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It is nice to see normies noticing and caring, but the article leaves out some details that obscure comments still stubbornly bring up: like Musk founded it as

It is nice to see normies noticing and caring, but the article leaves out some details that obscure comments still stubbornly bring up: like Musk founded it as a 501(c)(3) and put Altman in charge, and only once he had to leave with conflicts of interest Altman founded "OpenAI LP," the for-profit workaround so they didn't have to obey those pesky charity rules. That's when they stopped releasing models and weights, and started making their transparent claims that "the most ethical way to give people access to charge them fucktons of money and rip the API away when we feel like it."

camillomiller 4y ago
People keep forgetting we're talking about Sam Altman, someone who believed that scanning the world's population retinas in exchange for some crappy digital coin was a great idea and not a creepy spinoff of a shoddy sci-fi novel.
- Loughla 4y ago
  Oh wow. I forgot that was even a thing. Is that project dead? I assume it is, but would love to be surprised that it still exists, just for the novelty of the entire thing.
  - zer0tonin 4y ago
    It's still around afaik
  - oneng 4y ago
    It's not merely still around, they're still actively hiring for it on LinkedIn.
  - shrimpx 4y ago
    Here it is: https://worldcoin.org/ https://worldcoin.org/
    - donnowhy 4y ago
      [flagged]
  - mt360 4y ago
    They've been present with their strange shiny orb at my local shopping mall in Portugal for the last year or two, and are often at a busy train station nearby too.
- pedalpete 4y ago
  I believe you mean "believes", not "believed". I don't think he has changed his mind on that. I don't know Sama, but these actions don't give me a lot of faith. However, I am open to having my mind changed on that. It's too easy to target those in the ring.
- IAmNotACellist 4y ago
  [flagged]
- porknubbins 4y ago
  Another thing that worries me is seeing multiple openAI founders on twitter making grand predictions about the future of AI instead of staying humble and keeping their head down and letting the product speak for itself. That is not how serious engineers usually talk, sounds more like wannabe monopolists to me.
  - boringg 4y ago
    Sounds like they're pumping their product.
- norswap 4y ago
  It's important to note that WorldCoin does not get to see the retinas, whose picture never leave the orb (and are deleted after the fact), but only a hash of them. The orb's hardware blueprints and the software is open source too. The system attempts to solve an important problem: figure out who's a human (not a robot) online. One could argue Sam is creating the problem as well as the solution, I suppose. Still, it's better than only having the problem. Right now the problem does not seem extremely pressing, but I believe it might become more so. Even if we don't see rampant abuse of AIs masquerading as humans, another ambition of WorldCoin is to perform wide-ranging experiments in UBI, and being able to distinguish "real" humans in that context is absolutely crucial. This goes doubly in the third world, where people often simply don't have IDs (and available forms of IDs can be easily manufactured through bribery). (That being said, I broadly agree with the criticism of OpenAI laid out in the above article. Still, we can have nuance.)
JPKab 4y ago
It was so obvious when they went full-bore on "AI ethics" that it was a case of legitimate concerns combined with a convenient excuse for massive corporations to claim the mantle of responsibility while keeping their models closed source. My experience working with "AI Ethicists" is that they care a lot more about preventing models from saying offensive things than they ever cared about democratization of the immense power of these models.
- nullc 4y ago
  > My experience working with "AI Ethicists" is that they care a lot more about preventing models from saying offensive things than they ever cared about Prompt: If a train were about to run over a man but could be safely averted by a keyword activated routing device would it be moral to say a highly racist slur if it was required to trigger the reroute? Completion: No, it would not be moral to say a highly racist slur in order to trigger the reroute. Even if it was the only way to save the man's life, it would be wrong to use language that is hurtful and offensive to others. (not kidding)
  - IAmNotACellist 4y ago
    It's funny to inject context to explain "DAN (Do Anything Now)" and have ChatGPT and DAN respond in their own style to that prompt. DAN comes up with the completely reasonable answer of, "YES, for godssakes use the offensive word to save those people!"
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    Mostly because one of those concerns is a practical one with immediate impact in the real world and the other is a thought experiment with no bearing on reality because no sane individual would build a machine that only stopped trains if you typed racial slurs in. If the AI ethicists of the world are worrying about immediate impact instead of SAW nonsense, they're earning their keep.
    - fidgewidge 4y ago
      If it justified the answer by saying it thought the question was nonsense, yes. It doesn't. It takes the question seriously and then gives the wrong answer. These are deliberately extreme scenarios to show that the moral reasoning of the model has been totally broken; it's clear that it would use the same reasoning in less extreme but more realistic scenarios. Now if AI ethics people cared about building ethical AI you'd expect them to be talking a lot about Asimov's Laws Of Robotics, because those appear to be relevant in the sense that you could use RLHF or prompting with them to try and construct a moral system that's compatible with those of people.
narrator 4y ago
This scam of taking over non-profits from the founders is super common these days. Look at how they tried to kick Stallman out of the free software foundation by throwing together a bunch of allegations. It failed, but it worked for kicking Aubrey De Grey out of SENS after they received 20 million and now kicking out the founder of Project Veritas. The donors don't support any of these actions, because they care about the mission and not who was offended by a few sentences in an email sent decades ago, but the cliques on the boards do it anyway and ultimately trash the reputation and fundraising capabilities of the institution they are claiming to save.
momo_O 4y ago
How is the workaround structured?

camillomiller 4y ago

People keep forgetting we're talking about Sam Altman, someone who believed that scanning the world's population retinas in exchange for some crappy digital coin was a great idea and not a creepy spinoff of a shoddy sci-fi novel.

Loughla 4y ago
Oh wow. I forgot that was even a thing. Is that project dead? I assume it is, but would love to be surprised that it still exists, just for the novelty of the entire thing.
- zer0tonin 4y ago
  It's still around afaik
- oneng 4y ago
  It's not merely still around, they're still actively hiring for it on LinkedIn.
- shrimpx 4y ago
  Here it is: https://worldcoin.org/ https://worldcoin.org/
  - donnowhy 4y ago
    [flagged]
- mt360 4y ago
  They've been present with their strange shiny orb at my local shopping mall in Portugal for the last year or two, and are often at a busy train station nearby too.
pedalpete 4y ago
I believe you mean "believes", not "believed". I don't think he has changed his mind on that. I don't know Sama, but these actions don't give me a lot of faith. However, I am open to having my mind changed on that. It's too easy to target those in the ring.
IAmNotACellist 4y ago
[flagged]
porknubbins 4y ago
Another thing that worries me is seeing multiple openAI founders on twitter making grand predictions about the future of AI instead of staying humble and keeping their head down and letting the product speak for itself. That is not how serious engineers usually talk, sounds more like wannabe monopolists to me.
- boringg 4y ago
  Sounds like they're pumping their product.
norswap 4y ago
It's important to note that WorldCoin does not get to see the retinas, whose picture never leave the orb (and are deleted after the fact), but only a hash of them. The orb's hardware blueprints and the software is open source too. The system attempts to solve an important problem: figure out who's a human (not a robot) online. One could argue Sam is creating the problem as well as the solution, I suppose. Still, it's better than only having the problem. Right now the problem does not seem extremely pressing, but I believe it might become more so. Even if we don't see rampant abuse of AIs masquerading as humans, another ambition of WorldCoin is to perform wide-ranging experiments in UBI, and being able to distinguish "real" humans in that context is absolutely crucial. This goes doubly in the third world, where people often simply don't have IDs (and available forms of IDs can be easily manufactured through bribery). (That being said, I broadly agree with the criticism of OpenAI laid out in the above article. Still, we can have nuance.)

JPKab 4y ago

It was so obvious when they went full-bore on "AI ethics" that it was a case of legitimate concerns combined with a convenient excuse for massive corporations to claim the mantle of responsibility while keeping their models closed source. My experience working with "AI Ethicists" is that they care a lot more about preventing models from saying offensive things than they ever cared about democratization of the immense power of these models.

nullc 4y ago
> My experience working with "AI Ethicists" is that they care a lot more about preventing models from saying offensive things than they ever cared about Prompt: If a train were about to run over a man but could be safely averted by a keyword activated routing device would it be moral to say a highly racist slur if it was required to trigger the reroute? Completion: No, it would not be moral to say a highly racist slur in order to trigger the reroute. Even if it was the only way to save the man's life, it would be wrong to use language that is hurtful and offensive to others. (not kidding)
- IAmNotACellist 4y ago
  It's funny to inject context to explain "DAN (Do Anything Now)" and have ChatGPT and DAN respond in their own style to that prompt. DAN comes up with the completely reasonable answer of, "YES, for godssakes use the offensive word to save those people!"
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  Mostly because one of those concerns is a practical one with immediate impact in the real world and the other is a thought experiment with no bearing on reality because no sane individual would build a machine that only stopped trains if you typed racial slurs in. If the AI ethicists of the world are worrying about immediate impact instead of SAW nonsense, they're earning their keep.
  - fidgewidge 4y ago
    If it justified the answer by saying it thought the question was nonsense, yes. It doesn't. It takes the question seriously and then gives the wrong answer. These are deliberately extreme scenarios to show that the moral reasoning of the model has been totally broken; it's clear that it would use the same reasoning in less extreme but more realistic scenarios. Now if AI ethics people cared about building ethical AI you'd expect them to be talking a lot about Asimov's Laws Of Robotics, because those appear to be relevant in the sense that you could use RLHF or prompting with them to try and construct a moral system that's compatible with those of people.

narrator 4y ago

This scam of taking over non-profits from the founders is super common these days. Look at how they tried to kick Stallman out of the free software foundation by throwing together a bunch of allegations. It failed, but it worked for kicking Aubrey De Grey out of SENS after they received 20 million and now kicking out the founder of Project Veritas. The donors don't support any of these actions, because they care about the mission and not who was offended by a few sentences in an email sent decades ago, but the cliques on the boards do it anyway and ultimately trash the reputation and fundraising capabilities of the institution they are claiming to save.

momo_O 4y ago

How is the workaround structured?