4 ms·

capitalism ruins everything. imagine speed of improvement in AI if everything was open sourced, instead of guarding their little secrets. i hope google get f*

capitalism ruins everything. imagine speed of improvement in AI if everything was open sourced, instead of guarding their little secrets. i hope google get f**, hoarding AI knowledge for years, only got shaken after recent events force them.

Veen 4y ago
Do you know of any open source projects with the approximately $5 million it takes to train GPT3? Do you think the AI scientists who invented the underlying techniques would do so without being paid? No, Google and others paid for these people's work. Even if OpenAI was open source and still a non-profit, its funding would come from the profit generated by corporations and the wealth of individuals who became rich through capitalism. How do you think Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk were in a position to found OpenAI in the first place? For good or for bad, capitalism is the reason this stuff exists.
- zirgs 4y ago
  Stable Diffusion is a project like that. It cost millions to develop it. It is free, open source and can be run locally.
  - avian 4y ago
    Makes you wonder where's the catch, doesn't it?
    - zirgs 4y ago
      Where's the catch in Linux?
  - geokon 4y ago
    Are you sure? According to Wikipedia it's "source available" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_Diffusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_Diffusion It seems to come with a laundry list of vague restrictions
- detrites 4y ago
  Most crypto projects? (Half /s...) But seriously, the buzz around ChatGPT is huge. Anyone could step in with a crowdfunding campaign to raise that if they promised the right things.
- cafeoh 4y ago
  > Even if OpenAI was open source and still a non-profit, its funding would come from the profit generated by corporations and the wealth of individuals who became rich through capitalism Sounds to me like you're describing a system that fatally tethers individuals to profit motive, and technological advancement to the good will of a few, rather than something that magically allows for great projects to exist.
- phkahler 4y ago
  >> Do you know of any open source projects with the approximately $5 million it takes to train GPT3? Two things. 1) research into smaller more efficient models and 2) hardware prices will come down for a bit longer. So longer term this kind of thing should be free. It's common for companies to be first at complex things because the coordinated effort or cost involved, and later that becomes more feasible and cheap or free options become possible. I'm all for inventors/companies getting paid for new developments, but I'm also not terribly excited for them to keep innovation locked up and charge rent on it for eternity. This works out in most cases at varying pace, but not always.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  >How do you think Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk were in a position to found OpenAI in the first place? Wage theft, embezzlement of public funds, socially destructive practices, immoral and downright dangerous behaviors, lies and being children of already wealthy and well connected individuals ? Capitalism didn't give you OpenAI. Money and talented people working on it gave you OpenAI (hint: none of the people you listed did any work). Whether it comes from sociopath n°2354 as closed source, or a well funded public institution as open research (which, you know, we could have funded if the previously listed sociopaths paid taxes and contributed to society), people being paid did the work.
  - Veen 4y ago
    You should probably be little careful about accusing named individuals of embezzlement.
    - ohgodplsno 4y ago
      It's absurdly funny to me that out of all the list of actually harmful things that they're doing, you choose to focus on the one that is the most socially accepted. And no, I'll keep that comment there with names, thanks.
zo1 4y ago
Everything open source = No copyright and ownership of produced models. That's a sure-fire way of guaranteeing only Government funding, free labour, donations and oh so much politics of various forms. And I don't think the "speed of improvement" will increase, I'd say it'd slow to a crawl as there would be no money in it.
- Taek 4y ago
  Counter examples: + Stable Diffusion + Linux + Firefox + ffmpeg + bittorrent + plenty more
- Synaesthesia 4y ago
  Plenty innovations have come from state funding, like transistors, computers, the internet, and state funding for research still is the biggest by far. (a lot of it through the military, but still)
deafpolygon 4y ago
> capitalism ruins everything nah, capitalism is a great driver of progress > imagine speed of improvement in AI if everything was open sourced you mean, how Linux's year of the desktop has yet to come. open source is not a panacea for every problem.
- Quarrelsome 4y ago
  > nah, capitalism is a great driver of progress yes, in terms of angel investment and investors willing to make risky bets but also "super-no" in terms of publicly traded organisations, The worst excesses of the market just plays "number goes up" via price gouging or rent seeking while using their "at any cost" capital to buy out any emerging competition and transforming it into the same dire pattern. In practice I would argue that any system has its positives and negatives and the top end (publicly traded organisations) of the American system can be quite disgusting at times by taking solid business models and squeezing them until they're a former shell of themselves. All while stripping back further investment or maintenance and ignoring every warning or employee protest until the trains fall off the tracks and poison an entire town.
npteljes 4y ago
Not keeping promises is not the system's fault. People do it all the time in very different environments. When the context of the promise changes significantly, it tries the resolve behind the promise, and it's natural, almost expected, that people break it. Capitalism is almost orthogonal to this phenomenon. Of course, in a capitalist society, you'll see a lot of examples of capitalist entities making the bad stuff. But if we organized things in a different way, then different entities would be doing very similar things.
bitL 4y ago
Huh, how would an enthusiast get 1000x H100 GPUs to train some state-of-art model? ML workflows are the most expensive computing pipelines these days. It's easy to spend $1M/month just on inference alone in production. Without financial backing there would be some trivial useless models everywhere (there already are).

Veen 4y ago

Do you know of any open source projects with the approximately $5 million it takes to train GPT3? Do you think the AI scientists who invented the underlying techniques would do so without being paid? No, Google and others paid for these people's work. Even if OpenAI was open source and still a non-profit, its funding would come from the profit generated by corporations and the wealth of individuals who became rich through capitalism. How do you think Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk were in a position to found OpenAI in the first place? For good or for bad, capitalism is the reason this stuff exists.

zirgs 4y ago
Stable Diffusion is a project like that. It cost millions to develop it. It is free, open source and can be run locally.
- avian 4y ago
  Makes you wonder where's the catch, doesn't it?
  - zirgs 4y ago
    Where's the catch in Linux?
- geokon 4y ago
  Are you sure? According to Wikipedia it's "source available" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_Diffusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_Diffusion It seems to come with a laundry list of vague restrictions
detrites 4y ago
Most crypto projects? (Half /s...) But seriously, the buzz around ChatGPT is huge. Anyone could step in with a crowdfunding campaign to raise that if they promised the right things.
cafeoh 4y ago
> Even if OpenAI was open source and still a non-profit, its funding would come from the profit generated by corporations and the wealth of individuals who became rich through capitalism Sounds to me like you're describing a system that fatally tethers individuals to profit motive, and technological advancement to the good will of a few, rather than something that magically allows for great projects to exist.
phkahler 4y ago
>> Do you know of any open source projects with the approximately $5 million it takes to train GPT3? Two things. 1) research into smaller more efficient models and 2) hardware prices will come down for a bit longer. So longer term this kind of thing should be free. It's common for companies to be first at complex things because the coordinated effort or cost involved, and later that becomes more feasible and cheap or free options become possible. I'm all for inventors/companies getting paid for new developments, but I'm also not terribly excited for them to keep innovation locked up and charge rent on it for eternity. This works out in most cases at varying pace, but not always.
ohgodplsno 4y ago
>How do you think Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk were in a position to found OpenAI in the first place? Wage theft, embezzlement of public funds, socially destructive practices, immoral and downright dangerous behaviors, lies and being children of already wealthy and well connected individuals ? Capitalism didn't give you OpenAI. Money and talented people working on it gave you OpenAI (hint: none of the people you listed did any work). Whether it comes from sociopath n°2354 as closed source, or a well funded public institution as open research (which, you know, we could have funded if the previously listed sociopaths paid taxes and contributed to society), people being paid did the work.
- Veen 4y ago
  You should probably be little careful about accusing named individuals of embezzlement.
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    It's absurdly funny to me that out of all the list of actually harmful things that they're doing, you choose to focus on the one that is the most socially accepted. And no, I'll keep that comment there with names, thanks.

zo1 4y ago

Everything open source = No copyright and ownership of produced models. That's a sure-fire way of guaranteeing only Government funding, free labour, donations and oh so much politics of various forms. And I don't think the "speed of improvement" will increase, I'd say it'd slow to a crawl as there would be no money in it.

Taek 4y ago
Counter examples: + Stable Diffusion + Linux + Firefox + ffmpeg + bittorrent + plenty more
Synaesthesia 4y ago
Plenty innovations have come from state funding, like transistors, computers, the internet, and state funding for research still is the biggest by far. (a lot of it through the military, but still)

deafpolygon 4y ago

> capitalism ruins everything nah, capitalism is a great driver of progress > imagine speed of improvement in AI if everything was open sourced you mean, how Linux's year of the desktop has yet to come. open source is not a panacea for every problem.

Quarrelsome 4y ago
> nah, capitalism is a great driver of progress yes, in terms of angel investment and investors willing to make risky bets but also "super-no" in terms of publicly traded organisations, The worst excesses of the market just plays "number goes up" via price gouging or rent seeking while using their "at any cost" capital to buy out any emerging competition and transforming it into the same dire pattern. In practice I would argue that any system has its positives and negatives and the top end (publicly traded organisations) of the American system can be quite disgusting at times by taking solid business models and squeezing them until they're a former shell of themselves. All while stripping back further investment or maintenance and ignoring every warning or employee protest until the trains fall off the tracks and poison an entire town.

npteljes 4y ago

Not keeping promises is not the system's fault. People do it all the time in very different environments. When the context of the promise changes significantly, it tries the resolve behind the promise, and it's natural, almost expected, that people break it. Capitalism is almost orthogonal to this phenomenon. Of course, in a capitalist society, you'll see a lot of examples of capitalist entities making the bad stuff. But if we organized things in a different way, then different entities would be doing very similar things.

bitL 4y ago

Huh, how would an enthusiast get 1000x H100 GPUs to train some state-of-art model? ML workflows are the most expensive computing pipelines these days. It's easy to spend $1M/month just on inference alone in production. Without financial backing there would be some trivial useless models everywhere (there already are).