28 ms·

OpenAI and Elon Musk

• tayo42 3y ago
  > with someone whom we’ve deeply admired... He keeps showing us the kind of person he is, and people go on and on thinking this, until something happens to them?
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• Leary 3y ago
  I guess Sam Altman finally somehow found Ilya Sutskever after saying he didn't know where he was and whether he was still working at OpenAI [1] [1]https://officechai.com/startups/sam-altman-is-unsure-if-ilya-sutskever-is-still-working-at-openai/#:~:text=Sam%20Altman%20has%20said%20that,Economic%20Forum%20Conference%20in%20Davos https://officechai.com/startups/sam-altman-is-unsure-if-ilya....
  • maxlamb 3y ago
    Does it say he found him anywhere? All I see in the article are emails to him from 2016
    • icpmacdo 3y ago
      He is a signatory
  • de6u99er 3y ago
    can you please put a space in front of "https"?
  • yellow_lead 3y ago
    Your source never says he didn't know where he was. That's a bit hyperbolic. > with Sam being unsure of whether Sutskever is still working at OpenAI even 8 weeks after the entire incident He wasn't missing/found, maybe negotiations were ongoing.
• magnio 3y ago
  > Elon understood the mission did not imply open-sourcing AGI. As Ilya told Elon: “As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science...”, to which Elon replied: “Yup”. Wow the most open OpenAI has ever been is when someone sue them. On the other hand, this shows Elon doesn't care jackshit about the lack of openness from OpenAI. He's just mad only that he walked away from a monumental success.
  • behnamoh 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • TMWNN 3y ago
      If Musk is a has-been, he's the most-successful has-been in history by a factor of 100.
      • Freedom2 3y ago
        That's interesting. Care to share how you came up with the specific number of 100 for the factor?
      • xcv123 3y ago
        LOL. The "has been" could lose 99% of his wealth and still be rich enough to fly around on a private jet.
      • smoldesu 3y ago
        I'll tell Napoleon to send his regards.
  • sidcool 3y ago
    Yes. I think the same. Elon is just bitter he misjudged and now wants to claw back without seeming a giant a-hole.
    • 3y ago
• threeseed 3y ago
  Elon Musk's antics have been utterly shameless. a) If he cared at all about altruism, humanity etc he would open-source Grok and allow anyone access to the Twitter dataset. b) He talks all about AGI in relation to Tesla but then used it as a weapon to try and extract more control over the company from investors.
  • bamboozled 3y ago
    I don't really understand this view honestly, why should Grok be open sourced? When was Twitter called OpenTwitter and had a similar mission statement to OpenAI?
    • glenngillen 3y ago
      The parent post said if “Musk” cared, not Twitter. He also doesn’t have anything in the way of public shareholders to appease at Twitter anymore. Whether or not it’s a reasonable expectation is up for debate. But it is at least a congruent argument.
      • bamboozled 3y ago
        There’s a difference between developing and open sourcing models and technology and end user products though.
    • threeseed 3y ago
      If Musk wants to take the high moral ground and lecture others about openness and the importance to humanity he should start with his own actions. It seems pretty clear that altruism is a cynical marketing and PR technique for him rather than something he actually cares about.
      • xcv123 3y ago
        Musk cofounded and funded OpenAI.
        • 3y ago
• reallymental 3y ago
  All that's laid bare here, is the carcass of their personalities. None of this screams "I'm going to change this world", this organization is mired in politics from the start, no wonder Satya is hedging his bets. edit: grammar
  • sverhagen 3y ago
    You can start a little mom-and-pop store and get plenty of politics. No surprise a billion(s)-dollar company has politics. It's everywhere. I'm not going to claim that it's their openness that is allowing us to see it here, but in some companies it spills out in the open, in others it stays within the family, but there's always politics!
    • dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
      Yes but when the politics goes about destroying the company you have a real problem. See Apple in the 90's for instance.
      • HaZeust 3y ago
        Problems like being the company with the highest market cap in history for 13 years running!
        • dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
          No, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy and had to be bailed out by Microsoft in the 90's.
  • rchaud 3y ago
    The greatest trick AI has played is convincing the world that it's a black box that could genuinely grow out of the control of the powerful, well-connected few that control its development.
• NewsaHackO 3y ago
  They redefined the open in OpenAI in an almost Orwellian way.
  • scruple 3y ago
    Not particularly surprising, given the last few months of activity at OpenAI.
  • aeternum 3y ago
    Just like Google's "Do no evil" *only applicable to certain definitions of evil
    • romwell 3y ago
      Google scrapped "Don't be evil" a long time ago. Now it's some kind of "Kiss the ring and have respect for the hand that feeds you" or something.
      • aeternum 3y ago
        Agreed, but "Do no evil" shouldn't be the kind of thing you just scrap. Isn't doing that in and of itself somewhat evil?
        • krapp 3y ago
          "Don't be evil" is a meaningless phrase, because "evil" is an entirely subjective concept. Google was born out of NSA and CIA research grants, and they operate under capitalist incentives. Many would say they have never not been evil. But again, it's a matter of perspective. It's obviously not a phrase any company would ever take seriously since it has no real legal implications, and it's honestly weird how many people seem surprised and offended to find this out. No one is getting fired because Raisin Bran cereal doesn't guarantee a minimum of two scoops of raisins, either.
  • BeetleB 3y ago
    As is often argued right here on HN, many programmers believe the Open Source Initiative/Foundation redefined "open" and are not happy with their co-opting of the term. OpenAI is merely playing the same game.
• nodesocket 3y ago
  Seems pretty straightforward... Elon invested when they claimed to be an open-source non-profit, and clearly now are closed source and very for profit. The notion that the for profit is just a temporary means to achieve scale goals is laughable.
  • paulpauper 3y ago
    It is like Google's 'don't be evil' slogan. OpenAi proved to be anything but Open.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • pknerd 3y ago
      Don't use their models. As a paid member I am fine with it.
  • ipsum2 3y ago
    It's probably worth reading the post, which refutes these points.
    • grecy 3y ago
      It does not refute them in any way. It very openly admits them while (trying to) justify them.
      • ipsum2 3y ago
        "In late 2017, we and Elon decided the next step for the mission was to create a for-profit entity."
        • the_optimist 3y ago
          1) They defied their original charter. 2) separately: Creating a for-profit entity is not what happened here. They transformed into a for-profit entity and discarded the non-profit mission. There is no vestige left of the original non-profit. Same funds, same code, same IP.
• Reubend 3y ago
  Their evidence does a nice job of making Musk seem duplicitous, but it doesn't really refute any of his core assertions: they still have the appearance of abandoning their core mission to focus more on profits, even if they've elaborated a decent justification of why that's necessary to do. Or to put it more simply: here they explain why they had to betray their core mission. But they don't refute that they did betray it. They're probably right that building AGI will require a ton of computational power, and that it will be very expensive. They're probably right that without making a profit, it's impossible to afford the salaries 100s of experts in the field and an army of hardware to train new models. To some extent, they may be right that open sourcing AGI would lead to too much danger. But instead of changing their name and their mission, and returning the donations they took from these wealthy tech founders, they used the benevolent appearance of their non-profit status and their name to mislead everyone about their intentions.
  • idatum 3y ago
    > We realized building AGI will require far more resources than we’d initially imagined So the AGI existential threat to humanity has diminished?
    • Vecr 3y ago
      Not if their near-term funding rounds go through. So much for "compute overhang".
  • sroussey 3y ago
    I guess Mozilla as well then.
    • TheCapeGreek 3y ago
      Well yeah, dive into the comments on any Firefox-related HN post and you'll see the same complaint about the organization structure of Mozilla, and its hindrance of Firefox's progress in favour of fat CEO salaries and side products few people want.
• bugglebeetle 3y ago
  > We couldn’t agree to terms on a for-profit with Elon because we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI. I think Musk’s lawsuit is without merit, but it’s laughable in light of what happened with the recent leadership struggle to include this bit.
  • andsoitis 3y ago
    > I think Musk’s lawsuit is without merit If it does not have merit, why does OpenAI feel compelled to write this post? Unless they know or at least fear that the lawsuit has merit.
    • bugglebeetle 3y ago
      Public relations. What Musk has said about OpenAI is true: they abandoned their mission and sold themselves off to Microsoft in pursuit of profit, and have no intention of making the technology (or its rewards) widely available to all. They can’t counter any of these claims credibly, but can still (correctly) paint the messenger as arguing in bad faith to diminish their impact. Being right about all of this doesn’t accrue any material benefit to Musk, however, because the terms of the agreement are so full of loopholes that just about any lawyer can drive a semi through them.
      • danenania 3y ago
        “have no intention of making the technology (or its rewards) widely available to all” Has any organization done more to make AI widely available to all? I can’t think of one. True, they’re not making the source code available. True, they’re making tons of money off it. But their most powerful AI is accessible to anyone with a credit card.
        • andsoitis 3y ago
          > their most powerful AI is accessible to anyone with a credit card Only 22.26% of the world's population had credit cards as of 2021.
• ralph84 3y ago
  > we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI Unless that individual is Sam Altman?
• behnamoh 3y ago
  I don't care much about OpenAI === open-source as long as OpenAI === open the AI pandora's box to everyone. Compare: - Google open-sourced many models but sat on the transformers paper for 5 years and never released a product like ChatGPT for the masses. - OpenAI didn't open-source GPT-4 but made it available to basically everyone.
• LatticeAnimal 3y ago
  > As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in OpenAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science (even though sharing everything is definitely the right strategy in the short and possibly medium term for recruitment purposes). That is surprisingly greedy & selfish to be boasting about in their own blog.
  • Jensson 3y ago
    Yeah, they are basically saying that they called themselves OpenAI as a recruitment strategy but they never planned to be open after the initial hires.
    • Aeolun 3y ago
      They’re pretty open about that now though.
    • Spivak 3y ago
      Why do tech people keep falling for this shtick? It's happened over and over and over with open source becoming open core becoming source available being becoming source available with closed source bits. How society organizes property rights makes it damn near impossible to make anything commons in a way that can't in practice be reversed when folks see dollar signs. Owner is a non nullable field.
      • blackoil 3y ago
        By believing that since they aren't "MBA", economics and human behaviour don't apply to them.
      • sva_ 3y ago
        Because the people that got recruited on those terms suddenly see what kind of dough they will be making, I suppose.
      • 8organicbits 3y ago
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• endisneigh 3y ago
  I'm surprised they would publish this honestly. Especially considering that they're in a lawsuit.
  • baking 3y ago
    Probably didn't talk to a lawyer.
    • ilaksh 3y ago
      What is the actual justification for not discussing it openly? I know that is typical advice, but I am not sure it is correct advice for these types of situations anymore.
    • neom 3y ago
      That seems incredibly unlikely given a large percentage of the people around the top of OpenAI are lawyers, most notably, their Chief Strategy Officer.
    • DustinBrett 3y ago
      GPT-4 can pass the bar exam, so they can just ask it.
• ionwake 3y ago
  [flagged]
• jp42 3y ago
  Well, they didn't addressed extent of Microsoft's control over OpenAI.
• mulcahey 3y ago
  I am “GI” without the A last time I checked, and I don’t require much compute at all!
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • escapecharacter 3y ago
    It’s the meat
  • john2x 3y ago
    Just a couple million years of training!
• baking 3y ago
  > Elon said we should announce an initial $1B funding commitment to OpenAI. In total, the non-profit has raised less than $45M from Elon and more than $90M from other donors. This is not reflected in their 990's. They claim $20 million in public support and $70 million in "other income" which is missing the required explanation. Also, why are none of the current board members of OpenAI included as authors here? Is there a problem in the governance structure? Elon could not legally contribute more than he did without turning OpenAI into a private foundation. Private foundations are required to give away 5% of their total assets annually and are not permitted to own substantial stakes in for-profit businesses. Showing old emails from people who clearly don't understand what they are getting into is not very helpful to their case. Maybe if they had talked to a lawyer who understood non-profit law, or even just googled it. If the $70 million was in fact a donation instead of income, they fail the public support test and are de facto a private foundation.
  • mikeyouse 3y ago
    A bunch of what you wrote isn't accurate.. Here's the 2020 990 which shows the first 5 years of the org's existence (including the time at question for this suit): https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/810861541_202012_990_2022102420537372.pdf https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/810861541_202012_990_... Page 15 is Schedule A Pt 2 which shows the total contributions by year. They did indeed raise ~$133M over that time frame. Row 5 shows the contributions from any 1 person who contributed more than 2% of their total funding (this excludes other nonprofits) -- so the $41M there is definitely Musk. So his share was only ~30% of the total and the other 70% was public support which you can confirm in Section C at the bottom of that page. "Public support" includes other nonprofits - and it's fine of e.g. Musk 'laundered' other funding via a DAF or something at a different nonprofit since the funds belong to that nonprofit and they have ultimate discretion over the grant.
    • baking 3y ago
      I think I screwed up. It has been a while, but it looks like I misread Part II, Section B, Line 10 as $70 million, not $70,000. Let me check the previous years to see if I'm thinking of something else. Thanks for double-checking this. I know they got $20 million from Open Philanthropy which qualifies as public support, so I am still wondering about the other $70 million, but it is not the smoking gun that I thought it was. It has to be made up of donations from individuals under $2.6 million or from other public charities, but not private foundations.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• cmilton 3y ago
  What's with the redactions? Would that information change any of the context? I understand redacting an email address, but hmmm. This doesn't scream transparency, or open, by any means.
  • furyofantares 3y ago
    My read on some of the redaction is they appear to be someone on Elon's side of things who's not currently suing OpenAI. It can be hard to guess what redactions are though. They're redacted.
• TheAlchemist 3y ago
  This looks bad for OpenAI (although it's been pretty obvious that they are far from open for a long time). But it looks 10x worse for Elon. At least for the public image, he desperately try to maintain. > As we discussed a for-profit structure in order to further the mission, Elon wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control. > In late 2017, we and Elon decided the next step for the mission was to create a for-profit entity. Elon wanted majority equity, initial board control, and to be CEO. In the middle of these discussions, he withheld funding,
  • extheat 3y ago
    It was his money to give, he's not obligated to giving it out without some form of control. But yes that does seem pretty excessive, he basically wanted to pull a Tesla there.
  • pama 3y ago
    Do you mind elaborating why you think it looks bad for OpenAI? I didn't see anything that diminishes their importance as an entity or hurts them in respect to this lawsuit or their reputation. In their internal emails from 2016 they explain what they mean by open.
    • TheAlchemist 3y ago
      Bad as to the credibility of the image they tried to sell in the beginning. If we agree it's a for profit company, and all this 'Open' stuff is just PR, then yes - it's not looking bad. It's just business.
      • pama 3y ago
        I hear people complain about the 'Open' a lot recently, but I'm not sure I understand this type of concern. Publications, for companies, are always PR and recruitment efforts (independent of profit or nonprofit status). I recall that OpenAI were very clear about their long term intentions and plans for how to proceed since at least February of 2019 when they announced GPT2 and withheld the code and weights for about 9 months because of concerns with making the technology immediately available to all. In my own mind, they've been consistent in their behavior for the last 5 years, probably longer though I didn't care much about their early RL-related recruitment efforts.
• andsoitis 3y ago
  why respond?
  • wokwokwok 3y ago
    agree, this seems like a super bitchy kind of he-said-she-said cat fight and the update doesn't make any meaningful contribution other than 'no you didnt!! See, I have emails to prove it!'. Yeah yeah, put it in the court documents if it's relevant. This is drama for drama's sake / PR positioning for ??? reasons (someones ego). I thought OpenAI was playing the 'we're grown ups' game now? ...guess not.
  • sidibe 3y ago
    I like it just because I'm fascinated to see how much evidence it takes for some people to see who Elon is
  • rasz 3y ago
    its afraid
  • rrr_oh_man 3y ago
    It's like selective screenshots of your Whatsapp chat
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• baking 3y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20240306022619/https://openai.com/blog/openai-elon-musk https://web.archive.org/web/20240306022619/https://openai.co...
• hartator 3y ago
  > it's totally OK to not share the science Ilya being the bad guy is a surprise here.
  • rrr_oh_man 3y ago
    Why? Not that he hasn't been politicking...
  • reducesuffering 3y ago
    If that surprises you, you haven't followed Ilya much. Ilya is very terrified of AGI destroying humanity and doesn't believe in this "accelerate AI and give it to everyone" naivety. 'Back in May 2023, before Ilya Sutskever started to speak at the event, I sat next to him and told him, “Ilya, I listened to all of your podcast interviews. And unlike Sam Altman, who spread the AI panic all over the place, you sound much more calm, rational, and nuanced. I think you do a really good service to your work, to what you develop, to OpenAI.” He blushed a bit, and said, “Oh, thank you. I appreciate the compliment.” An hour and a half later, when we finished this talk, I looked at my friend and told her, “I’m taking back every single word that I said to Ilya.” He freaked the hell out of people there. And we’re talking about AI professionals who work in the biggest AI labs in the Bay area. They were leaving the room, saying, “Holy shit.” The snapshots above cannot capture the lengthy discussion. The point is that Ilya Sutskever took what you see in the media, the “AGI utopia vs. potential apocalypse” ideology, to the next level. It was traumatizing.' https://www.aipanic.news/p/what-ilya-sutskever-really-wants https://www.aipanic.news/p/what-ilya-sutskever-really-wants
    • john2x 3y ago
      Is that talk mentioned in the quote available online?
      • reducesuffering 3y ago
        No I don’t believe it was publicly recorded.
• fillskills 3y ago
  This is going to come across as contrarian view and get a lot of downvotes - OpenAI is being 'open'. Not Open Source, but Open. They are bringing AGI tech to the common person at affordable pricing. Before OpenAI, all the AI and its use cases were hidden behind closed doors at Google. By kickstarting the AI race, they have created high standards, new knowledge, and enough momentum to hold up the entire startup ecosystem and the US economy. They make hard choices and now the entire industry is moving forward because of their choices.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • hartator 3y ago
    We all had an understanding that open in OpenAI meant open source. Come on.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • electriclove 3y ago
    Google is actually the one that published the paper that made all this possible (just like they have done with tons of other breakthroughs) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Is_All_You_Need https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Is_All_You_Need
    • bevekspldnw 3y ago
      Papers aren’t products, and most of the authors - who did the actual work - are long gone.
  • tailspin2019 3y ago
    I don’t have a horse in this race but I’d definitely like to see this viewpoint discussed more. The open source angle probably matters more to the HN audience but it’s hard to argue that OpenAI hasn’t “opened up access to AI” to a vast global audience. And that’s not to say that the means by which they’ve done so doesn’t still need some scrutiny.
• chjj 3y ago
  I find it very strange that OpenAI would post this in the middle of a lawsuit. Shouldn't all of these emails come out in discovery anyway? Publishing this only benefits OpenAI if they're betting on the case never reaching discovery. It seems like they just want to publish very select emails which paint a certain picture. Also, DKIM signatures are notably absent, not that we could verify them anyway since the emails are heavily redacted.
  • EMIRELADERO 3y ago
    > Also, DKIM signatures are notably absent, not that we could verify them anyway since the emails are heavily redacted. What are you implying? Faking emails opens you up to libel. I doubt OpenAI is trying to add another lawsuit to their workload.
    • chjj 3y ago
      > What are you implying? I'm not implying anything. I'm pointing out a lack of openness on OpenAI's part.
      • EMIRELADERO 3y ago
        Unless it's brought up as a point in court, actual exhibits in lawsuits don't have DKIM signatures either.
        • chjj 3y ago
          I'm not making a legal argument.
          • EMIRELADERO 3y ago
            Oh! In that case, let me ask: where have you ever seen DKIM signatures being provided on a public blog post/press release?
            • 3y ago
• sroussey 3y ago
  > Elon wanted majority equity, initial board control, and to be CEO. In the middle of these discussions, he withheld funding. Reid Hoffman bridged the gap to cover salaries and operations. Wow, Reid Hoffman for the win.
  • AlfredBarnes 3y ago
    He catches wins surprisingly often.
• matt_heimer 3y ago
  If you are going to simulate blacking out email addresses maybe don't preserve spacing.
  • WatchDog 3y ago
    I presume they persevered the spacing to avoid any accusations of being misleading as to the redacted information. This kind of in place redaction seems to be the typical way that documents are submitted to courts, or at least it was the same way that the emails Elon provided were redacted[0]. [0]: https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1763633741807960498 https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1763633741807960498
    • chatmasta 3y ago
      Surely it would be more effective to reduce every censorship bar to 1 character width.
• mupuff1234 3y ago
  The mission of OpenAI is to ensure AGI benefits all of h̶u̶m̶a̶n̶i̶t̶y̶ shareholders.
  • foreverobama 3y ago
    [dead]
• advael 3y ago
  Like most airing out of drama, this doesn't really materially change anything aside from making everyone involved look extremely bad But also, all entities involved looked bad already to observers who weren't so deeply rooting for them already that nothing would change their minds, so this is basically tabloid fodder drama in terms of importance as far as I can tell
  • gitaarik 3y ago
    Well, isn't it good that the public learns more about the bad stuff they're doing?
    • advael 3y ago
      Yes, transparency is perhaps the most important check against power. We are constantly told by governments and corporations alike that there is some dire safety reason they have to do so much secretly, and while rare exceptions where this may actually be true for some temporary situation do exist (often the case in wars, perhaps, though not decades after the fact as governments so often allege), it's clear that this is often a lie told for the obvious reason that this secrecy allows powerful people to act without this check. We only get told the lie in the first place because this secrecy breaks expectations of transparency; often - as with openAI - breaks promises that were previously made So we have them airing their dirty laundry because a billionaire sued them for his own petty reasons, having planned to break the promises the organization made that he's now suing them over in a similar way. Billionaire is hypocrite, news at eleven. This doesn't exonerate the organization. I hope this suit makes people angry. I hope it makes it harder to get away with this facile and infantilizing line about keeping people in the dark to protect them
    • pests 3y ago
      Bad stuff? What bad stuff?
      • gitaarik 3y ago
        Well, you said it made them look bad. Or did you mean that they aren't doing anything bad but are only making it look bad for each other? Edit: sorry, I meant the parent said that. But I guess you understand it now. Edit 2: To be clear, the bad stuff: - OpenAI not really being "open" in any way. - Elon not really caring about that but just wanting to take revenge because they became successful without him.
• woopsn 3y ago
  I'm not sure who they are attempting to convince of what with this communication? Nobody who doesn't know who REDACTED is cares what REDACTED thought of the issue. This is again some of the least professional comms I've seen from a Microsoft entity. We'll see what the evidence is ourselves if and when the case goes to court.
• WatchDog 3y ago
  Who is the redacted person from email #2? I'm guessing email #3 is referring to Larry, whom Elon has had a lot to say about publicly on the topic of AGI.
• ergocoder 3y ago
  The anthropic guy must feel like they have made the best decision. I love the drama. It is very entertaining. I'm glad OpenAI decided to start as a non profit. I feel like they will never be able to get away with it. The issue will keep lingering.
• runeb 3y ago
  > It seems to me that OpenAI today is burning cash and that the funding model cannot reach the scale to seriously compete with Google (an 800B company). If you can't seriously compete but continue to do research in open, you might in fact be making things worse and helping them out “for free”, because any advances are fairly easy for them to copy and immediately incorporate, at scale. It was a reasonable concern, funny that it turned out the other way with the transformer
• whatever1 3y ago
  Aren't there tax implications in this whole scheme? Shouldn't they have to pay taxes retroactively from the day they were founded as a non-profit? Shouldn't the donations be taxed?
  • pests 3y ago
    Non profits are allowed to own fornprofits. Mozilla Foundation owns Mozilla Corp which brings in tons of money for years.
• boringuser2 3y ago
  Selectively editing material you release to libel a public figure is highly duplicitous. They redacted parts of these emails. Did they publish all of the emails? Or are we literally being fed a curated collection? Very gross.
• rifty 3y ago
  The manner in which they became for-profit does not feel like an exact comparison to Elon thinking that they should become private to be competitive. For example, merging with Tesla isn't the same path the non-profit OpenAI went even if the end state is similar. Though I think the blog post will probably achieve its messaging goals of diminishing Elon's character to their own public status... "Yeah you think we suck, but it would be no tangible difference to you if Elon had run it, so you should know he sucks too."
• SoothingSorbet 3y ago
  Is it normal (or beneficial) for a corporation of this size to put out a press release like this regarding ongoing lawsuits?
• eftychis 3y ago
  Reading the messages: This is a marketing step of course, no sane lawyer would agree to this. And that is because, I don't think they show what they think and want to show. That at some point Elon had an opinion that a lot of money is needed or that OpenAI maybe had no future? That does not change the duty or obligations of a non-profit to the mission. Also, it is clear some important information has been blacked out. And that critical conversation happened offline. I don't think it will do Elon the image pressure they think it will. But if I was Microsoft... I would hedge my bets a lot... This looks more and more as giving fuel to a dissolution action of OpenAI as a non-profit than anything else.
  • nprateem 3y ago
    And what would happen? 2 minutes after being dissolved, ClosedAI is founded and hires all the employees.
    • eftychis 3y ago
      Perhaps even before the dissolution. But the science and IP become public and open or under a non-profit that is tasked with opening them. And for-profit segments are stripped of any exclusive rights that arose from the OpenAI. The irony is that the dissolution, overseeing by third special referee or permanent injunction (e.g. the Musk suit) of OpenAI is the only ways OpenAI is "opening their AI."
• seydor 3y ago
  How do the openAi engineers feel about being tricked into the roost? Strange we never hear from them , is it because their mouths are stuffed with gold?
• jjallen 3y ago
  Everyone should leave OpenAI and form a new entity. Problem's solved. Key partners would resign the key contracts they have. Leave the whole “Open” part behind for good so we can stop talking reading and hearing about it.
  • derwiki 3y ago
    It wasn’t everyone, but that’s sort of the Anthropic origin story
• globalvariablex 3y ago
  >"Given both the competitive landscape and the safety implications of large-scale models like GPT-4, this report contains no further details about the architecture (including model size), hardware, training compute, dataset construction,training method, or similar." I am not a fan of the "enjoy the fruits but not the science" statement they made in the blog. The quote above was from GPT-4's technical paper. I'll go the extra mile and steel man a counter-argument and say they're seeking a competitive advantage to secure more in investments so they can stick to their mission statements of making safe AGI, but I think we can all see where this line of thinking of is going further down the line. Building your stack around an academic research paper from a rival company then refusing to publish your contributions is terribly disappointing imo. I hope this won't be a trend that other companies participate in.
  • andoando 3y ago
    It’s a ridiculous statement. Any corporation can say their goal is to make their product available to as many people as possible. I love how transparent it makes it though that these guys live in a bubble and you shouldn’t take their beliefs too seriously
• cwilby 3y ago
  I don't know what to say more than - I wish they'd calculated in KWh instead of $. I really want to know that figure, but I'm left extrapolating. I could _guess_ it's huge, but that's not the point. > "Can we make a separate intelligence beside ourselves, damn the energy expenditure?"
• joshxyz 3y ago
  Okay, so Open in OpenAI means people get to enjoy the free version of the fremium product.
• gibsonf1 3y ago
  I find it interesting that they promote the idea that they are pursuing AGI when they don't even have any I yet in their products.
  • gitaarik 3y ago
    If it would already be in their products, there wouldn't be much to pursue, right?
• cooper_ganglia 3y ago
  I don't trust anyone involved to have the best interest of anyone else involved.
  • rvz 3y ago
    This is the correct response. Either of them could be lying. A leak needs to happen to cut through the BS and nonsense.
• fddrdplktrew 3y ago
  OpenAI is not far ahead from alternatives... it doesn't matter much what the outcome will be.
  • esafak 3y ago
    Unless they develop an agent that can recursively self-improve to the point of an intelligence explosion!
    • fddrdplktrew 3y ago
      now recursive functions are AI? /s
    • speedgoose 3y ago
      I assume almost everyone already trains on synthetic data.
      • esafak 3y ago
        The next frontier is the physical world; untainted by LLMs.
• sangnoir 3y ago
  > we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI This has to be a joke, right? I'd like to think Altman paused for a second and chuckled to himself after writing - or reading - that.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • SpaceManNabs 3y ago
    This whole post makes OpenAI look like a clown show.
    • zigman1 3y ago
      Which it is, but somehow is receiving 1/10th of the flack from HN community than any non-tech bureaucratic organization would, especially a sovereign entity that dares to charge taxes. Maybe that's because it is led by cool "startup" people, I don't know.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• sgammon 3y ago
  Has anyone else noticed the redactions have variable widths? A little video of devtools: https://customer-zppj20fjkae6kidj.cloudflarestream.com/e28e5f27f5f41c883e4adb24767b5b30/watch https://customer-zppj20fjkae6kidj.cloudflarestream.com/e28e5... I remember seeing techniques which could decode such redactions from PDFs. I don't know why the widths would be included unless it was intentional (stylistic, maybe? but it would be a bear to code), or perhaps exported from something like Adobe Acrobat. Elon's email is one solid redaction block, while the email body is broken up into widths that don't seem to be consistent.
  • buzzert 3y ago
    Somebody used Claude to attempt to un-redact the missing text, and the result it generated is scarily convincing: https://twitter.com/skirano/status/1765238754615181531 https://twitter.com/skirano/status/1765238754615181531
    • denysvitali 3y ago
      Except the CC part. Why would you include the co-founder of your competitor in an email describing how to win over said competitor?
• swat535 3y ago
  Why would anyone even be under the impression that Elon would be pursuing some higher truth or a noble goal by this suite ? This response is comical and ironically proves Musk's point that OpenAI is just a profit seeking organization structured in a way to masquerade as a non profit to doge taxes. Basically a clever scheme by Sam, he gets to have his cake and eat it too this way and probably everyone at the leadership level is congratulation themselves for being so brilliant. Look here, the truth is that they have been caught with their pants down and now are just attempting to back peddle. I understand why they won't budge because if they do, they will lose all their scam marketing tactics and Nonprofit status. Let's hope other AI models catch up quickly, I'm rooting for OSS to take over this field entirely like UNIX did with. Oh, also, before you lecture me about the "threat of AI", maybe give me a chat bot that can do basic math first.
  • DustinBrett 3y ago
    Because his actions have shown he is several times.
• sharkjacobs 3y ago
  > For example, Albania is using OpenAI’s tools to accelerate its EU accession by as much as 5.5 years What an insane thing to say so matter of factly. This is like a character in an airport bookstore political thriller who is poorly written to be smart.
  • Falimonda 3y ago
    Why is that such an insane thing for them to say?
    • tsimionescu 3y ago
      How is it not? How could anyone possibly know that number? And what gives you any inkling that it has the remotest chance of being true?
      • loceng 3y ago
        They asked ChatGPT of course!
      • Falimonda 3y ago
        How about the possibility that OpenAI and the Albanian government - along with many other governments - have a relationship of which you're unaware?
        • baobabKoodaa 3y ago
          Uh huh. And they arrived at this 5.5 number how? It's bullshit.
          • Falimonda 3y ago
            You cannot fathom how a government official may have told them that they've managed to accelerate their EU accession through the help of LLMs by a specific number of months? Here's a speculative scenario that doesn't seem so insane: Albania has a roadmap for EU accession. The roadmap is broken up into discrete tasks. The tasks have estimates for time to completion. They've been able to quickly hack away at 5.5 years worth of tasks using LLMs. Your problem with the statement is that they didn't provide a source. Maybe express interest in the facts that might support that instead of freaking out over perceived insanity.
• polycaster 3y ago
  > Unfortunately, humanity's future is in the hands of XXXX. Only wrong answers please.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • FergusArgyll 3y ago
    Brin probably, Musk and him got into a fight over AI years ago. It's detailed in the Isaacson biography
• 2pointsomone 3y ago
  If anyone paying the right price to access a product, and no underlying technology, making it "open", isn't most of the world's technology open? Isn't Apple really OpenApple? Isn't Oracle really OpenOracle? Apple probably puts out more open-source tech than OpenAI. Does the word mean much anymore, then? Is it nothing more than a sentiment then? Perhaps OpenAI should have renamed itself to "AI for all" or something when they adopted the capped-profit model. Perhaps they should've returned donor funds and turned fully for-profit too. Perhaps that was a genuine resolution and pivot, which every org should be able to allowed to do. Genuine question, I run a nonprofit whose name starts with "open". But we do explicitly bring closed source work to be more openly licensed, without necessarily making the technology open-source.
  • rmbyrro 3y ago
    Well, if AI is the product, Apple is OpenLuxuryHardware, and Oracle is OpenScrewYou.
    • 2pointsomone 3y ago
      :'D
  • neom 3y ago
    Red Hat made off alright. Genuine questions: If OpenAI can pull off something like Red Hat, would people be more, or less, ok with it?
  • antonyt 3y ago
    The real villain here is OpenTable!
• atleastoptimal 3y ago
  Did people really think leading the development of the most important invention in human history wouldn’t involve a little bit of drama? I know everyone wants OpenAI to be a magical place that open sources their models the moment they’re done training, but it’s clear that they’ve chosen a reasonable path for their business based on both practicality and risk reduction. If they had gone another way, today they’d be an unceremonious branch of Elon’s empire, or a mid-level nonprofit that never had the means to hire the best people and is still spending all their time soliciting donations to train GPT 3.5. They did what they believed they had to do to be the ones to get to AGI. Will they be the safest stewards of this tech? Hard to say, though it’s clear even the once safety minded Anthropic isn’t shying from releasing SOTA models.
  • Timber-6539 3y ago
    > ... chosen a specific path for their business based on both practicality and risk reduction The risk reduction didn't go so well now that Elon is putting up lawyers to force them to become more "open". This organization thrives in the dark and they know their secret to success depends on it. Would save every one a lot of time if they came out as a proper non-profit and dropped "open" in the name/branding. > If they had gone another way, today they’d be an unceremonious branch of Elon’s empire They substituted this dream with Microsoft.
    • atleastoptimal 3y ago
      I’m pretty sure Elon won’t win the case, and still, 49% is less than 100%
      • timeon 3y ago
        > I’m pretty sure Elon won’t win the case 0%. Not 1%. I wish it were otherwise.
  • _heimdall 3y ago
    > most important invention in human history How can we possibly weigh all human inventions and decide this one, which has yet to even be invented, is the most important?
• Timber-6539 3y ago
  A lot of fluff in here, most of it selectively chosen. I'll be waiting for the discovery in the court case before I form an opinion on who is in the right here.
• tempestn 3y ago
  I'm kind of surprised they'd post something this substantial without any apparent proofreading (given the repetition around the Tesla stuff).
• de6u99er 3y ago
  IMHO Musk just wants to slow down OpenAI, so his company can catch up. That being said, I am pretty sure there will be other conversations supporting Musks claims
  • sandspar 3y ago
    Elon Musk has been warning about AI risks for at least a decade. Whatever his other motives, AI risk seems like one of his deeply held beliefs.
• nobrains 3y ago
  > by opensorucing [sic] everything, we make it easy for someone unscrupulous with access to overwhelming amount of hardware to build an unsafe AI by open sourcing everything, we make it easy for someone unscrupulous with access to overwhelming amount of hardware to build an unsafe BROWSER by open sourcing everything, we make it easy for someone unscrupulous with access to overwhelming amount of hardware to build an unsafe OPERATING SYSTEM
• fagrobot 3y ago
  [flagged]
• jimkleiber 3y ago
  > We are dedicated to the OpenAI mission and have pursued it every step of the way. (emphasis added) > We intend to move to dismiss all of Elon’s claims. (emphasis added) I feel somewhat surprised but more worried that people working in a space riddled with so much uncertainty seem to use so much certainty in their statements.
• greatgib 3y ago
  From the email exchange: > even though sharing everything is definitely the right strategy in the short and possibly medium term for recruitment purposes Now we have the clear proof that it was their clear intention from the start to abuse from the naivety of everyone pretending to have an open sourcing goal when in fact they knew planned from the beginning to close everything once they would reach a certain amount of success. That sucks...
  • _heimdall 3y ago
    I'm not sure how anyone believed they would open source their proprietary AI, or what that would even mean. Did OpenAI ever even officially define what open source means in this context? Is the training algorithm open source? Or the data model? Or the interpretation engine that reads the model and spits out content? Or some combination of all three?
• mise_en_place 3y ago
  There’s so much greed in this space it’s sickening. Even Elon isn’t immune to greed. It should not be humans determining the course of AGI, but rather multiple AIs in a DAO that rule by quorum and consensus. The human element must be taken out of the equation.
• throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  All of these people are so bizarre. It's like Howard Hughes versus some potential acquisition turned competitor and the yellow journalism that followed. Time is a flat circle.
• seydor 3y ago
  The timestamps of the emails are interesting. apparently they work at 3:40 AM but also at midday and at 8 AM
  • pests 3y ago
    Life becomes work for these types of people, I'm sure there's no hard line when at work or at home, esp during the early days or the early frenzy.
• finnjohnsen2 3y ago
  "Open, as in Open For Business" And Elon was in on it. Not really surprising but disappointing obviously.
• posix86 3y ago
  This letter seems to adress why they're not open, but not whatsoever why they're selling out to Microsoft, which was Musk's primary criticism, or am I wrong?
• syrusakbary 3y ago
  Two thoughts after reading the article: 1. The post depicts properly the need of ownership from Elon Musk, but it misses the point of the Open Source Mission that OpenAI had when being created. And therfore, it misses the main point of the lawsuit. 2. It feels like the writing is assisted by OpenAI itself. Am I the only one thinking that the strategy of the post (and maybe the contents) are completely guided by their algorithm?
• Alifatisk 3y ago
  They should atleast rename themselves, I'll stick to ClosedAi until then.
• lispm 3y ago
  The level of nonsense is amazing. AGI is far away and not yet a problem of "compute power". We've seen with Autonomous Driving what these statements are worth. Albania is using ChatGPT to speed up EU accession by upto 5.5 years? What? Implementing EU laws using a tool, whose capability to "understand" legal text is like zero and whose capability to hallucinate is unbounded?
• qwertox 3y ago
  Microsoft being the sole beneficiary is the main problem. They are not the only company which can offer compute and money.
• hnbad 3y ago
  Is there some executive summary of this? I find it hard to wade through the waffling and while I appreciate citing sources by pasting e-mails verbatim this doesn't exactly make the statement easier to follow. It sounds like they're damning Elon with faint praise?
• hsuduebc2 3y ago
  From: Elon Musk To: Ilya Sutskever The most promising option I can think of, as I mentioned earlier, would be for OpenAI to attach to Tesla as its cash cow. I believe attachments to other large suspects (e.g. Apple? Amazon?) would fail due to an incompatible company DNA. Using a rocket analogy, Tesla already built the “first stage” of the rocket with the whole supply chain of Model 3 and its onboard computer and a persistent internet connection. The “second stage” would be a full self driving solution based on large-scale neural network training, which OpenAI expertise could significantly help accelerate. With a functioning full self-driving solution in ~2-3 years we could sell a lot of cars/trucks. If we do this really well, the transportation industry is large enough that we could increase Tesla's market cap to high O(~100K), and use that revenue to fund the AI work at the appropriate scale. Surprise.
• chrsw 3y ago
  Is there really that much of a distinction between OpenAI and Microsoft at this point? Not talking about on paper like tax documents but in the real world of interests, objectives and decision-making.
• machiaweliczny 3y ago
  Anyone can guess this part of Elon’s email: “ Unfortunately, humanity's future is in the hands of …” ?
• herculity275 3y ago
  > Unfortunately, humanity's future is in the hands of <redacted>. > <redacted> > And they are doing a lot more than this. I'm really curious who/what Elon was calling out here.
  • AlfredBarnes 3y ago
    Probably Google.
• tcgv 3y ago
  This post is a lame PR stunt, which will only add fuel to the fire. It tries to portray openAI as this great bennefactor and custodian of virtue: > “As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science...” > I've seen you (and Sam and other OpenAI people) doing a lot of interviews recently extolling the virtues of open sourcing AI, but (...) There are many good arguments as to why the approach you are taking is actually very dangerous and in fact may increase the risk to the world How lucky are we that openAI, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to shield us from harm by locking away its source code! Truly, our digital salvation rests in the hands of corporate benevolence! It also employs outdated internal communication (selectively) to depict the other party as a pitiful loser who failed to secure openAI control and is now bent on seeking revenge: > As we discussed a for-profit structure in order to further the mission, Elon wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control. > Elon understood the mission did not imply open-sourcing AGI. As Ilya told Elon: “As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science...”, to which Elon replied: “Yup”. [4] If their case to defend against Elon's action relies on his "Yup"from 2016, and justifications for being able to compete with Google, it's not a strong one.
  • boringg 3y ago
    I also thought this was kind of entertaining in their method to try and tar and feather. The highly selective (much dated) e-mail comms in a very roughly packaged statement. If that's how they are trying to protect their public image it doesn't sell their position strongly if anything it makes them look worse. It looks very amateurish almost childish to be honest.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • jstummbillig 3y ago
    Assume good intentions and nothing of substance being hidden: Is there any way to be transparent here that would have satisfied you or are you essentially asking for them to just keep to themselves or something else?
• burntalmonds 3y ago
  It's nice to have more context, but posting all of this seems ill advised.
• KoolKat23 3y ago
  At creation a company's purpose is defined in its memorandum & articles of association, in this case OpenAI's would be to achieve AGI and to better humanity through the development and provision of AI models. This is how the company creates value and sustains itself. Whether it is for-profit or not-for-profit is a different point. In this case it is clearly for profit and it should be registered and taxed as such. They try avoid the implied obligation through a creative case of running a company held by a "foundation". A tax avoidance scheme basically.
• floor_ 3y ago
  "Open"AI
• megamix 3y ago
  "The mission of OpenAI is to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity, which means both building safe and beneficial AGI and helping create broadly distributed benefits." This is a confidence trick. Nothing they do actually can be proven to "benefits all of humanity". Would never put my trust in Altman.
• SpaceManNabs 3y ago
  The title of the post made me think it was going to be a blog post from a third party commentator. For OpenAI to write such a blog post is so petty and desperate. It is clear that they are full of it.
• nibab 3y ago
  the email evidence confirms that infrastructure is one of the strongest moats in this space. From Elon: "Not only that, but any algorithmic advances published in a paper somewhere can be almost immediately re-implemented and incorporated. Conversely, algorithmic advances alone are inert without the scale to also make them scary." This is reinforced by the fact that infrastructure / training details are much more sparse in papers than algorithmic adjustments. It's all about 1. researchers (capable of navigating the maze and carefully chosing what to adopt from the research space) 2. clean data 3. infrastructure
• iteygib 3y ago
  This is the usual Musk play book. He is a salesman, not a tech guru, and plays the "good guy card" when it suits him in order to fool his followers en masse. A few months ago this forum was very much for the profit model of Altman after his ouster, and now it's the other way around. Why believe any sort of discussion on the internet at all anymore? Can hackernews prove the discussions here are not by Tesla staff? By OpenAI staff? By bots? By AI responses? There is a saturation point being hit by the credibility and reliability of this medium we call the internet. This was obviously always the case to some degree, but the profit model of most businesses now are built on the backbones of social media hype, all of which is completely, and easily, falsifiable, more than ever before.
  • xbar 3y ago
    Making a conclusion that this forum was somehow uniform in the position you suggest is too revisionist to finish reading the remainder of your comments.
    • iteygib 3y ago
      Case in point: you made a conclusion without fully reading something, based on a pre-existing bias you had after someone made a claim that went against it. This is modern internet in a nutshell, and that's not even considering whether this forum, like any other, is not just a lot of the same people behind multiple accounts. Here's a thread to get you started: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38309611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38309611
  • loceng 3y ago
    "A few months ago this forum was very much for the profit model of Altman after his ouster, and now it's the other way around." Speak for yourself. Oddly your second paragraph is an argument against the validity of your first paragraph.
  • sva_ 3y ago
    > A few months ago this forum was very much for the profit model of Altman after his ouster I did not get that impression at all.
• xbar 3y ago
  Two things can be trouble.
• evolve2k 3y ago
  TLDR; Elon is slimy, Sam also.
• sva_ 3y ago
  It is interesting that their narration of the story includes emails from 2017, early 2018, and late 2018, a chronological order they point out. But the last email from Ilya to Elon and back, which rounds off this narrative, is from early 2016 - and they curiously don't mention the date here.
• oglop 3y ago
  Amazing people still think Musk’s “core points” are still correct after this. I hate this community anymore.
• habosa 3y ago
  Regardless of who is right here, I think the enormous egos at play make OpenAI the last company I’d want to develop AGI. First Sam vs. the board, now Elon vs. everyone … it’s pretty clear this company is not in any way being run for the greater good. It’s all ego and money with some good science trapped underneath.
  • chaorace 3y ago
    The really depressing thing is that the board anticipated exactly this type of outcome when they were going "capped profit" and deliberately restructured the company with the specific goal of preventing this from happening... yet here we are. It's difficult to walk away without concluding that "profit secondary" companies are fundamentally incompatible with VC funding. Would that be a pessimistic take? Are there better models left to try? Or is it perhaps the case that OpenAI simply grew too quickly for any number of safeguards to be properly effective?
    • derelicta 3y ago
      How did they structure it to prevent this? Is it in the statutes of the company or smth?
      • chaorace 3y ago
        It's actually a very clever structure! Please open the following image to follow along as I elaborate: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_PGOPOacAApU8e.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_PGOPOacAApU8e.jpg At the top level, there is the non-profit board of directors (i.e.: the ones Sam Altman had that big fight with). They are not beholden to any shareholders and are directly bound by the company charter: https://openai.com/charter https://openai.com/charter The top-level nonprofit company owns holding companies in partnership with their employees. The purpose of these holding companies is to own a majority of shares in & effectively steer the bottom layer of our diagram. At the bottom layer, we have the "capped profit" OpenAI Global, LLC (this layer is where Sam Altman lives). This company is beholden to shareholders, but because the majority shareholder is ultimately controlled by a non-profit board, it is effectively beholden to the interests of an entity which is not profit-motivated. In order to raise capital, the holding company can create new shares, sell existing shares, and conduct private fundraising. As you can see on the diagram, Microsoft owns some of the shares in the bottom company (which they bought in exchange for a gigantic pile of Azure compute credits).
• lubesGordi 3y ago
  I'm not an ML guy but does it actually matter that OpenAI doesn't disclose it's source? Who cares? They proved the transformer arch and everyone knows how to replicate what they did. That's pretty open. The sauce is the alignment and maybe that's what 'people' are mad about, I don't know.
• numpad0 3y ago
  After 1-bit quantizing situation from my armchair, the whole series of event looks like a cold and dry business decision that Musk is a risk with low expectancy of return. Isn't that it, after all?
• benjamaan 3y ago
  why would I lie?
• JohnFen 3y ago
  They're both bad actors, and they both have good points. I hope they keep fighting each other -- it might distract them from us.
• sirmike_ 3y ago
  This is exactly like a plot from Silicon Valley. OA's "middle-out compression" will revolutionize the world! I agree with hackernews Habosa's starkly simple comment. These people are up their own ass.
• redm 3y ago
  I'm not a Meta fan, but it's hard to not look at how they have handled Llama and how well it's worked out for them and the "community." I think that OpenAI could also be playing a leading role in the science instead of selling subscriptions for Microsoft.
• tarruda 3y ago
  I guess neither Elon Musk nor Sam Altman want to live in a world where someone else makes it a better place
• meetpateltech 3y ago
  Elon Musk has said that he will drop lawsuit against OpenAI if they change their name to ClosedAI [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1765409615070601417 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1765409615070601417]
  • partiallypro 3y ago
    I don't think OpenAI has to worry about much at all, he can't bleed them dry via a lawsuit when they have one of the largest corporations on Earth bankrolling them. I'm not sure what he's trying to accomplish other than making dubious lawsuits like Trump does.
• 34679 3y ago
  Is there a widely accepted definition of "safe AI"? Musk's definition is obviously very different from Google's. Are we including offensive language in general discussion of AI safety, or are we just talking about illegal activity? Because if it's the latter, then by definition we already have laws in place. Trying to make a gun that can't fire bullets will always yield a result that is not a gun. AGI is inherently unsafe. Intelligent people will always be capable of harm. The choice needs to be made: do we want to make this thing a gun or not?
• dorkwood 3y ago
  At first I thought "why would Elon choose to slow down progress like this?" And then I realized that he probably knows some things that I don't. He's always one step ahead, even if he doesn't seem like it. I wouldn't be surprised if he's in control of OpenAI a year from now. Having Elon as the brains and Altman as the salesman would be the ultimate dream team.
  • sumeno 3y ago
    It's because he's an egomaniac and wants credit and control. He's not the brains at all
• nojvek 3y ago
  What is OpenAI GPT doing that Mistral or Claude or LLama isn't doing? What makes OpenAI sit the high moral throne? I get Sam & Elon's ego clash but I don't understand in this day why GPT-4 is a special snowflake and others aren't. The LLM hallucinates as much as its peers. We are nowhere close to AGI. None of the LLMs exhibit composite reasoning and on the fly acquisition of new skills.
• nickpsecurity 3y ago
  Just reposting another comment here which has a link to their original, mission statement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39611908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39611908 That mission statement contradicts what I’m reading here. It also contradicts what Anthropic is doing. HuggingFace, TogetherAI, and Mosaic are all executing on the original vision which OpenAI has abandoned. Perhaps the board and regulators should ask those companies’ leaders how to best balance open AI’s vs business and risk management. Also, don’t forget it’s not proprietary/closed vs free/open. There are models in between with shared source, remixing, etc. They might require non-commercial use for the models and their derivatives. Alternatively, license the models with royalties on their use like RTIS vendors do. They can build some safety restrictions into those agreements if they want. Like for software licensing, we don’t have to totally abandon revenue to share or remix the code.
  • nickpsecurity 3y ago
    Edit to add this comment from Sam Altman from the Slate Star Codex article. Again, it sounds quite opposite of what they’re doing: “We think the best way AI can develop is if it’s about individual empowerment and making humans better, and made freely available to everyone, not a single entity that is a million times more powerful than any human. Because we are not a for-profit company, like a Google, we can focus not on trying to enrich our shareholders, but what we believe is the actual best thing for the future of humanity.“
• matheusmoreira 3y ago
  > Elon understood the mission did not imply open-sourcing AGI. > As Ilya told Elon: “As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. > The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science...” > to which Elon replied: “Yup”. That's honestly pretty disgusting.
• fdeage 3y ago
  I loved this part: "Unfortunately, humanity's future is in the hands of [redacted]." Google? or a person?