4 ms·

Whatever the laws are, imo it's pretty clear that OpenAI are robber barons of data. It's totally justified to steal from a robber baron. How many people did the

Whatever the laws are, imo it's pretty clear that OpenAI are robber barons of data. It's totally justified to steal from a robber baron. How many people did they ask consent from before hoovering up their data? We should be doing everything possible, including breaking ToS, to get as much value from ChatGPT

ben_w 3y ago
> it's pretty clear that OpenAI are robber barons of data. It's totally justified to steal from a robber baron. How many people did they ask consent from before hoovering up their data? Clear morally if you assume their stated goals are bad faith and just arse covering[0], not necessarily in law — by way of example, I have, sincerely, wondered how Google got away with crawling the web to create its search index. As this was before they were sued by newspapers for including snippets of search results, they ultimately didn't get away with it. > We should be doing everything possible, including breaking ToS, to get as much value from ChatGPT Generating additional and better models may be a tempting "screw the rich" option, but also the exact wrong option if you see their behaviour as IP theft that needs to be fixed — go to court, order the model to be destroyed, don't make more of them. [0] I don't think they were originally, but (a) I generally look for the best in people, and (b) even if I'm right it is always possible they were/will be swayed by the presence of a huge pile of non-hypothetical money. Does anyone besides the old board of directors even know why that board fired Altman a few months back?
- jurynulifcation 3y ago
  I was happy to assume it was good faith until Altman started trying to engage in regulatory capture to protect his competitive moat. You are correct in saying we should pursue lawfare against OpenAI to make sure such blatant and widescale theft can't happen again. I believe you are incorrect in saying it's a bad idea to produce more models. We should do our best to destroy their extralegal competitive moat via extralegal means, then also do our best to ensure such a moat can not be legally constructed again.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > I was happy to assume it was good faith until Altman started trying to engage in regulatory capture to protect his competitive moat I've not seen him do that, just a lot of people saying that's the only thing they can believe he must have meant. What I've seen in his comments, in the original transcripts, is basically "regulate GPT-4 and better, don't bother regulating anything smaller or simpler than that, don't regulate open source models". > You are correct in saying we should pursue lawfare against OpenAI to make sure such blatant and widescale theft can't happen again. I believe you are incorrect in saying it's a bad idea to produce more models. Contradictory position. To produce more models based on one you characterise to be "theft" is to actually make it happen again. Making new models from the output of their models is one of three ways I can see of doing this, along with court ordering their models be published (rather than destroyed), or some other company retraining from scratch on their own crawl of the web. This third option is also why I think anyone using the "moat" metaphor with regard to OpenAI's models needs to stop and think about how they're acting like a stochastic parrot.
    - jurynulifcation 3y ago
      Oh, just to be clear, I have no problems with models built on OSINT. My problem is someone doing that, building a commercial product on it, and then telling others they can't do it to them, while also using the money they get from the endeavor to make the world worse for everyone else.

ben_w 3y ago

> it's pretty clear that OpenAI are robber barons of data. It's totally justified to steal from a robber baron. How many people did they ask consent from before hoovering up their data? Clear morally if you assume their stated goals are bad faith and just arse covering[0], not necessarily in law — by way of example, I have, sincerely, wondered how Google got away with crawling the web to create its search index. As this was before they were sued by newspapers for including snippets of search results, they ultimately didn't get away with it. > We should be doing everything possible, including breaking ToS, to get as much value from ChatGPT Generating additional and better models may be a tempting "screw the rich" option, but also the exact wrong option if you see their behaviour as IP theft that needs to be fixed — go to court, order the model to be destroyed, don't make more of them. [0] I don't think they were originally, but (a) I generally look for the best in people, and (b) even if I'm right it is always possible they were/will be swayed by the presence of a huge pile of non-hypothetical money. Does anyone besides the old board of directors even know why that board fired Altman a few months back?

jurynulifcation 3y ago
I was happy to assume it was good faith until Altman started trying to engage in regulatory capture to protect his competitive moat. You are correct in saying we should pursue lawfare against OpenAI to make sure such blatant and widescale theft can't happen again. I believe you are incorrect in saying it's a bad idea to produce more models. We should do our best to destroy their extralegal competitive moat via extralegal means, then also do our best to ensure such a moat can not be legally constructed again.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > I was happy to assume it was good faith until Altman started trying to engage in regulatory capture to protect his competitive moat I've not seen him do that, just a lot of people saying that's the only thing they can believe he must have meant. What I've seen in his comments, in the original transcripts, is basically "regulate GPT-4 and better, don't bother regulating anything smaller or simpler than that, don't regulate open source models". > You are correct in saying we should pursue lawfare against OpenAI to make sure such blatant and widescale theft can't happen again. I believe you are incorrect in saying it's a bad idea to produce more models. Contradictory position. To produce more models based on one you characterise to be "theft" is to actually make it happen again. Making new models from the output of their models is one of three ways I can see of doing this, along with court ordering their models be published (rather than destroyed), or some other company retraining from scratch on their own crawl of the web. This third option is also why I think anyone using the "moat" metaphor with regard to OpenAI's models needs to stop and think about how they're acting like a stochastic parrot.
  - jurynulifcation 3y ago
    Oh, just to be clear, I have no problems with models built on OSINT. My problem is someone doing that, building a commercial product on it, and then telling others they can't do it to them, while also using the money they get from the endeavor to make the world worse for everyone else.