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He's begging for regulatory capture. "I can destroy the world but I won't. My competitor's will, so regulate them." A shrewd plan considering he's not offering

by mimd 4y ago

He's begging for regulatory capture. "I can destroy the world but I won't. My competitor's will, so regulate them." A shrewd plan considering he's not offering something beyond what another company with a large nvidia cluster could offer.

dmix 4y ago
The odds that is the end game of the AI ethics movement is pretty likely: A mega-monopoly AI firm with a wall of gov policy that will cripple any upstart who can't jump through "safety" hoops written for and by the parent company. So any talented dev who wants to do great AI work either has to work for parent company or build a startup designed to get acquired by them (aka don't rattle the cage).
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  I think that's the goal but there is a reasonable chance that they completely fail and no serious regulation ever gets passed. That's the thing with technology, people get used to it and then trying to ban/control it makes you look ridiculous. It's like how now that Tesla has made it normal to have driving assistance (and calling it FSD) there is little appetite outside of contrarian circles for serious regulation. If, however, regulation was proposed before Tesla shipped then it might have passed.
  - dmix 4y ago
    Never underestimate the pull in politics for calls to "protect the children", stop x-ism/x-phobia/etc, foreign boogiemen, or lack of control by law enforcement/Intel agencies... or merely the revolving door that will start once companies like OpenAI become massive and their ex "AI ethics" execs are the ones writing the policy to protect us all from ourselves. These sorts of "public/private" control patterns and the destruction of competition while maintaining private monopoly control in the pursuit of "safety"/"equity" is America's most reliable religion. HN is always full of people pushing for it in one way or the other, so it's not entirely foreign to us either. Nor something we can merely blame on politicians or some intentional conspiracy by a subset of the population.
zmmmmm 4y ago
> A shrewd plan considering he's not offering something beyond what another company with a large nvidia cluster could offer So why does Bard seem inferior to GPT-4?
- jamaliki 4y ago
  It'll get better fast.
- throwaway1851 4y ago
  Bard hasn’t been using Google’s best language models. I believe it just got an upgrade, however, and I’m now getting output that is significantly more coherent and useful than ChatGPT’s. It’s also a helluva lot faster, though that could owe to the limited access.
- thefreeman 4y ago
  I mean they’ve literally said they are using a much smaller parameter model at first to while testing. you can not believe it if you want but that’s the very obvious answer.
skybrian 4y ago
All that may be true, but it doesn't help us decide whether more AI regulation is a good idea or not. As with most things, it probably depends on how it's done.
- mimd 4y ago
  That's a difficult question. I'm just pointing out that Sam's "contributions" are unhelpful to solving that question. You're limited by two prisoners and separate, sometimes antagonistic, countries. For example, we have little agreement on nuclear weapons, at best we've gotten concessions on testing, a few types of missiles, and so on. Same with current climate legislation. So getting global agreement is hard outside of the bare minimum. Most of the inner county approaches seem to be either panic, political distraction, or like Sam, regulatory capture, as they are ignoring that it means nothing if another country pursues it. So I'd focus on what simple agreements we could get worldwide.
jasonhansel 4y ago
An excellent case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
sebzim4500 4y ago
>A shrewd plan considering he's not offering something beyond what another company with a large nvidia cluster could offer. It's been 4 months, no one has released anything nearly as good as the initial release of ChatGPT. Meanwhile OpenAI has released GPT-4 and is trialing plugins and 32k context. Either their competition is incompetent or OpenAI is doing something right.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  Without knowing the profit margin of OpenAI it’s anyone’s guess. Personally I’d be surprised if it’s profitable, azure subsidies aside
  - sebzim4500 4y ago
    Who said anything about making a profit? If Google could make Bard work as well as GPT-4 they would do it, even if it had to operate at a significant loss to start.
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      If it doesn’t make a profit there’s no incentive to do it.
      - mimd 4y ago
        It's a stunt now for both companies as it's a proxy for both search, AI capabilities for sale, and clouds. But eventually they will reach a limit of payoff. But 4 months is short for product development, especially as it sounds like google was caught off guard by the public interest in interacting with chatgpt.
  - polycaster 4y ago
    According to Reuters [1] in 2022 they projected $200 million revenue in 2023 and $1 billion revenue in 2024. In 2019 they Planned to spend the then 1 bn funding within the next 5 years or so. So I suppose they’re not far away from net zero at least. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/chatgpt-owner-openai-projects-1-billion-revenue-by-2024-sources-2022-12-15/ https://www.reuters.com/business/chatgpt-owner-openai-projec...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by mimd 4y ago

dmix 4y ago

The odds that is the end game of the AI ethics movement is pretty likely: A mega-monopoly AI firm with a wall of gov policy that will cripple any upstart who can't jump through "safety" hoops written for and by the parent company. So any talented dev who wants to do great AI work either has to work for parent company or build a startup designed to get acquired by them (aka don't rattle the cage).

sebzim4500 4y ago
I think that's the goal but there is a reasonable chance that they completely fail and no serious regulation ever gets passed. That's the thing with technology, people get used to it and then trying to ban/control it makes you look ridiculous. It's like how now that Tesla has made it normal to have driving assistance (and calling it FSD) there is little appetite outside of contrarian circles for serious regulation. If, however, regulation was proposed before Tesla shipped then it might have passed.
- dmix 4y ago
  Never underestimate the pull in politics for calls to "protect the children", stop x-ism/x-phobia/etc, foreign boogiemen, or lack of control by law enforcement/Intel agencies... or merely the revolving door that will start once companies like OpenAI become massive and their ex "AI ethics" execs are the ones writing the policy to protect us all from ourselves. These sorts of "public/private" control patterns and the destruction of competition while maintaining private monopoly control in the pursuit of "safety"/"equity" is America's most reliable religion. HN is always full of people pushing for it in one way or the other, so it's not entirely foreign to us either. Nor something we can merely blame on politicians or some intentional conspiracy by a subset of the population.

zmmmmm 4y ago

> A shrewd plan considering he's not offering something beyond what another company with a large nvidia cluster could offer So why does Bard seem inferior to GPT-4?

jamaliki 4y ago
It'll get better fast.
throwaway1851 4y ago
Bard hasn’t been using Google’s best language models. I believe it just got an upgrade, however, and I’m now getting output that is significantly more coherent and useful than ChatGPT’s. It’s also a helluva lot faster, though that could owe to the limited access.
thefreeman 4y ago
I mean they’ve literally said they are using a much smaller parameter model at first to while testing. you can not believe it if you want but that’s the very obvious answer.

skybrian 4y ago

All that may be true, but it doesn't help us decide whether more AI regulation is a good idea or not. As with most things, it probably depends on how it's done.

mimd 4y ago
That's a difficult question. I'm just pointing out that Sam's "contributions" are unhelpful to solving that question. You're limited by two prisoners and separate, sometimes antagonistic, countries. For example, we have little agreement on nuclear weapons, at best we've gotten concessions on testing, a few types of missiles, and so on. Same with current climate legislation. So getting global agreement is hard outside of the bare minimum. Most of the inner county approaches seem to be either panic, political distraction, or like Sam, regulatory capture, as they are ignoring that it means nothing if another country pursues it. So I'd focus on what simple agreements we could get worldwide.

jasonhansel 4y ago

An excellent case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.

sebzim4500 4y ago

>A shrewd plan considering he's not offering something beyond what another company with a large nvidia cluster could offer. It's been 4 months, no one has released anything nearly as good as the initial release of ChatGPT. Meanwhile OpenAI has released GPT-4 and is trialing plugins and 32k context. Either their competition is incompetent or OpenAI is doing something right.

endisneigh 4y ago
Without knowing the profit margin of OpenAI it’s anyone’s guess. Personally I’d be surprised if it’s profitable, azure subsidies aside
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  Who said anything about making a profit? If Google could make Bard work as well as GPT-4 they would do it, even if it had to operate at a significant loss to start.
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    If it doesn’t make a profit there’s no incentive to do it.
    - mimd 4y ago
      It's a stunt now for both companies as it's a proxy for both search, AI capabilities for sale, and clouds. But eventually they will reach a limit of payoff. But 4 months is short for product development, especially as it sounds like google was caught off guard by the public interest in interacting with chatgpt.
- polycaster 4y ago
  According to Reuters [1] in 2022 they projected $200 million revenue in 2023 and $1 billion revenue in 2024. In 2019 they Planned to spend the then 1 bn funding within the next 5 years or so. So I suppose they’re not far away from net zero at least. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/chatgpt-owner-openai-projects-1-billion-revenue-by-2024-sources-2022-12-15/ https://www.reuters.com/business/chatgpt-owner-openai-projec...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]