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They will have an endless wave of commoditization chasing behind them. NVIDIA will continue to market chips to anyone who will buy... Well anyone who is allowed

They will have an endless wave of commoditization chasing behind them. NVIDIA will continue to market chips to anyone who will buy... Well anyone who is allowed to buy, considering the recent export restrictions. On that note, if OpenAI is in bed with the US government with this to some degree, I would expect tariffs, expert restrictions, and all of that to continue to conveniently align with their business objectives. If the frontier models generate huge revenue from big government and intelligence and corporate contracts, then I can see a dynamo kicking off with the business model. The missing link is probably that there need to be continual breakthroughs that massively increase the power of AI rather than it tapering off with diminishing returns for bigger training/inference capital outlay. Obviously, openAI is leveraging against that view as well. Maybe the most important part is that all of these huge names are involved in the project to some degree. Well, they're all cross-linked in the entire AI enterprise, really, like OpenAI Microsoft, so once all the players give preference to each other, it sort of creates a moat in and of itself, unless foreign sovereign wealth funds start spinning up massive stargate initiatives as well. We'll see. Europe has been behind the ball in tech developments like this historically, and China, although this might be a bit of a stretch to claim, does seem to be held back by their need for control and censorship when it comes to what these models can do. They want them to be focused tools that help society, but the American companies want much more, and they want power in their own hands and power in their user's hands. So much like the first round where American big tech took over the world, maybe it's prime to happen again as the AI industry continues to scale.

fragmede 2y ago
Why would China censoring Tiananmen Square/whatever out of their LLMs be anymore harmful to the training process when the US controlled LLMs also censor certain topics, eg "how do I make meth?" or "how do I make a nuclear bomb?".
- vaccineai 2y ago
  Because China censors very common words and phrases such as "harmonized", "shameless", "lifelong", "river crabbed", "me too". This is because Chinese citizens uses puns and common phrases initially to get around censors.
  - curt15 2y ago
    Is "Pooh" also censored?
    - thebiss 2y ago
      See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Winnie-the-Pooh_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Winnie-the-Pooh_...
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    OpenAI models refuse to translate subtitles because they contain violence, sex, or racism. That’s just a different flavour of enforced right-think.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      They are absolutely different flavors. OpenAI is not being told by the government to censor violence, sex or racism - they're being told that by their executives. News flash: household-name businesses aren't going to repeat slurs if the media will use it to defame them. Nevermind the fact that people will (rightfully) hold you legally accountable and demand your testimony when ChatGPT starts offering unsupervised chemistry lessons - the threat of bad PR is all that is required to censor their models. There's no agenda removing porn from ChatGPT any more than there's an agenda removing porn from the App Store or YouTube. It's about shrewd identity politics, not prudish shadow government conspiracies against you seeing sex and being bigoted.
      - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
        Sigh. No. Censorship is censorship is censorship. That is true even if you happen to like and can generate a plausible defense of US version that happens to be business friendly ( as opposed to China's ruling party friendly ).
        ForHackernews 2y ago
- Fade_Dance 2y ago
  They want their LLMs explicitly approved to align with the values of the regime. Not necessarily a bad thing, or at least that avenue wasn't my point. It does get in the way of going fast and breaking things though, and on the other side there is an outright accelerationist pseudo-cult.
  - bakuninsbart 2y ago
    Ignoring the moral dimension for a second, I do wonder if it is harder to implement a rather cohesive, but far-reaching censorship in the chinese style, or the more outrage-driven type of "censorship" required of American companies. In the West we have the left pre-occupied with -isms and -phobias, and the right with blasphemy and perceived attacks on their politics. With the hard shift to the right and Trump coming into office, especially the last bit will be interesting. There is a pretty substantial tension between factual reporting and not offending right-wing ideology: Should a model consider "both sides" about topics with with clear and broad scientific consensus if it might offend Trumpists? (Two examples that come to mind was the recent "The Nazis were actually left wing" and "There are only two genders".)
- throwaway290 2y ago
  Because when a small group of elites with permament term and no elections decides what is allowed and what isn't... and has full control of silencing what's not allowed and any meta discussion about the silencing itself... is different from when an elected government decides it, and then anyone is free to raise a stink on whatever is their version of twitter today without worrying about being disappeared tomorrow
  - snapcaster 2y ago
    It's not an elected government if you're talking about the US. These policies are also all decided by "elites with permanent term and no elections" you realize right?
    - throwaway290 2y ago
      > It's not an elected government if you're talking about the US If you don't believe US has elections then straighten up your tinfoil hat:) Maybe you'll say next the earth is flat, if you think people have nothing better to do but to find ways to lie to you.
      - snapcaster 2y ago
        I don't feel like this was a good faith interpretation of my comment. What i'm saying is that in the US and China, censorship is decided by unelected officials. In one case it's CPC in another case it's corporate executives
        throwaway290 2y ago
        That makes even less sense as a comparison. Sure Instagram censored anti-Trump posts for a day but in case you didn't notice you are free to discuss that without fearing suppression or jail.
        snapcaster 2y ago
- matkoniecz 2y ago
  Because falsifying history seems worse than restricting meth production, at least to me. Though I see no reason whatsoever why LLM should be blocked from answering "how do I make a nuclear bomb?" query.

fragmede 2y ago

Why would China censoring Tiananmen Square/whatever out of their LLMs be anymore harmful to the training process when the US controlled LLMs also censor certain topics, eg "how do I make meth?" or "how do I make a nuclear bomb?".

vaccineai 2y ago
Because China censors very common words and phrases such as "harmonized", "shameless", "lifelong", "river crabbed", "me too". This is because Chinese citizens uses puns and common phrases initially to get around censors.
- curt15 2y ago
  Is "Pooh" also censored?
  - thebiss 2y ago
    See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Winnie-the-Pooh_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Winnie-the-Pooh_...
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  OpenAI models refuse to translate subtitles because they contain violence, sex, or racism. That’s just a different flavour of enforced right-think.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    They are absolutely different flavors. OpenAI is not being told by the government to censor violence, sex or racism - they're being told that by their executives. News flash: household-name businesses aren't going to repeat slurs if the media will use it to defame them. Nevermind the fact that people will (rightfully) hold you legally accountable and demand your testimony when ChatGPT starts offering unsupervised chemistry lessons - the threat of bad PR is all that is required to censor their models. There's no agenda removing porn from ChatGPT any more than there's an agenda removing porn from the App Store or YouTube. It's about shrewd identity politics, not prudish shadow government conspiracies against you seeing sex and being bigoted.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
      Sigh. No. Censorship is censorship is censorship. That is true even if you happen to like and can generate a plausible defense of US version that happens to be business friendly ( as opposed to China's ruling party friendly ).
      - ForHackernews 2y ago
Fade_Dance 2y ago
They want their LLMs explicitly approved to align with the values of the regime. Not necessarily a bad thing, or at least that avenue wasn't my point. It does get in the way of going fast and breaking things though, and on the other side there is an outright accelerationist pseudo-cult.
- bakuninsbart 2y ago
  Ignoring the moral dimension for a second, I do wonder if it is harder to implement a rather cohesive, but far-reaching censorship in the chinese style, or the more outrage-driven type of "censorship" required of American companies. In the West we have the left pre-occupied with -isms and -phobias, and the right with blasphemy and perceived attacks on their politics. With the hard shift to the right and Trump coming into office, especially the last bit will be interesting. There is a pretty substantial tension between factual reporting and not offending right-wing ideology: Should a model consider "both sides" about topics with with clear and broad scientific consensus if it might offend Trumpists? (Two examples that come to mind was the recent "The Nazis were actually left wing" and "There are only two genders".)
throwaway290 2y ago
Because when a small group of elites with permament term and no elections decides what is allowed and what isn't... and has full control of silencing what's not allowed and any meta discussion about the silencing itself... is different from when an elected government decides it, and then anyone is free to raise a stink on whatever is their version of twitter today without worrying about being disappeared tomorrow
- snapcaster 2y ago
  It's not an elected government if you're talking about the US. These policies are also all decided by "elites with permanent term and no elections" you realize right?
  - throwaway290 2y ago
    > It's not an elected government if you're talking about the US If you don't believe US has elections then straighten up your tinfoil hat:) Maybe you'll say next the earth is flat, if you think people have nothing better to do but to find ways to lie to you.
    - snapcaster 2y ago
      I don't feel like this was a good faith interpretation of my comment. What i'm saying is that in the US and China, censorship is decided by unelected officials. In one case it's CPC in another case it's corporate executives
      - throwaway290 2y ago
        That makes even less sense as a comparison. Sure Instagram censored anti-Trump posts for a day but in case you didn't notice you are free to discuss that without fearing suppression or jail.
        snapcaster 2y ago
matkoniecz 2y ago
Because falsifying history seems worse than restricting meth production, at least to me. Though I see no reason whatsoever why LLM should be blocked from answering "how do I make a nuclear bomb?" query.