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For me as someone who was a subscriber and cancelled and permanently deleted my account, the biggest issue with OpenAI is they compete with everyone in an under

For me as someone who was a subscriber and cancelled and permanently deleted my account, the biggest issue with OpenAI is they compete with everyone in an underhanded way where they say you can’t use the output to compete with them. Yet ChatGPT does everything, so who’s really safe from OpenAI? Same deal with Anthropic, Google and XAI. Just a bunch of shady monopolistic companies, who wants to work with / for someone like that? Answer: people who don’t think about how bad it is. That said, I reckon the vast majority of their subscribers neither read nor care about the true philosophical implications of their terms of use, which gives them millions of people paying to get “brain raped.” Imitating users, stealing users’ jobs, and banning users who attempt to compete with them, can keep OpenAI around for a long time, because that’s the big tech equivalent of taking souls. Not something anyone with morals wants to take part in, but surely possible for that to evolve into a profitable capitalist business model long term.

minimaxir 2y ago
> Just a bunch of shady monopolistic companies "A bunch of monopolistic companies" is an oxymoron. The entire race-to-the-bottom with pricing is because of the lack of moat and open-source pressure.
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  It's because the companies want to be monopolies: they're monopolistic. Groups who aren't monopolistic in this space behave differently.
nomel 2y ago
> they say you can’t use the output to compete with them Their terms of use words it as: > Use Output to develop models that compete with OpenAI. I think this is acceptable for 99.99% of users. > in an underhanded way Could you elaborate on why you see that as underhanded? It's not secret, as it's a bullet point in their TOS, and I don't see how it's dishonest. Billions were put into this model. Not letting the competitors save a good chunk of that seems fairly reasonable, from a "we need to make the billions back eventually" business perspective. I would claim there's a much better chance that Llama is the more underhanded model, existing partly to wipe out/impede competition, including OpenAI, before going behind a pay wall.
- bionhoward 2y ago
  I just feel like it’s underhanded to have a provision along the lines of “you’re not allowed to use your chat logs to compete with us while we use your chat logs to compete with you” … how is that reasonable? At least if Meta makes a great Llama model (since 3.1) both sides can benefit and it doesn’t have a ridiculous customer noncompete, and I can use the model on my own computer as much as I like. The difference is, one side has a noncompete, and the other is competitive.
  - nomel 2y ago
    "We spent billions on this. You're not allowed to use our billions to save yourself billions, and then cause us loss by competing with us". This seems reasonable to me. Data is the currency of AI companies. If OpenAI wants to keep the lights on, which they may not be able to do as is, they need to make money or they perish. It's reasonable for them to have a logical strategy of self preservation. I think Llama is closer to, "Good luck trying to make a profit with us giving this stuff away for free. Oh look, there aren't any real competitors left! Introducing Llama 5.0, with 10x the fee and vendor lock in! Btw, thanks for all the research that made it possible!" This is also expected behavior for a large tech company trying to fight for market dominance. To see similar examples that match this template, see the history of Intel and Microsoft.
startupsfail 2y ago
Most model providers disallow distilling their models to make copies. It’s fine, we do need diversity. And not the kind of diversity you get than small vocal minority usurped the megaphone.

minimaxir 2y ago

> Just a bunch of shady monopolistic companies "A bunch of monopolistic companies" is an oxymoron. The entire race-to-the-bottom with pricing is because of the lack of moat and open-source pressure.

wizzwizz4 2y ago
It's because the companies want to be monopolies: they're monopolistic. Groups who aren't monopolistic in this space behave differently.

nomel 2y ago

> they say you can’t use the output to compete with them Their terms of use words it as: > Use Output to develop models that compete with OpenAI. I think this is acceptable for 99.99% of users. > in an underhanded way Could you elaborate on why you see that as underhanded? It's not secret, as it's a bullet point in their TOS, and I don't see how it's dishonest. Billions were put into this model. Not letting the competitors save a good chunk of that seems fairly reasonable, from a "we need to make the billions back eventually" business perspective. I would claim there's a much better chance that Llama is the more underhanded model, existing partly to wipe out/impede competition, including OpenAI, before going behind a pay wall.

bionhoward 2y ago
I just feel like it’s underhanded to have a provision along the lines of “you’re not allowed to use your chat logs to compete with us while we use your chat logs to compete with you” … how is that reasonable? At least if Meta makes a great Llama model (since 3.1) both sides can benefit and it doesn’t have a ridiculous customer noncompete, and I can use the model on my own computer as much as I like. The difference is, one side has a noncompete, and the other is competitive.
- nomel 2y ago
  "We spent billions on this. You're not allowed to use our billions to save yourself billions, and then cause us loss by competing with us". This seems reasonable to me. Data is the currency of AI companies. If OpenAI wants to keep the lights on, which they may not be able to do as is, they need to make money or they perish. It's reasonable for them to have a logical strategy of self preservation. I think Llama is closer to, "Good luck trying to make a profit with us giving this stuff away for free. Oh look, there aren't any real competitors left! Introducing Llama 5.0, with 10x the fee and vendor lock in! Btw, thanks for all the research that made it possible!" This is also expected behavior for a large tech company trying to fight for market dominance. To see similar examples that match this template, see the history of Intel and Microsoft.

startupsfail 2y ago

Most model providers disallow distilling their models to make copies. It’s fine, we do need diversity. And not the kind of diversity you get than small vocal minority usurped the megaphone.