7 ms·

The best outcome right now is for OpenAI to open source GPT-4 architecture and its training data, then release the weights. Would at least take LLM dominance aw

The best outcome right now is for OpenAI to open source GPT-4 architecture and its training data, then release the weights. Would at least take LLM dominance away from Microsoft.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> best outcome right now is for OpenAI to open source GPT-4 architecture and its training data, then release the weights. Would at least take LLM dominance away from Microsoft. While undermining its safety argument. Better: open it to partners, subject to vetting and contractual terms regarding its use, in exchange for cash and/or compute.
- basisword 3y ago
  If it's that unsafe, it shouldn't be in the hands and control of a clearly incompetent private company.
  - kylebenzle 3y ago
    Has ANYONE been able to articulate what the "safety" concern is or more likely is it just companies trying to build an artificial moat around a statistical model built on free/stolen data? Currently the for-profit models are Nerfed to not allow bigoted or sexist (against women) text to be generated but that seems to be it. What kind of text are we being protected from?
    - hollerith 3y ago
      The main danger (but certainly not the only danger) is that the AI kills us all for reasons that have been articulated for 20 years including in books by respected academics like Nick Bostrom. The techniques used to 'steer' or 'aim' the AI stop working once the AI becomes better than humans (and human institutions like the FBI or Microsoft) at certain cognitive capabilities like making intricate plans that will succeed in spite of determined human opposition. Researchers employed full-time at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute have been trying to solve this 'control' or 'alignment' problem continuously for 20 years, but progress has been very slow compared to 'progress' on just building dangerous AI.
    - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
      LLMs have the potential to be one of the most toxic technologies in human history. Sexist etc content is a footnote compared to the potential for an automated, proven, and tuneable technology of mass persuasion and impersonation. So - massively addictive adtech. Reliable and effective political and ideological propaganda. Bot farms and "credible" fake media content produced at scale. Imagine those being used against a relatively defenceless population to creative division, undermine personal and collective confidence, and encourage stochastic terrorism and other kinds of violence.
- consp 3y ago
  > While undermining its safety argument. For someone not knowledgeable in this, why is this the case?
  - tw04 3y ago
    >For someone not knowledgeable in this, why is this the case? So you open this to the world - what's the stop the Chinese government from weaponizing it to both suppress their own citizens and attack foreign adversaries?
    - coconut08 3y ago
      they are already doing this. even if you don't give this to them they will just make it themselves. keeping it hidden doesn't prevent china from doing bad things. this doesn't keep this power out of the hands of china it just keeps it out of the hands of the common person.
      - tw04 3y ago
        Right, just like not giving them access to TSMC and advanced fab designs doesn't stop them. And not giving them access to advanced jet engines didn't slow them down. Except... it does and the net effect was seen just this week as Xi started softening his tone realizing that his economy cannot keep up without access to advanced technology.
        coconut08 3y ago
        if you think that china can't get access to gpus because the united states says so then you are incredibly naive. of course they can get access to gpus. they could buy them on the black market or buy them through another country or just steal them. they are literally made in taiwan right next to and right under the thumb of china.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      What's stopping them from doing that right now with the GPT-4 API?
- api 3y ago
  The safety argument is bullshit, at least in terms of the model itself doing nasty things. The risk with AI is monopolization by humans using it for nefarious purposes. This risk is reduced through openness and transparency.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- liotier 3y ago
  > While undermining its safety argument Which is just political marketing for regulatory barriers to entry lobbying.
  - bootsmann 3y ago
    It was the legit raison d'être of the company when it was founded, the safetyism fiesta predates the legislative entrenchment.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    I tend to agree. But we just watched folks vaporise tens of billions of dollars to defend that view. In light of that, I’m willing to give it a little credence.
    - nullc 3y ago
      There are multiple factions hiding behind safety. The regulatory capture faction and the BuildingGodInOurImage factions both currently say similar things to the public, but the underlying motivations are very different. But neither seem likely to want to open anything meaningful that is is AGI related-- locking the public out of powerful AI is a point in which all the major 'safety' factions are aligned. (well not the monopolization concern faction, but they're not a player here and usually don't hide behind the safety banner)
soderfoo 3y ago
One would assume that MSFT, for its $9 billion investment, would have some kind protection against this from happening. But seeing the shenanigans of the past few days and how MSFT failed to secure a board seat for their $$, it would not surprise me.
- sensanaty 3y ago
  They'd probably have some legal avenues they could pursue should this happen, but if it did happen, what exactly could M$ do about it? Once it's out in the world, that's it, it'll be everywhere and no amount of M$ lobbying is gonna be able to get rid of it. A man can dream...
  - brookst 3y ago
    If you're dreaming about people bailing on contracts they signed over some kind of personal vendetta, you may not be one of the good guys.
    - sensanaty 3y ago
      Why on earth would I care about some contracts when talking about M$, as if they wouldn't breach any number of contracts if they could get away with it? As far as I'm concerned literally everyone else is "one of the good guys" when the other side we're talking about is M$ and the psychopaths that are involved with it, regardless of their actions.
Tempest1981 3y ago
Or same for an early GPT-5?
ot 3y ago
But how would that benefit OpenAI? It would be a "fuck you" move that faintly inconveniences Microsoft and destroys OpenAI.
- airstrike 3y ago
  > and destroys OpenAI You mean destroy the rubble that's currently left in the offices of the company formerly known as OpenAI? If 500-750 key employees have departed to a competitor, what's left to protect? Yeah, it would 80% be a "fuck you" move, but the other 20% would represent a pivot to an "open source" model like the name once implied
  - bdowling 3y ago
    > the other 20% would represent a pivot to an "open source" model like the name once implied Or they would be triggering a billion-dollar lawsuit that would surely bankrupt the company.
    - klohto 3y ago
      On what grounds exactly? They are still the owners
      - bdowling 3y ago
        I don't have any insider knowledge that the linked post is true, but it seems plausible. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38349969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38349969 Even if there isn't anything explicit, there may be an implicit promise that a strategic partner won't share all the company secrets with the partner's competitors.
    - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
      Not seeing they have anything to lose at this point.
  - vigilantpuma 3y ago
    Have 500-750 key employees departed? Or even threatened to depart? OpenAI has (well, had) 770 employees, you think Microsoft will lure away 70-97% of them?
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
Best outcome for whom? OpenAI's best asset isn't GPT-4. GPT-4 is just an interim step to GPT-5 and 6 and 7 and so on. Imagine we had this conversation when GPT-3 was out. Just open-source it and disband the team! And what? Nothing. The people are always the greatest asset of a software company. Always. That's even the case with AI. At least... until I guess we get an AGI which is so powerful that it can self-improve, then I guess screw the people. But then that applies not just to the OpenAI team, but the world as a whole.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Best outcome for whom? For the HN readers commenting on this.
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    Only if they're myopic. People think you open-source something and it starts improving rapidly. But that's not exactly how it works. The first push is almost always commercial. And only when the product is mature, well understood in and out, and people get bored of paying for it, then open-source initiatives start showing up to democratize this product type for everyone without dependency on a single vendor. Think like Unix -> Linux. Linux is largely stagnant, but that's also because it's "done". Sure tons of patches flow in, but if you need a major architectural change, with breaking changes, FOSS can't deliver that most of the time, if ever. Are we done developing AI? Nothing major to add, that's it? Hell, no. We're merely starting. And so... we need to see what commercial companies (even under the guide of not-for-profit ones) can do, before we start demanding open-source versions.
crazygringo 3y ago
I don't see how that would benefit OpenAI at all. You're saying that would be the best outcome, but... why?
- tarruda 3y ago
  90% of the OpenAI staff threatened to leave, so I can see two possibilities for the future: - The OpenAI staff stays and the current board is replaced by Microsoft - The OpenAI staff leaves and goes work for Microsoft. Either way Microsoft has 100% control over this technology, thus the best possible outcome is OpenAI releasing it.
zanfr 3y ago
yes that's what they should do. best course for everyone except MSFT
- thelittleone 3y ago
  Great for China, Russia and Iran too.
qwytw 3y ago
Aren't/weren't the people running OpenAI ideologically opposed to "too capable" opensource LLM models due to various safety concerns? > and its training data I'm not sure you can opensource something you don't actually hold any copyright to..
- gryn 3y ago
  yes, the safety of their power/business/bank account. despite claiming otherwise something along the lines of "The Greater Good" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUpbOliTHJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUpbOliTHJY
- ActionHank 3y ago
  Yeah, it would be far better if corporations were the only ones with that knowledge. /s
partiallypro 3y ago
Is there no concern from you or people that share this idea about this technology falling into the arms of state actors that won't be so moral about it? You all have seemingly had an issue with money being made, but it falling into state actor hands means lives could be lost. That seems like a much bigger deal than someone making money.
- meiraleal 3y ago
  > Is there no concern from you or people that share this idea about this technology falling into the arms of state actors that won't be so moral about it? I'm deeply concerned about it falling into the arms of private actors, specially the worst of them, M$.
- guhcampos 3y ago
  Honestly? I don't believe ChatGPT has much value for state actors at all, especially in Military. They have their own kind of AI technology which serves different purposes and we probably know nothing or very little about it. It's not like they will be sharing their tech with the World, much less open sourcing it.
- sensanaty 3y ago
  Lol as if the gov't having access to it is somehow worse than fucking microsoft having their grubby greedy hands on it? As if they're moral and give a shit about literally anything other than their bottom line and how to extract the maximum amount of money out of everything they ever touch? Besides, state actors probably already have tech that far surpasses GPT and they're probably using it for a lot more than making people feel clever for copy/pasting a CRUD app together for their useless startup.
- wheelerof4te 3y ago
  "falling into the arms of state actors that won't be so moral about it?" What do you mean by "moral"? State actors have interests, major corporations also have their interests. Very few of them can be called moral. Big tech was always about power and money. No morals there.
hoseja 3y ago
There are yuddite decels at whatever is left of the wheel, not happening.
zwily 3y ago
The new CEO wants AI development to slow down to 10-20% what it is. How would open sourcing GPT-4 align with that?
- dacryn 3y ago
  that's misquoted by the Altman fanclub. the new CEO wanted to focus on something else than LLMs, because it's believed to be a dead end, and allocate more time and resources into grounding AI. they don't want AI to slow down, they want to try out something else and not put all their eggs in one basket. extremely big difference
  - zwily 3y ago
    How is this misquoted? https://x.com/eshear/status/1703178063306203397?s=46&t=yWOhqJwJAtTRV5te6RU9gw https://x.com/eshear/status/1703178063306203397?s=46&t=yWOhq... I see nothing in that thread that says what you’re talking about.

The best outcome right now is for OpenAI to open source GPT-4 architecture and its training data, then release the weights. Would at least take LLM dominance away from Microsoft.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> best outcome right now is for OpenAI to open source GPT-4 architecture and its training data, then release the weights. Would at least take LLM dominance away from Microsoft. While undermining its safety argument. Better: open it to partners, subject to vetting and contractual terms regarding its use, in exchange for cash and/or compute.

basisword 3y ago
If it's that unsafe, it shouldn't be in the hands and control of a clearly incompetent private company.
- kylebenzle 3y ago
  Has ANYONE been able to articulate what the "safety" concern is or more likely is it just companies trying to build an artificial moat around a statistical model built on free/stolen data? Currently the for-profit models are Nerfed to not allow bigoted or sexist (against women) text to be generated but that seems to be it. What kind of text are we being protected from?
  - hollerith 3y ago
    The main danger (but certainly not the only danger) is that the AI kills us all for reasons that have been articulated for 20 years including in books by respected academics like Nick Bostrom. The techniques used to 'steer' or 'aim' the AI stop working once the AI becomes better than humans (and human institutions like the FBI or Microsoft) at certain cognitive capabilities like making intricate plans that will succeed in spite of determined human opposition. Researchers employed full-time at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute have been trying to solve this 'control' or 'alignment' problem continuously for 20 years, but progress has been very slow compared to 'progress' on just building dangerous AI.
  - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
    LLMs have the potential to be one of the most toxic technologies in human history. Sexist etc content is a footnote compared to the potential for an automated, proven, and tuneable technology of mass persuasion and impersonation. So - massively addictive adtech. Reliable and effective political and ideological propaganda. Bot farms and "credible" fake media content produced at scale. Imagine those being used against a relatively defenceless population to creative division, undermine personal and collective confidence, and encourage stochastic terrorism and other kinds of violence.
consp 3y ago
> While undermining its safety argument. For someone not knowledgeable in this, why is this the case?
- tw04 3y ago
  >For someone not knowledgeable in this, why is this the case? So you open this to the world - what's the stop the Chinese government from weaponizing it to both suppress their own citizens and attack foreign adversaries?
  - coconut08 3y ago
    they are already doing this. even if you don't give this to them they will just make it themselves. keeping it hidden doesn't prevent china from doing bad things. this doesn't keep this power out of the hands of china it just keeps it out of the hands of the common person.
    - tw04 3y ago
      Right, just like not giving them access to TSMC and advanced fab designs doesn't stop them. And not giving them access to advanced jet engines didn't slow them down. Except... it does and the net effect was seen just this week as Xi started softening his tone realizing that his economy cannot keep up without access to advanced technology.
      - coconut08 3y ago
        if you think that china can't get access to gpus because the united states says so then you are incredibly naive. of course they can get access to gpus. they could buy them on the black market or buy them through another country or just steal them. they are literally made in taiwan right next to and right under the thumb of china.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    What's stopping them from doing that right now with the GPT-4 API?
api 3y ago
The safety argument is bullshit, at least in terms of the model itself doing nasty things. The risk with AI is monopolization by humans using it for nefarious purposes. This risk is reduced through openness and transparency.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
liotier 3y ago
> While undermining its safety argument Which is just political marketing for regulatory barriers to entry lobbying.
- bootsmann 3y ago
  It was the legit raison d'être of the company when it was founded, the safetyism fiesta predates the legislative entrenchment.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  I tend to agree. But we just watched folks vaporise tens of billions of dollars to defend that view. In light of that, I’m willing to give it a little credence.
  - nullc 3y ago
    There are multiple factions hiding behind safety. The regulatory capture faction and the BuildingGodInOurImage factions both currently say similar things to the public, but the underlying motivations are very different. But neither seem likely to want to open anything meaningful that is is AGI related-- locking the public out of powerful AI is a point in which all the major 'safety' factions are aligned. (well not the monopolization concern faction, but they're not a player here and usually don't hide behind the safety banner)

soderfoo 3y ago

One would assume that MSFT, for its $9 billion investment, would have some kind protection against this from happening. But seeing the shenanigans of the past few days and how MSFT failed to secure a board seat for their $$, it would not surprise me.

sensanaty 3y ago
They'd probably have some legal avenues they could pursue should this happen, but if it did happen, what exactly could M$ do about it? Once it's out in the world, that's it, it'll be everywhere and no amount of M$ lobbying is gonna be able to get rid of it. A man can dream...
- brookst 3y ago
  If you're dreaming about people bailing on contracts they signed over some kind of personal vendetta, you may not be one of the good guys.
  - sensanaty 3y ago
    Why on earth would I care about some contracts when talking about M$, as if they wouldn't breach any number of contracts if they could get away with it? As far as I'm concerned literally everyone else is "one of the good guys" when the other side we're talking about is M$ and the psychopaths that are involved with it, regardless of their actions.

Tempest1981 3y ago

Or same for an early GPT-5?

ot 3y ago

But how would that benefit OpenAI? It would be a "fuck you" move that faintly inconveniences Microsoft and destroys OpenAI.

airstrike 3y ago
> and destroys OpenAI You mean destroy the rubble that's currently left in the offices of the company formerly known as OpenAI? If 500-750 key employees have departed to a competitor, what's left to protect? Yeah, it would 80% be a "fuck you" move, but the other 20% would represent a pivot to an "open source" model like the name once implied
- bdowling 3y ago
  > the other 20% would represent a pivot to an "open source" model like the name once implied Or they would be triggering a billion-dollar lawsuit that would surely bankrupt the company.
  - klohto 3y ago
    On what grounds exactly? They are still the owners
    - bdowling 3y ago
      I don't have any insider knowledge that the linked post is true, but it seems plausible. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38349969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38349969 Even if there isn't anything explicit, there may be an implicit promise that a strategic partner won't share all the company secrets with the partner's competitors.
  - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
    Not seeing they have anything to lose at this point.
- vigilantpuma 3y ago
  Have 500-750 key employees departed? Or even threatened to depart? OpenAI has (well, had) 770 employees, you think Microsoft will lure away 70-97% of them?

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

Best outcome for whom? OpenAI's best asset isn't GPT-4. GPT-4 is just an interim step to GPT-5 and 6 and 7 and so on. Imagine we had this conversation when GPT-3 was out. Just open-source it and disband the team! And what? Nothing. The people are always the greatest asset of a software company. Always. That's even the case with AI. At least... until I guess we get an AGI which is so powerful that it can self-improve, then I guess screw the people. But then that applies not just to the OpenAI team, but the world as a whole.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>Best outcome for whom? For the HN readers commenting on this.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  Only if they're myopic. People think you open-source something and it starts improving rapidly. But that's not exactly how it works. The first push is almost always commercial. And only when the product is mature, well understood in and out, and people get bored of paying for it, then open-source initiatives start showing up to democratize this product type for everyone without dependency on a single vendor. Think like Unix -> Linux. Linux is largely stagnant, but that's also because it's "done". Sure tons of patches flow in, but if you need a major architectural change, with breaking changes, FOSS can't deliver that most of the time, if ever. Are we done developing AI? Nothing major to add, that's it? Hell, no. We're merely starting. And so... we need to see what commercial companies (even under the guide of not-for-profit ones) can do, before we start demanding open-source versions.

crazygringo 3y ago

I don't see how that would benefit OpenAI at all. You're saying that would be the best outcome, but... why?

tarruda 3y ago
90% of the OpenAI staff threatened to leave, so I can see two possibilities for the future: - The OpenAI staff stays and the current board is replaced by Microsoft - The OpenAI staff leaves and goes work for Microsoft. Either way Microsoft has 100% control over this technology, thus the best possible outcome is OpenAI releasing it.

zanfr 3y ago

yes that's what they should do. best course for everyone except MSFT

thelittleone 3y ago
Great for China, Russia and Iran too.

qwytw 3y ago

Aren't/weren't the people running OpenAI ideologically opposed to "too capable" opensource LLM models due to various safety concerns? > and its training data I'm not sure you can opensource something you don't actually hold any copyright to..

gryn 3y ago
yes, the safety of their power/business/bank account. despite claiming otherwise something along the lines of "The Greater Good" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUpbOliTHJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUpbOliTHJY
ActionHank 3y ago
Yeah, it would be far better if corporations were the only ones with that knowledge. /s

partiallypro 3y ago

Is there no concern from you or people that share this idea about this technology falling into the arms of state actors that won't be so moral about it? You all have seemingly had an issue with money being made, but it falling into state actor hands means lives could be lost. That seems like a much bigger deal than someone making money.

meiraleal 3y ago
> Is there no concern from you or people that share this idea about this technology falling into the arms of state actors that won't be so moral about it? I'm deeply concerned about it falling into the arms of private actors, specially the worst of them, M$.
guhcampos 3y ago
Honestly? I don't believe ChatGPT has much value for state actors at all, especially in Military. They have their own kind of AI technology which serves different purposes and we probably know nothing or very little about it. It's not like they will be sharing their tech with the World, much less open sourcing it.
sensanaty 3y ago
Lol as if the gov't having access to it is somehow worse than fucking microsoft having their grubby greedy hands on it? As if they're moral and give a shit about literally anything other than their bottom line and how to extract the maximum amount of money out of everything they ever touch? Besides, state actors probably already have tech that far surpasses GPT and they're probably using it for a lot more than making people feel clever for copy/pasting a CRUD app together for their useless startup.
wheelerof4te 3y ago
"falling into the arms of state actors that won't be so moral about it?" What do you mean by "moral"? State actors have interests, major corporations also have their interests. Very few of them can be called moral. Big tech was always about power and money. No morals there.

hoseja 3y ago

There are yuddite decels at whatever is left of the wheel, not happening.

zwily 3y ago

The new CEO wants AI development to slow down to 10-20% what it is. How would open sourcing GPT-4 align with that?

dacryn 3y ago
that's misquoted by the Altman fanclub. the new CEO wanted to focus on something else than LLMs, because it's believed to be a dead end, and allocate more time and resources into grounding AI. they don't want AI to slow down, they want to try out something else and not put all their eggs in one basket. extremely big difference
- zwily 3y ago
  How is this misquoted? https://x.com/eshear/status/1703178063306203397?s=46&t=yWOhqJwJAtTRV5te6RU9gw https://x.com/eshear/status/1703178063306203397?s=46&t=yWOhq... I see nothing in that thread that says what you’re talking about.