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Ask HN: Why is OpenAI still called OpenAI?
It's clear their mission and approach has changed. Why keep "open" in the name?
- smoldesu 3y agoProbably because it's a recognizable name, and the overwhelming majority of users don't seem to notice or care. So... business purposes. I love FOSS and see the irony just as clearly as anyone else, but it's kinda pointless to highlight supposed hypocrisy from the name alone. It would be stupid to get mad at Alphabet for not inventing new letters or Apple for not breeding new fruits. Yes, the name implies something that it's not. Outside of the fairly limited (and clearly unrelated) context of Open Source though, it doesn't seem like their name correlates to much of anything. Long-term, it wouldn't surprise me if they go all-in on the ChatGPT name and switch OpenAI to something more suit-and-tie. I'm sure they're in no hurry, though.
- duiker101 3y agoI'd be willing to bet already most people have no idea what OpenAI is, just like most people don't know what ByteDance is.
- sfc32 3y agoOr that most people don't realise that TikTok is a rebranded Musicality, which was used by pedophiles for grooming https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/horrified-parents-warn-paedophiles-using-8363035 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/horrified-parents-w...
- qd011 3y agoBecause it's a good name, and names are brands, not some legal commitment to anyone's intepretation of what the company does. Apple don't sell produce, Tesla have nothing to do with the Serbian-American inventor, Amazon aren't related to the river, and the Walt Disney company kept his name after he died.
- frou_dh 3y agoNot very convincing because all your examples are nouns, when OP was taking issue with an adjective.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sophacles 3y agoHere's some examples with bad adjectives: Best Buy is rarely even close to the best price. Under armor makes a lot of outerware, and thier underwear is not designed specifically for armor. Yum brands doesn't have very good properties. Western Union is a global bank, it neither limited to the west nor meaningfully related to union.
- penjelly 3y agoother commenters said it best but... chatgpt is available to all and its free (gpt3.5 anyway) so they can still argue its "open" in some way. Consider the alternative where chatgpt is only for ceo's of megacorps or 3.5 is a paid plan. "Open" doesnt have to mean Open Source.
- SeanLuke 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20151211215507/https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/ https://web.archive.org/web/20151211215507/https://openai.co... > As a non-profit, our aim is to build value for everyone rather than shareholders. Researchers will be strongly encouraged to publish their work, whether as papers, blog posts, or code, and our patents (if any) will be shared with the world. We'll freely collaborate with others across many institutions and expect to work with companies to research and deploy new technologies. It sure sounds like "open" meant Open Source to OpenAI.com.
- penjelly 3y agoyes it originally meant that, im saying it can now be argued that open means something different.
- codeTired 3y agoBecause company names and slogans are often misleading.
- renewiltord 3y agoBecause, unlike Meta and Alphabet of the time, they were the first to give us access to this secret technology. They threw open the doors and the other guys had to follow, and Meta eventually went farther. But they opened the doors. Seems fine to me.
- smoldesu 3y agoOpenAI was most certainly not the first organization to develop (or distribute) an LLM model: https://github.com/google-research/bert https://github.com/google-research/bert https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04805 https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04805 Failing that, Seq2seq predates OpenAI's incorporation: https://google.github.io/seq2seq/ https://google.github.io/seq2seq/ https://github.com/google/seq2seq https://github.com/google/seq2seq https://arxiv.org/abs/1409.3215 https://arxiv.org/abs/1409.3215
- renewiltord 3y agoThey gave us an actually functioning thing that did useful stuff while everyone else was pretending theirs was great. When it came out, both Meta and Google couldn't match.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- smoldesu 3y agoSure, Jan.
- jackblemming 3y agoThe same reason politicians name the most toxic and disgusting bills the “Protect the Children Act”.
- saulpw 3y agoThe same reason North Korea is officially called the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". If you're not going to walk the talk, you can still get some good PR from an "aspirational" name. You'd think that people would be wise to this strategy after so many Definitely Not Evil groups turned out to actually be evil, but every year brings a new cohort of gullibles into the world.
- SkyMarshal 3y agoCompany names often don’t mean anything at all, they’re just a pointer to the corporate entity. Think of it like “Google” or “Exxon” or similar, doesn’t matter what it means just what it points to. It just needs to be distinct and not confused with some other entity.
- geocrasher 3y agoA friend of mine started a window washing business. We'll call it "Willy's Windows". He had a great reputation and the business reflected his name. He sold the business, and the new owner kept "Willy's Windows" because it already had a reputation attached to it. And that's your answer. Even through Acquisitions, major company changes and refactoring, a name carries a reputation. And when it's a good one, they keep it, even if it means nothing in their new state.
- NotYourLawyer 3y agoUnless it’s twitter, in which case you just throw away one of the most well-known brands in the world.
- hanselot 3y agoPeople I like do something: "OMG, did you see that Y rebranded to Z??!!!" You can do the rest. Edit - lint + change name of vars to reduce complexity for the non-dutch.
- catlover76 3y agoI can't recall any tech rebrands (or general rebrands) that people took seriously or were felt affirmatively or excitedly positive about. At best, people react with ambivalence.
- hanselot 3y agoPlease google what google was called before they changed the name.
- catlover76 3y agoI didn't dispute that name changes and rebrands occur or have occurred. I suggested that they aren't usually met with the kind of elation you suggest, whether or not anyone likes the company.
- pixl97 3y agoWhy is "Federal Express" called federal if it's not part of the government? You don't see anyone here going "OpenText" isn't actually open, how dare they name their business that, they need to change. Open doesn't mean anything, never has never did. It's not a protected name, like "Engineer" is in some locations restricting its use. OpenAI is just the case of inevitable betrayal that occurred the moment they got a money making plan going.
- singleshot_ 3y ago> Why is "Federal Express" called federal if it's not part of the government? Because everything goes back to Memphis before it gets delivered. It’s a centralized, not distributed, delivery service.
- esrauch 3y agoI'm 100% sure the complaint isn't made about OpenText because no one is taking about OpenText and being talked about is a prerequisite to being complained about. I don't think anyone will defend OpenText's name as a good name if they make closed sourced software.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sneed_chucker 3y agoBecause names don't really have to mean anything. There's also "OpenVMS" and "The Open Group"
- Legend2440 3y agoBecause you can name your company anything you want. (as long as it isn't already trademarked, anyway)
- stranded22 3y agoThe same reason as the online safety bill, or Tony Blair being the Middle East peace envoy. It is just branding.
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]