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>blatant theft on an industrial scale of the mental products They haven't been stolen; the creators still have them. They've just been copied. It's amazing how

>blatant theft on an industrial scale of the mental products They haven't been stolen; the creators still have them. They've just been copied. It's amazing how much the ethos on this site has shifted over the past decade, away from the hacker idea that "intellectual property" isn't real property, just a means of growing corporate power, and information wants to be free.

candiddevmike 2y ago
> They haven't been stolen; the creators still have them. They've just been copied You wouldn't download a car.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
Information should be free for people. Not 150 billion dollar enterprises.
- infecto 2y ago
  Disagree. There should be no distinction between the two. Those kind of distinctions are what cause unfair advantages. If the information is available to consume, there should be no constraint on who uses it. Sure you might not like OpenAI, but maybe some other company comes a long and builds the next magical product using information that is freely available.
  - TheRealDunkirk 2y ago
    Treating corporations as "people" for policy's sake is a legal decision which has essentially killed the premise of the US democratic republic. We are now, for all intents and purposes, a corporatocracy. Perhaps an even better description would simply be oligarchy, but since our oligarchs' wealth is almost all tied up in corporate stocks, it's a very incestuous relationship.
    - infecto 2y ago
      Meh, I am just saying I believe in open and free information. I don't follow the OP's ideal of information for me but not thee.
      - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
        The idea of knowledge as a source of understanding and personal growth is completely oppositional to it's conception as a scarce resource, which to OpenAI and whomever else wants to train LLMs is what it is. OpenAI did not read everything in the library because it wanted to know everything; it read everything at the library so it could teach a machine to create a statistical average written word generator, which it can then sell access to. These are fundamentally different concepts and if you don't see that, then I would say that is because you don't want to see it. I don't care if employees at OpenAI read books from their local library on python. More power to them. I don't even care if they copy the book for reference at work, still fine. But utilizing language at scale as a scarce resource to train models is not that and is not in any way analogous to it.
        infecto 2y ago
        I am sorry you are too blinded by your own ideology and disagreement with OpenAI to see others points of views. In my view, I do not want to constrain any person or entity on their access to knowledge, regardless of output product. I do have issues with entities or people consuming knowledge and then prevent others from doing so. I am not describing a scenario of a scarce resource but of an open one. Public information should should be free for anyone to consume and use how they want.
        ToucanLoucan 2y ago
        > I am sorry you are too blinded by your own ideology and disagreement with OpenAI to see others points of views. A truly hilarious sentiment coming from someone making zero effort to actually engage with what I'm saying in favor of parroting back empty platitudes.
xdennis 2y ago
> It's amazing how much the ethos on this site has shifted over the past decade It hasn't. The hacker ethos is about openness, individuality, decentralization (among others). OpenAI is open in what it consumes, not what it outputs. It makes sense to have protections in place when your other values are threatened. If "information want's to be free" leads to OpenAI centralizing control over the most advanced AI then will it be worth it? A solution here would be similar to the GPL: even megacorps can use GPL software, but they have to contribute back. If OpenAI and the rest would be forced to make everything public (if it's trained on open data) then that would be an acceptable compromise.
- visarga 2y ago
  > The hacker ethos is about openness, individuality, decentralization (among others). Yes, the greatest things on the internet have been decentralized - Git, Linux, Wikipedia, open scientific publications, even some forums. We used to passively consume content and internet allowed interaction. We don't want to return to the old days. AI falls into the decentralized camp, the primary beneficiaries are not the providers but the users. We get help of things we need, OpenAI gets a few cents per million tokens, they don't even break even.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    > AI falls into the decentralized camp I'm sorry, the worlds knowledge now largely accessible by a laymen via LLMs controlled by at most, 5 companies is decentralized? If that statement is true then the world decentralized truly is entirely devoid of meaning at this point.
    - visarga 2y ago
      Let's classify technology: 1. Decentralized technologies you can operate privately, freely, and adapt to your needs: computers, old internet, Linux, git, FireFox, local Wikipedia dump, old standalone games. 2. Centralized technologies that invade privacy, lead to loss of control and manipulation: web search, social networks, mobile phones, Chrome, recent internet, networked games. LLMs fall into the decentralized camp. You can download a LLM, run it locally, fine-tune it. It is interactive, the most interactive decentralized tech since standalone games. If you object that LLMs are mostly centralized today (upfront cost of pre-training and OpenAI popularity), I say they are still not monopolies, there are many more LLM providers than search engines and social networks, and the next round of phones and laptops will be capable of local gen-AI. The experience will be seamless, probably easier to adapt than touchscreens were in 2007.
triceratops 2y ago
So why isn't every language model out there "open"?

candiddevmike 2y ago

> They haven't been stolen; the creators still have them. They've just been copied You wouldn't download a car.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

Information should be free for people. Not 150 billion dollar enterprises.

infecto 2y ago
Disagree. There should be no distinction between the two. Those kind of distinctions are what cause unfair advantages. If the information is available to consume, there should be no constraint on who uses it. Sure you might not like OpenAI, but maybe some other company comes a long and builds the next magical product using information that is freely available.
- TheRealDunkirk 2y ago
  Treating corporations as "people" for policy's sake is a legal decision which has essentially killed the premise of the US democratic republic. We are now, for all intents and purposes, a corporatocracy. Perhaps an even better description would simply be oligarchy, but since our oligarchs' wealth is almost all tied up in corporate stocks, it's a very incestuous relationship.
  - infecto 2y ago
    Meh, I am just saying I believe in open and free information. I don't follow the OP's ideal of information for me but not thee.
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      The idea of knowledge as a source of understanding and personal growth is completely oppositional to it's conception as a scarce resource, which to OpenAI and whomever else wants to train LLMs is what it is. OpenAI did not read everything in the library because it wanted to know everything; it read everything at the library so it could teach a machine to create a statistical average written word generator, which it can then sell access to. These are fundamentally different concepts and if you don't see that, then I would say that is because you don't want to see it. I don't care if employees at OpenAI read books from their local library on python. More power to them. I don't even care if they copy the book for reference at work, still fine. But utilizing language at scale as a scarce resource to train models is not that and is not in any way analogous to it.
      - infecto 2y ago
        I am sorry you are too blinded by your own ideology and disagreement with OpenAI to see others points of views. In my view, I do not want to constrain any person or entity on their access to knowledge, regardless of output product. I do have issues with entities or people consuming knowledge and then prevent others from doing so. I am not describing a scenario of a scarce resource but of an open one. Public information should should be free for anyone to consume and use how they want.
        ToucanLoucan 2y ago
        > I am sorry you are too blinded by your own ideology and disagreement with OpenAI to see others points of views. A truly hilarious sentiment coming from someone making zero effort to actually engage with what I'm saying in favor of parroting back empty platitudes.

xdennis 2y ago

> It's amazing how much the ethos on this site has shifted over the past decade It hasn't. The hacker ethos is about openness, individuality, decentralization (among others). OpenAI is open in what it consumes, not what it outputs. It makes sense to have protections in place when your other values are threatened. If "information want's to be free" leads to OpenAI centralizing control over the most advanced AI then will it be worth it? A solution here would be similar to the GPL: even megacorps can use GPL software, but they have to contribute back. If OpenAI and the rest would be forced to make everything public (if it's trained on open data) then that would be an acceptable compromise.

visarga 2y ago
> The hacker ethos is about openness, individuality, decentralization (among others). Yes, the greatest things on the internet have been decentralized - Git, Linux, Wikipedia, open scientific publications, even some forums. We used to passively consume content and internet allowed interaction. We don't want to return to the old days. AI falls into the decentralized camp, the primary beneficiaries are not the providers but the users. We get help of things we need, OpenAI gets a few cents per million tokens, they don't even break even.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > AI falls into the decentralized camp I'm sorry, the worlds knowledge now largely accessible by a laymen via LLMs controlled by at most, 5 companies is decentralized? If that statement is true then the world decentralized truly is entirely devoid of meaning at this point.
  - visarga 2y ago
    Let's classify technology: 1. Decentralized technologies you can operate privately, freely, and adapt to your needs: computers, old internet, Linux, git, FireFox, local Wikipedia dump, old standalone games. 2. Centralized technologies that invade privacy, lead to loss of control and manipulation: web search, social networks, mobile phones, Chrome, recent internet, networked games. LLMs fall into the decentralized camp. You can download a LLM, run it locally, fine-tune it. It is interactive, the most interactive decentralized tech since standalone games. If you object that LLMs are mostly centralized today (upfront cost of pre-training and OpenAI popularity), I say they are still not monopolies, there are many more LLM providers than search engines and social networks, and the next round of phones and laptops will be capable of local gen-AI. The experience will be seamless, probably easier to adapt than touchscreens were in 2007.

triceratops 2y ago

So why isn't every language model out there "open"?