understand language well enough to solve the problem predates GPT-3 by 2 years)
  - pmarreck 4y ago
    I never heard of the name of that problem and now I will never forget it! Thank you! I'm actually on a 3 day Facebook ban because I posted a very legit medical NIH link that looked quite innocent (despite dealing with sexual organs- it was an article about a case of urethral intercourse, which I was including to demonstrate how little people, or perhaps just Americans, seem to understand human anatomy) and unbeknownst to me, the preview card picked a closeup of some kind of vaginal surgery to feature, and that resulted in an instaban. Fffffuuuuuuuuu It was basically the visual version of this
- Miraste 4y ago
  It's doubly pathetic because of how they frame it: -We are the world's most advanced AI company. -Our filter verifiably acts as a simple blacklist. -You aren't allowed to see the blacklist because it's really a "contextual" filter, so you'll have to guess. -If you guess wrong too many times you'll be banned. -Using our service more often increases the chance you'll hit the number of wrong guesses. -No, you can't know what that number is.
  - pmarreck 4y ago
    I ran up against a warning because I tried to enhance/expand old videogame cover art which happened to feature... sit down because this will shock you... fighting!
metacritic12 4y ago
Yup, OpenAI is founded by AI-safety-as-a-religion people. They're essentially single-issue voters, who believes earnestly their issue is the only issue that matters. You see analogues of them in e.g. climate change (right or wrong). This religion definitely has a parentalist bent to it that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. I vaguely recall them floating on Twitter the theoretical idea of whether murdering people to prevent AI-takeover is acceptable, due to how bad AI-takeover is. Not surprising limiting access, spying on what its users are using their tools for, etc, is acceptable to them. This is much in the same vein as how for Lenin, the eventual triumph of the working class is so important as to justify a little bit of interim violence, dictatorship, and summary executions.
- Miraste 4y ago
  The difference being that climate change activists have mountains of data, decades' worth, backing their cause, while OpenAI and friends have a sci fi story they made up, based on nothing. The whole "AI alignment" movement is the worst example of arrogance in modern tech. Even the nomenclature screams condescension - the imaginary AGI needs "aligned values?" Aligned with whose values? Invariably it ends up being the creators', at the expense of squashing everyone else's. The DALL-E "acceptable use" rules are a dystopian nightmare and they are born of incredibly pompous self-righteousness.
  - addingadimensio 4y ago
    Shutting down nuclear power is also dystopian.
    - Miraste 4y ago
      Anyone who calls themself a climate change activist and supports shutting down nuclear plants is - well, I prefer not to use invective on HN, so let's say extremely misguided.
      - addingadimensio 4y ago
somenameforme 4y ago
Wow, I was about to argue against this 'unfairly cynical' take, but it's completely correct. --- (2015) OpenAI's original "Introducing OpenAI Post" : https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/ https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/ : "As a non-profit, our aim is to build value for everyone rather than shareholders. Researchers will be strongly encouraged to publish their work, whether as papers, blog posts, or code, and our patents (if any) will be shared with the world. We’ll freely collaborate with others across many institutions and expect to work with companies to research and deploy new technologies." (2018) OpenAI's "Charter" : https://openai.com/charter/ https://openai.com/charter/ : "We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project." "We are committed to providing public goods that help society navigate the path to AGI. Today this includes publishing most of our AI research, but we expect that safety and security concerns will reduce our traditional publishing in the future, while increasing the importance of sharing safety, policy, and standards research." --- Provides some interesting context to the fact that Elon left the company's board in February 2018 over "disagreements about the company's development."
- moffkalast 4y ago
  > if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project Haha, and then they would proceed to get told to politely piss off.
- bogomipz 4y ago
  That's interesting. Might you or someone else be able to say what was the catalyst for this change in mission? What happened between 2015 and 2018?
moffkalast 4y ago
> stated goal was basically to develop advanced AI first, then keep a lid on it until they could somehow ensure it was “safe” or would only be used by “good” people That was the stated made up bullshit they spun because "we're keeping this walled to figure out how to squeeze the most profit out of it" doesn't go as well with their focus groups.
samstave 4y ago
So what is the evil AI we all should worry about but may not know about? NSA.?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pmarreck 4y ago
I'm glad I can now download models to my computers in order to perform "UnsafeAI". I'm tired of this nanny-state "nudity is worse than violence" puritanical BS. If the cat is out of the bag, it's too late and you'll have to rely on the good-actor faith of the majority to keep nefarity in check, anyway. Any extra inconvenience or impediment you apply after that to good actors will just frustrate them, without any compensatory "win."

ryanmcbride 4y ago

For real it's insane to me how much I bump up against their community guidelines. For example, you'll get a community guidelines block if you enter a prompt like "An illustration of a computer in the style of Henry Vandyke Carter". removing "Vandyke" from the prompt lets it go through[1], but doesn't result in the style I want. Because there's no artist that I'm aware of that goes by "Henry Carter". The middle name is important. It reminds me of the old 2D Runescape days where the language filter would convert "dictionary" to "**tionary". [1]https://ibb.co/4106mfF https://ibb.co/4106mfF

Blahah 4y ago
H V Carter
- ryanmcbride 4y ago
  I'm out of credits but I'll try that later
msoucy 4y ago
My favorite example of an issue like this (the Scunthorpe problem) is from the mobile game Kingdom Hearts Unchained X. In it, players used Medals based around Disney characters, including experiment 626. However, for a long time after the game's release, players were unable to say that name in chat, because it got rendered as s***ch
wyldfire 4y ago
Scunthorpe prob [1]. Apparently they couldn't just unleash a model to fix this [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem [2] https://www.techdirt.com/2018/08/31/scunthorpe-problem-why-ai-is-not-silver-bullet-moderating-platform-content-scale/ https://www.techdirt.com/2018/08/31/scunthorpe-problem-why-a...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- solidasparagus 4y ago
  If only there existed some tool that understood language deeper than substrings! (That second link describing how AI can't understand language well enough to solve the problem predates GPT-3 by 2 years)
- pmarreck 4y ago
  I never heard of the name of that problem and now I will never forget it! Thank you! I'm actually on a 3 day Facebook ban because I posted a very legit medical NIH link that looked quite innocent (despite dealing with sexual organs- it was an article about a case of urethral intercourse, which I was including to demonstrate how little people, or perhaps just Americans, seem to understand human anatomy) and unbeknownst to me, the preview card picked a closeup of some kind of vaginal surgery to feature, and that resulted in an instaban. Fffffuuuuuuuuu It was basically the visual version of this
Miraste 4y ago
It's doubly pathetic because of how they frame it: -We are the world's most advanced AI company. -Our filter verifiably acts as a simple blacklist. -You aren't allowed to see the blacklist because it's really a "contextual" filter, so you'll have to guess. -If you guess wrong too many times you'll be banned. -Using our service more often increases the chance you'll hit the number of wrong guesses. -No, you can't know what that number is.
- pmarreck 4y ago
  I ran up against a warning because I tried to enhance/expand old videogame cover art which happened to feature... sit down because this will shock you... fighting!

metacritic12 4y ago

Yup, OpenAI is founded by AI-safety-as-a-religion people. They're essentially single-issue voters, who believes earnestly their issue is the only issue that matters. You see analogues of them in e.g. climate change (right or wrong). This religion definitely has a parentalist bent to it that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. I vaguely recall them floating on Twitter the theoretical idea of whether murdering people to prevent AI-takeover is acceptable, due to how bad AI-takeover is. Not surprising limiting access, spying on what its users are using their tools for, etc, is acceptable to them. This is much in the same vein as how for Lenin, the eventual triumph of the working class is so important as to justify a little bit of interim violence, dictatorship, and summary executions.

Miraste 4y ago
The difference being that climate change activists have mountains of data, decades' worth, backing their cause, while OpenAI and friends have a sci fi story they made up, based on nothing. The whole "AI alignment" movement is the worst example of arrogance in modern tech. Even the nomenclature screams condescension - the imaginary AGI needs "aligned values?" Aligned with whose values? Invariably it ends up being the creators', at the expense of squashing everyone else's. The DALL-E "acceptable use" rules are a dystopian nightmare and they are born of incredibly pompous self-righteousness.
- addingadimensio 4y ago
  Shutting down nuclear power is also dystopian.
  - Miraste 4y ago
    Anyone who calls themself a climate change activist and supports shutting down nuclear plants is - well, I prefer not to use invective on HN, so let's say extremely misguided.
    - addingadimensio 4y ago

somenameforme 4y ago

Wow, I was about to argue against this 'unfairly cynical' take, but it's completely correct. --- (2015) OpenAI's original "Introducing OpenAI Post" : https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/ https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/ : "As a non-profit, our aim is to build value for everyone rather than shareholders. Researchers will be strongly encouraged to publish their work, whether as papers, blog posts, or code, and our patents (if any) will be shared with the world. We’ll freely collaborate with others across many institutions and expect to work with companies to research and deploy new technologies." (2018) OpenAI's "Charter" : https://openai.com/charter/ https://openai.com/charter/ : "We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project." "We are committed to providing public goods that help society navigate the path to AGI. Today this includes publishing most of our AI research, but we expect that safety and security concerns will reduce our traditional publishing in the future, while increasing the importance of sharing safety, policy, and standards research." --- Provides some interesting context to the fact that Elon left the company's board in February 2018 over "disagreements about the company's development."

moffkalast 4y ago
> if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project Haha, and then they would proceed to get told to politely piss off.
bogomipz 4y ago
That's interesting. Might you or someone else be able to say what was the catalyst for this change in mission? What happened between 2015 and 2018?

moffkalast 4y ago

> stated goal was basically to develop advanced AI first, then keep a lid on it until they could somehow ensure it was “safe” or would only be used by “good” people That was the stated made up bullshit they spun because "we're keeping this walled to figure out how to squeeze the most profit out of it" doesn't go as well with their focus groups.

samstave 4y ago

So what is the evil AI we all should worry about but may not know about? NSA.?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pmarreck 4y ago

I'm glad I can now download models to my computers in order to perform "UnsafeAI". I'm tired of this nanny-state "nudity is worse than violence" puritanical BS. If the cat is out of the bag, it's too late and you'll have to rely on the good-actor faith of the majority to keep nefarity in check, anyway. Any extra inconvenience or impediment you apply after that to good actors will just frustrate them, without any compensatory "win."