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OpenAI faces complaint to FTC that seeks suspension of ChatGPT releases
- marcc 4y agoWhat do they expect to happen if they win? OpenAI can't use GPT-4 (or build/release GPT-5), but the innovation will continue in areas of the world not subject to this regular? I understand that the LLM models are advancing quickly and aren't easily explainable or transparent. The models feel like magic at times. But that doesn't mean society should shut them down. This is fearful behavior and spreading FUD really. These folks should take the time to understand how an LLM works before taking this action.
- zvonimirs 4y agoYea! Also, there will never be regulation that will stop open sourced LLMs from emerging that will be just as powerful and, one day, even more than GPT-4.
- CJefferson 4y agoYour argument is companies should be allowed to do anything they like, because there will be another country where they can abuse with impunity?
- nickthegreek 4y agoI think the argument is that no harm has actually been shown and there is no legal reason to have one of the fastest growing companies hamstrung while Big Tech gets it's shit together.
- sieabahlpark 4y ago[dead]
- eggsmediumrare 4y ago[flagged]
- mmastrac 4y agoYour argument is so ridiculous and easy to disprove with even a moment's Google search that I wonder why you made it.
- eggsmediumrare 4y agoThere was a very thorough understanding of the theoretical harm, as there is with AI. Harm from the Trinity test was not shown until after Japan, again having parallels with AI considering we don't yet know the long-term harms that may occur due to existing, less powerful models. Would you mind sharing your contention instead of just telling me you googled something? My argument is also pretty clearly not that pedantic. I'm saying there was obviously going to be harm by the detonation of a nuclear weapon, but it wasn't technically shown until it was actually detonated. I'm saying the same thing is true of AI. You can disagree, but it's not _that_ ridiculous to compare the two.
- tiagod 4y agoBad example. Plenty of harm during tests.
- FrenchDevRemote 4y agoSEO spam and social media fake content are already pretty common, so there is definitely at least some harm
- fogoflove 4y agoI feel as if there needs to be data that demonstrates an explosion of SEO spam and social media fake content. People have been doing those things since we figured out we could -- LLMs are just exponentially better at it. If we're going to start using excuses for LLMs to get clipped, I think we should focus on the core of the problem, not the fact LLMs can enhance it.
- boringuser2 4y agoIt's a terrible argument. The harm is transparent and greatly eclipses most other threats to cybersecurity.
- nickthegreek 4y agoPlease list the harm that has been done. I do not see it as transparent.
- boringuser2 4y agoIf someone puts a gun to your head, what harm has been done? Well, the potential harm is only deniable by the biggest of shills, but, technically, the only harm is psychological.
- nickthegreek 4y agoEverything and I really do mean everything has potential harm. Is your position that OpenAI should have to suspend their business over this?
- boringuser2 4y agoDo you really see commensurate potential harm between an extreme scenario and a mundane one? The development of AGI is an extreme, extreme scenario.
- nickthegreek 4y agoIs your position that OpenAI should have to suspend their business over this?
- boringuser2 4y agoThese goalposts keep evolving.
- zvonimirs 4y agoDefinitely not - companies should be regulated but stopping the future releases is not possible when you have tech powerful as GPT.
- SuoDuanDao 4y agosounds like a sound argument, nonviolence isn't ignoring violence; You don't win a knife fight by declaring it a spirited debate; Darwin had a point; etc.
- tomjen3 4y agoWhere anything they like means publishing a text prediction engine that is pretty good?
- Veen 4y agoThey expect: - To be paid a lot of money by OpenAI to go away, or - To be paid a lot of money to have a role in vetting future AI products, or - To be paid a lot of money by wealthy individuals in the AI alignment camp, or - To be paid a lot of money by OpenAI's competitors to block research until they can catch up with OpenAI.
- marcc 4y agoInteresting. I hadn’t thought about this as a pure money grab yet.
- gabereiser 4y agoThis was my hot-take as well. The issue here is that OpenAI has some pretty large backers that know the FTC well. Not sure how this will pan out.
- elif 4y agoIt reminds me of a time when new ideas about spirituality and human position in the universe were so disruptive to the status quo operation of the church and kingdom of England that they were outlawed. And pilgrims abandoned all they had to cross a virtually unpassable ocean to seek empty land to build from scratch but with the freedom to continue experimenting with their new ideas. Funny how this country has come full circle.
- dilippkumar 4y ago> What do they expect to happen if they win? Most likely it’s a play to buy time for competition to catch up.
- rvz 4y ago> I understand that the LLM models are advancing quickly and aren't easily explainable or transparent. The models feel like magic at times. This is exactly why LLMs aren't useful or trustworthy for anything serious other than the niche of summarization of existing text. Even with that, you have to keep checking that it isn't hallucinating or bullshitting. > These folks should take the time to understand how an LLM works before taking this action. Anyone who knows about deep neural networks already knows that fundamentally they are black-boxes and are extremely poor at explainability and reasoning. This also applies to LLMs and it is not 'FUD'.
- Veen 4y agoThey're useful for many things, provided the user is aware of their limitations. That's true of any tool or information source.
- boringuser2 4y agoGPT-4 is basically magic when it comes to code. Have you used it?
- gremlinsinc 4y agoIf you start with unit tests, you can have a looping ai just keep iterating code into a python file for example until it figures out how to pass the test, then all you need to do is write tests and the rest of the code writes itself.
- boringuser2 4y agoThese models are nakedly dangerous, even a cursory glance suggests this.
- Our_Benefactors 4y ago“the nonprofit research group Center for AI and Digital Policy” Uh huh. mentally filing this group into “AI grifters to be ignored”.
- ilaksh 4y agoThe fact that they are targeting GPT4 for supposed bias and safety risks, when GPT4 is the least biased and safest (hardest to jailbreak) model that OpenAI has released, makes this look like just an unsophisticated attack on their business model.
- ravenstine 4y agoWe have no business restricting OpenAI for bias when society still treats the MSM as authoritative.
- Overpower0416 4y agoI guess this is the start of governments starting to regulate AIs
- sebzim4500 4y agoThis is just a letter that someone sent the FTC, it is not the FTC actually doing anything.
- bl0rg 4y agoWe need global regulation and treaties regarding AI, pronto.
- simonw 4y agoHere's the press release from the organization that filed the complaint, which has a bit more detail: https://s899a9742c3d83292.jimcontent.com/download/version/1680174583/module/8450182663/name/PRESS-CAIDP-OpenAI-FTC-Complaint.pdf https://s899a9742c3d83292.jimcontent.com/download/version/16...
- oli5679 4y agoWhen I read this, I was wondering if the moratorium advocacy signed by prominent members of Google research labs and OpenAI could be viewed as collusion/market-sharing?
- ben_w 4y agoI may not agree with: > CAIDP calls GPT-4 “biased, deceptive, and a risk to privacy and public safety.” But the rest looks good to me: > The group says the large language model fails to meet the agency’s standards for AI to be “transparent, explainable, fair, and empirically sound while fostering accountability.” > The group wants the FTC to require OpenAI establish a way to independently assess GPT products before they’re deployed in the future. It also wants the FTC to create a public incident reporting system for GPT-4 similar to its systems for reporting consumer fraud. It also wants the agency to take on a rulemaking initiative to create standards for generative AI products. Sure, there will be (more) FOSS clones, and non-American clones. NBD — if they can't pass stuff like this, they're not going to be as valuable regardless.
- djoldman 4y agocase text: https://www.caidp.org/app/download/8450269463/CAIDP-FTC-Complaint-OpenAI-GPT-033023.pdf https://www.caidp.org/app/download/8450269463/CAIDP-FTC-Comp...
- sashank_1509 4y agoThis is how our society becomes the dystopia in Atlas Shrugged. Every single fast moving technology that we do not understand, needs to be stopped on its track and regulated to check for “safety”, “inclusion”etc because really the biggest problem facing the world right now is Unchecked Technological Progress. In fact the biggest problem facing Black People and Women are biased AI, god forbid humans are always fair. Clown world!
- nightski 4y agoIt’s really ironic to me that Elon Musk signed a petition to halt LLMs but then uses AI on our roads putting people at risk without issue.
- chatmasta 4y agoYes. Elon Musk has killed more people with his AI than anyone else has with theirs.
- ben_w 4y agoI'd be surprised if there's enough evidence to determine in either direction, for that. How many used an AI for medical advice? A medical AI which said "no cancer" when there was? Does Therac-25 count as GOFAI? How many have taken an LLM at face value about some topic, and like those stories about GPS directions gone wrong, done something daft that we've not necessarily yet heard about (or if we have, the headline was "Florida Man does X" rather than "AI tells man to do X, and he does"?) It's like how we don't know how many people had a crash shortly after failing to notice FSD had switched itself off.
- chatmasta 4y agoI think at this point we can reasonably assume nobody has used AI for cancer diagnosis. Give it a year or two and maybe that's valid. Or maybe it even is true now if some high number of people have asked ChatGPT for tips about symptoms and decided not to go to the doctor based on its advice. But either way, it's inarguable that Tesla AI has directly killed more people than any other publicly known AI. I suppose you could consider guided missiles, but those are not really AI (although you could make a similar argument that neither is FSD).
- ben_w 4y ago> I think at this point we can reasonably assume nobody has used AI for cancer diagnosis. Why do you believe that to be the case? It's been in the news since at least Jan 2020: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/02/tech/google-health-breast-cancer/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/02/tech/google-health-breast...
- szoszon 4y agoI wonder how much of this attack on "AI" is directed by China. Slowing down AI development in the western world until they can catch up seems like a big win for China.
- paulpan 4y agoTherein lies Sam Altman's biggest fear: regulatory crackdown or restrictions on OpenAI. At this point the government presents the only risk to the progress and success of OpenAI. Sure there are competitors like Google but so far OpenAI is the leader and doesn't seem to be slowing down. The market could evolve into a natural duopoly, especially given the huge capital expenditures and technical know-how required to stand up and maintain a cutting edge LLM like GPT-4. Once GPT-4/chatGPT reaches a certain tipping point for disruption, and public sentiment turns from curiosity to fear, the resulting backlash and scrutiny could be on the level of Microsoft's antitrust case in the 1990s. If I were Sam, I'd be pouring resources and money into DC to try to get ahead of this coming storm.
- blibble 4y ago> Once GPT-4/chatGPT reaches a certain tipping point for disruption, and public sentiment turns from curiosity to fear, the resulting backlash and scrutiny could be on the level of Microsoft's antitrust case in the 1990s. amongst the soon-to-be-permanently unemployed middle class there are going to be a few crazy people once/if they realise what these companies are working towards: their employees will require 24/7 security... I'm not sure this is a future that any of us want (bar some executives)?
- bunnyswipe_com 4y agoHell no
- yzdbgd 4y agoWhat bothers me about this is that, yes, moving too fast with Ai to the point of disruption or where society can't keep up is a problem. Yet, restricting OpenAi on the other hand won't prevent other big companies from building their own in-house GPT-4 (or GPT5) level model. We're going there whether the government likes it or not, At the very least OpenAi is transparent (more than Google or facebook at least).
- firefoxkekw 4y agoNeo-Luddism. Like they are going to stop China or any other country outside US or EU. The most they can hope to do, is to force some companies to move off-shore. Wonder where was all this people when Elon Musk started releasing betas on FSD. Self-appointed 'Center for AI and Digital Policy', nothing more to add.
- ben_w 4y ago> Wonder where was all this people when Elon Musk started releasing betas on FSD. Loudly and openly for the entire duration, including governments specifically saying the marketing was misleading.
- 324dsfsa43 4y agoIf some half-baked regulation take place in US on AI research, most probably many corporations will just spin-off some "new" startup somewhere less touchy about AIs. Let's say Germany, France, Ireland, it could be almost anywhere, as long as the money get to bootstrap a sufficiently effective replacement for any inhouse research division. It could take time, or not, now the money isn't a problem, and if some regulation begin to cripple the market, suddenly you have a hungrier market with even less offer to satisfy demand, hence the money get hotter and will be pumped even faster into AI research. I think these guys looking for regulations, stopping development, etc. don't know anything about economics. Everything they are doing, will backfire quite soon.
- rajivjain 4y agoOne way or other, the cat is out of the bag and there is no going back. Remember Napster. Even if Open AI/ChatGPT is taken down, however unlikely, there is no slowing down the innovation that is about to transform our lives. This moment in time feels like early 2000s when Web 1.0 became real to masses and suddenly everyone had a use for web. We are at precipice of the next big technology cycle, and this is showing all the classical symptoms of incumbents fighting the inevitable disruption
- Loveaway 4y agoIf they succeed in freezing AI development there will be no APIs like OpenAI is offering. It'll be all closed doors. Huge Benefit for those with access, rest of humanity basically plebs.
- polski-g 4y agoThey 100% cannot freeze AI development. They might be able to freeze commercialization of AI development, but the First Amendment protects development of any and all code: https://samirchopra.com/2016/03/03/apples-code-is-speech-argument-the-decss-case-and-free-software/ https://samirchopra.com/2016/03/03/apples-code-is-speech-arg...
- rvz 4y ago> One way or other, the cat is out of the bag and there is no going back. As long as ChatGPT and GPT-4 is available as an API, the cat has been tethered by its owner and can be put back into the bag. > This moment in time feels like early 2000s when Web 1.0 became real to masses and suddenly everyone had a use for web. Where 90% of startups have just went out of business. Even if they are emerging, the big tech conglomerates will just out pace them before they could attempt to challenge them. > We are at precipice of the next big technology cycle, and this is showing all the classical symptoms of incumbents fighting the inevitable disruption They said that about FSD as well, IoT, etc. Yet none of that was trusted enough to 'take off'. There is something in the way which separates the legitimate use-cases from the grifters and it is called 'Regulation and compliance', which eliminates the majority of short-term grifts just like the AI hype of LLMs on everything.
- say_it_as_it_is 4y agoI'm sure that China is going to honor the demands of activists in America and halt its development of AI projects
- nemo44x 4y agoI mean, can't they just move the company to a friendly island nation, or elsewhere? It's in our best interest the an American company is far and away the leader in this field.
- privacylawthrow 4y agoThe FTC has been begging the complain-for-profit sector to give it a formal path to regulate AI. The FTC's only enforcement hook in this area is that it can take action against companies that have unfair or deceptive trade practices. This is how the FTC began regulating privacy and security in the US, and it's been waiting to use it for AI. It comes as no surprise that this complaint is from Mark Rotenberg, former head of EPIC. He's very well aware of the boundaries of the FTC's power, and this complaint effectively serves as a letter to the FTC from an expert about how the FTC can position itself to begin regulating AI.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- phkahler 4y ago>> ” Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak were among the other signatories. I like Elon and his companies, but this is ridiculous. Autopilot AI has been killing people for years now and he always defends it.
- jmclnx 4y agoThe last thing want is to talk to a AI bot when calling a company or health provider with questions. Due to where I live and my accent, these voice bots never work. So, anything to stop these from being commercialized is good to me. But these articles about AI are nuts, some state AI will destroy all life on Earth. That was a headline I ran across that was suppose to be signed by some scientists. I did not read it because it sounded crazy. Also, these GPT* things is not really AI, but word/sentence parsers and probably some fancy database lookup.
- humanistbot 4y ago> But these articles about AI are nuts, some state AI will destroy all life on Earth. That was a headline I ran across that was suppose to be signed by some scientists. I did not read it because it sounded crazy. I'm going to give you some advice, without taking a stance on the content of that open letter one way or the other. If you do not engage with someone or some group because you think they 'sound crazy' based solely on a news headline, you are only limiting yourself. Do yourself a favor and go read it for yourself, and make your own judgement about whether it is crazy. Maybe you read it and your suspicions are confirmed: you do think it is crazy, but now you have a first-hand view of exactly how crazy it is, and you can think about how to react given that influential people hold views you think are crazy. Or maybe you read it and your suspicions are overturned, and you have a first-hand view of a new perspective. But if you just say "that's crazy, I'm not reading that" based on a news headline, you're letting a very superficial take determine your information diet. You're not even reading the article itself, just the headline! And the primary source the article and headline is based on is right there, it is relatively short. And journalists don't even get to write their own headlines, which is a huge issue within journalism. Headline writing is a dedicated role that has been SEO-ed to death. If you're a journalist, it is taboo to publicly blame your headline writers for the stupid, reductionist, and misleading titles they gave the piece you wrote, but every journalist has stories to tell about how much they hate their headline writers.
- jmarinez 4y agoMy first instinct after reading the complaint is... Fuck off!! How nice it must be for members of this so called "Center for AI and Digital Policy" to dictate - isn't that the result of a complaint enforced by the FTC - from their nice and comfortable chairs at what OpenAI and by inference, every other AI research company in the US, what to do and how. Is this the new form of virtue signaling? The FTC should stop OpenAI because of all the possible negative outcomes their AI work MAY create? Right off the top of my head, I can come up with at least 10 places in the US and around the world where members of CAID can go to right now and make a real difference to people who have real problems NOW. Instead, they want to tell and force others on what to do with their expression - yes, AI research and its output is a form of expression protected in the US (home of OpenAI) under free speech laws. How about taking a page from their org name and create an AI that can do all those things they're asking for automatically? No, that's not an option for them because it would actually require them to do more work than the complaint they could've probably used ChatGPT to write. In their infinite wisdom, couldn't they have foreseen in the last 10 years that an AI-based tool like ChatGPT would emerge? Where's their AI tool that could save us all now from the awful and destructive AI companies that are creating so much value for the world? Have they even read OpenAI's System Card on GPT-4? Did CAID even see the tradeoffs and concerns explored? On the way to reading the card they should dust off a copy of Lessig's Code, checkout a copy of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and remember that this the US, we don't force people to do anything, engage in dialogue instead. “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ― George Orwell
- seanhunter 4y agoThis complaint seems somewhat unlikely to lead to an actual FTC action. The criticism is about unfair or deceptive business practices under the FTC act. The FTC has a fairly specific definition of what constitutes unfair or deceptive business practises[1] > “Deceptive” practices are defined in the Commission’s Policy Statement on Deception as involving a material representation, omission or practice that is likely to mislead a consumer acting reasonably in the circumstances. An act or practice is “unfair” if it “causes or is likely to cause substantial injury to consumers which is not reasonably avoidable by consumers themselves and not outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or to competition.” [1] https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/mission/enforcement-authority https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/mission/enforcement-authority