29 ms·

> OpenAI wants to be perceived as an open, academic, capped-profit for a noble reason collective. Does anybody actually believe this? Their name has been a ru

> OpenAI wants to be perceived as an open, academic, capped-profit for a noble reason collective. Does anybody actually believe this? Their name has been a running joke for years already.

amitport 4y ago
The openAI brand is now recognized much beyond the circles that know anything about it. For most people it is "the chatGPT organization" and nothing more.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
rvnx 4y ago
Brother of OpenDNS
- shagie 4y ago
  Cousin to OpenVMS, child of The Open Group and TOGAF which doesn't mean what you first think it means (The Open Group Architecture Framework).
linhns 4y ago
I believe ChatGPT spewed this out. No one seems to know what's the cap of it so "capped-profit" is crap.
- jefftk 4y ago
  The profit cap started out as 100x investment: economic returns for investors and employees are capped (with the cap negotiated in advance on a per-limited partner basis). Any excess returns go to OpenAI Nonprofit. Our goal is to ensure that most of the value (monetary or otherwise) we create if successful benefits everyone, so we think this is an important first step. Returns for our first round of investors are capped at 100x their investment (commensurate with the risks in front of us), and we expect this multiple to be lower for future rounds as we make further progress. https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/ https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/
pkdpic 4y ago
Not to diminish anyone's appreciation for OpenAI's increasingly performance-art level Orwellian name but I have found myself believing that their preference would still be to secure funding that would allow them to live up to the implied openness if it was ever an option. Sam Altman has stated over and over again that they tried to solicit interest / investment from public sources like governments before resorting to private capital. Maybe I just want to believe that their hearts are in the right place but that is the impression my advanced youtube and wikipedia research has left me with.
- ShamelessC 4y ago
  Sam Altman is also deeply entrenched in the land of venture capital, where a CEO's ability to bs is as important as their level of media experience.
atmosx 4y ago
Absolutely. I heard from 6 different ppl in a week, some technical others not so much say that openAI is producing OS software for free. The use of the word “open” fooled lots and lots of ppl who believe their software is open source and free.
- ben_w 4y ago
  I guess this is going to be Java/JavaScript confusion all over again.
logicallee 4y ago
You ask "does anyone believe this"? I decided to think about whether I believe OpenAI is "open, academic, capped-profit for a noble reason collective". I'll list some pros/contras in no particular order: CONTRA: I can't download ChatGPT and run it locally. Why not? Clearly they are hoarding it. PRO: They genuinely overtrain toward responses that the model judges benefit humanity, to the point of failing at the task. I can't think of a specific example but everyone knows what I mean. It is a frustration to users and doesn't help their image. They seem to be overtraining this way out of the goodness of their hearts. PRO: its non-profit or capped-profit structure would let it behave in the way it claims it is behaving. (By contrast, a for-profit public company in some sense has a fiduciary responsibility to maximize value for shareholders rather than benefit for humanity.) PRO: ChatGPT is available for free and Dall-E gives some free credits. CONTRA: Dall-E doesn't give enough free credits. It might have a longer wait time for free users but it shouldn't hard cap them at a certain number of free credits per month. For example perhaps free users could not be subject to any reasonable usage limits (a few hundred images per day should be fine) but could have to wait 1 extra minute for each one. CON: its architecture isn't open, it doesn't share how it trained its models, it doesn't publish its datasets and parameters that would let other companies achieve the same results (reproduce their work and have their own version), its research is closed off and unavailable. CON: the company is not directly applying AI to proactively solving social problems. CON: (debatable) some users who are not sources of revenue have been banned. From experimentong with a chatbot (not any hard legal limits just things like exploring their sexuality with the chatbot. It's just a chatbot, it would make sense to exclude such conversations from further training data or feedback, keep male and female researchers at OpenAI from having to review unsavory conversations, or even warn or at most temporarily ban the user. An account closure is super extreme for natural forms of interaction that don't go near legal limits. It does not seem like an open company. Alternative viewpoint: on the other hand, we keep certain flamebait subjects out of HN. Perhaps having certain subjects banable is necessary for their open mission at a larger level - specifically, users will stop going there for sex since they associate it purely with productivity, similar to how we associate HN with intellectual curiosity, which is a result of very heavy moderation here and without which this place would not exist in its form?) Overall based on the above considerations, I think that OpenAI is not "open" but if it started publishing downloadable models for anyone to run, I would feel differently.
achow 4y ago
Sam Altman addresses that when he was asked that question in 'How I Built This' Podcast. Essentially: OpenAI did not realize the massive scale they needed for them to be successful. When they realized this, they could not raise any funding as 'non-profit'. They asked govt, who did not want to fund it, and other sources, at the end they did not have any other recourse. Sam Altaman says: 90% of funding was needed for compute power, but also was needed for things like buying dataset and then to pay employee so that they can compete with likes of Google to retain them. If they would not have done this, then very soon they would have become irreverent. So to retain the earlier intent (for greater good) they put in bunch of 'safety features' around funding - Ex. 'Profit Cap' - after 100X the profit would be distributed to the world (in some way). Similarly, there were few others he talked about. The relevant portion starts at 32:39 mark in the following podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3oOX1QHLPw9uvLL5LmBk28?si=s https://open.spotify.com/episode/3oOX1QHLPw9uvLL5LmBk28?si=s...
- OnlineGladiator 4y ago
  It sounds like you agree with me that OpenAI is poorly named. "We wanted to be open, but we couldn't - we kept the name anyway."
  - meowkit 4y ago
    The argument then becomes how to interpret "Open", not that you both agree. If they keep publishing their research, then OpenAI seems like a fine name to me.
    - OnlineGladiator 4y ago
      And Russia never invaded Ukraine. You can stretch the meaning of a word all you want, it doesn't change the fact that the people misrepresenting the word are acting in bad faith.
      - throwaway29812 4y ago
        What?
EGreg 4y ago
To be fair, if they open sourced ChatGPT, they’d accelerate the utter demise of all internet forums and articles by a couple years. As it is we must wait for the likes of StabilityAI / LAION to copy them before ushering in the dystopian future! Update: OK maybe Chinese AI companies will do it, they don’t seem to cooperate with any nonproliferation agreements either
- ben_w 4y ago
  If GPT family translations are similar quality to a Google Translate round trip from English to Chinese and back, I don't think it's going to make a massive difference to forum quality. (I'd try it now, but servers are at capacity for me).

> OpenAI wants to be perceived as an open, academic, capped-profit for a noble reason collective. Does anybody actually believe this? Their name has been a running joke for years already.

amitport 4y ago

The openAI brand is now recognized much beyond the circles that know anything about it. For most people it is "the chatGPT organization" and nothing more.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

rvnx 4y ago

Brother of OpenDNS

shagie 4y ago
Cousin to OpenVMS, child of The Open Group and TOGAF which doesn't mean what you first think it means (The Open Group Architecture Framework).

linhns 4y ago

I believe ChatGPT spewed this out. No one seems to know what's the cap of it so "capped-profit" is crap.

jefftk 4y ago
The profit cap started out as 100x investment: economic returns for investors and employees are capped (with the cap negotiated in advance on a per-limited partner basis). Any excess returns go to OpenAI Nonprofit. Our goal is to ensure that most of the value (monetary or otherwise) we create if successful benefits everyone, so we think this is an important first step. Returns for our first round of investors are capped at 100x their investment (commensurate with the risks in front of us), and we expect this multiple to be lower for future rounds as we make further progress. https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/ https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/

pkdpic 4y ago

Not to diminish anyone's appreciation for OpenAI's increasingly performance-art level Orwellian name but I have found myself believing that their preference would still be to secure funding that would allow them to live up to the implied openness if it was ever an option. Sam Altman has stated over and over again that they tried to solicit interest / investment from public sources like governments before resorting to private capital. Maybe I just want to believe that their hearts are in the right place but that is the impression my advanced youtube and wikipedia research has left me with.

ShamelessC 4y ago
Sam Altman is also deeply entrenched in the land of venture capital, where a CEO's ability to bs is as important as their level of media experience.

atmosx 4y ago

Absolutely. I heard from 6 different ppl in a week, some technical others not so much say that openAI is producing OS software for free. The use of the word “open” fooled lots and lots of ppl who believe their software is open source and free.

ben_w 4y ago
I guess this is going to be Java/JavaScript confusion all over again.

logicallee 4y ago

You ask "does anyone believe this"? I decided to think about whether I believe OpenAI is "open, academic, capped-profit for a noble reason collective". I'll list some pros/contras in no particular order: CONTRA: I can't download ChatGPT and run it locally. Why not? Clearly they are hoarding it. PRO: They genuinely overtrain toward responses that the model judges benefit humanity, to the point of failing at the task. I can't think of a specific example but everyone knows what I mean. It is a frustration to users and doesn't help their image. They seem to be overtraining this way out of the goodness of their hearts. PRO: its non-profit or capped-profit structure would let it behave in the way it claims it is behaving. (By contrast, a for-profit public company in some sense has a fiduciary responsibility to maximize value for shareholders rather than benefit for humanity.) PRO: ChatGPT is available for free and Dall-E gives some free credits. CONTRA: Dall-E doesn't give enough free credits. It might have a longer wait time for free users but it shouldn't hard cap them at a certain number of free credits per month. For example perhaps free users could not be subject to any reasonable usage limits (a few hundred images per day should be fine) but could have to wait 1 extra minute for each one. CON: its architecture isn't open, it doesn't share how it trained its models, it doesn't publish its datasets and parameters that would let other companies achieve the same results (reproduce their work and have their own version), its research is closed off and unavailable. CON: the company is not directly applying AI to proactively solving social problems. CON: (debatable) some users who are not sources of revenue have been banned. From experimentong with a chatbot (not any hard legal limits just things like exploring their sexuality with the chatbot. It's just a chatbot, it would make sense to exclude such conversations from further training data or feedback, keep male and female researchers at OpenAI from having to review unsavory conversations, or even warn or at most temporarily ban the user. An account closure is super extreme for natural forms of interaction that don't go near legal limits. It does not seem like an open company. Alternative viewpoint: on the other hand, we keep certain flamebait subjects out of HN. Perhaps having certain subjects banable is necessary for their open mission at a larger level - specifically, users will stop going there for sex since they associate it purely with productivity, similar to how we associate HN with intellectual curiosity, which is a result of very heavy moderation here and without which this place would not exist in its form?) Overall based on the above considerations, I think that OpenAI is not "open" but if it started publishing downloadable models for anyone to run, I would feel differently.

achow 4y ago

Sam Altman addresses that when he was asked that question in 'How I Built This' Podcast. Essentially: OpenAI did not realize the massive scale they needed for them to be successful. When they realized this, they could not raise any funding as 'non-profit'. They asked govt, who did not want to fund it, and other sources, at the end they did not have any other recourse. Sam Altaman says: 90% of funding was needed for compute power, but also was needed for things like buying dataset and then to pay employee so that they can compete with likes of Google to retain them. If they would not have done this, then very soon they would have become irreverent. So to retain the earlier intent (for greater good) they put in bunch of 'safety features' around funding - Ex. 'Profit Cap' - after 100X the profit would be distributed to the world (in some way). Similarly, there were few others he talked about. The relevant portion starts at 32:39 mark in the following podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3oOX1QHLPw9uvLL5LmBk28?si=s https://open.spotify.com/episode/3oOX1QHLPw9uvLL5LmBk28?si=s...

OnlineGladiator 4y ago
It sounds like you agree with me that OpenAI is poorly named. "We wanted to be open, but we couldn't - we kept the name anyway."
- meowkit 4y ago
  The argument then becomes how to interpret "Open", not that you both agree. If they keep publishing their research, then OpenAI seems like a fine name to me.
  - OnlineGladiator 4y ago
    And Russia never invaded Ukraine. You can stretch the meaning of a word all you want, it doesn't change the fact that the people misrepresenting the word are acting in bad faith.
    - throwaway29812 4y ago
      What?

EGreg 4y ago

To be fair, if they open sourced ChatGPT, they’d accelerate the utter demise of all internet forums and articles by a couple years. As it is we must wait for the likes of StabilityAI / LAION to copy them before ushering in the dystopian future! Update: OK maybe Chinese AI companies will do it, they don’t seem to cooperate with any nonproliferation agreements either

ben_w 4y ago
If GPT family translations are similar quality to a Google Translate round trip from English to Chinese and back, I don't think it's going to make a massive difference to forum quality. (I'd try it now, but servers are at capacity for me).