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Occam's razor: I think Sam's personal narrative is the correct one. He built a non-profit that took off in a way that he didn't expect it and now a for-profit i
by pj_mukh 2y ago
Occam's razor: I think Sam's personal narrative is the correct one. He built a non-profit that took off in a way that he didn't expect it and now a for-profit is the best way to run the lightning they've caught.
In terms of profit, AFAICT, Sam doesn't have designs on building extra large yachts and his own space agency but what he wants is to be the one at the stead of building what he considers is world-changing tech. One could rationally call this power-hungry but one could also rationally call this just helicopter parenting of a tech you've helped built. And for that a for-profit that is allowed to maximize profits to re-invest in the tech is the optimal setup (esp if all the competitors are doing the same)
Is this a different org than when it started? Yes. Was this a dupe from the beginning? I don't think so.
"But why can't he have a more worldly-aligned board looking over his shoulder?"
Because we live in California and have a bad taste for governance by committee or worse: governance by constant non-representative democracy (see: Housing).
If this now completely comes off the wheels, I still think Congressional action can be a stopgap, but atleast for now, this restructure makes sense to me.
- grey-area 2y agoHe didn’t build it.
- eberfreitas 2y agoCan we please, move this comment to the top?
- huevosabio 2y agoI don't think the narrative makes sense. It was clear from way back in 2016 that training would take a ton of resources. Researchers were already been sucked into FAANG labs because they had the data, the compute, and the money. There was never a viable way for a true non-profit to make world-changing, deep learning-based AI models. When seen through the rearview mirror, the whole narrative screams of self-importance and duplicity. GPT-2 was too dangerous, and only they were trust-worthy enough to possess. They were trust-worthy because this was a non-profit, so "interest aligned with humanity". This charade has continued even to barely some months ago.
- feoren 2y agoSam: "I'm not in it for the money. I have principles." World: "But what if it was like, a lot of money?" Sam: "Oh alright you convinced me. Fuck my principles."
- pj_mukh 2y agoWhat do you do with a a lot of money past a point? A corporate controlled AGI being just a stop on the way to build another private space agency seems like a...letdown.
- talldayo 2y agoTo be honest, I would take a private space agency 7 days out of the week with that kind of capital. We have no fundamental proof that LLMs will scale to the intelligence levels that we imagine in our heads. The industry application for LLMs is even weaker than computer vision, and the public sentiment is almost completely against it. Sam's product is hype; eventually people are going to realize that Q* and Strawberry were marketing moves intended to extend OpenAI's news cycle relevancy and not serious steps towards superintelligence. We were promised tools, and they're shipping toys. I could tell you in very plain terms how a competitor to Boeing and SpaceX would benefit the American economy. I have not even the faintest fucking clue what "AGI" even is, or how it's profitable if it resembles the LLMs that OpenAI is selling today.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- namaria 2y agoOccam's razor has never meant "let's take discourse at face value". That's not least complexity. That's least effort.