4 ms·

So sam let the cat out of bag (chatgpt) behind the backs of "safety review" and the board. Probably why Google was caught flat footed and how ChatGPT became the

So sam let the cat out of bag (chatgpt) behind the backs of "safety review" and the board. Probably why Google was caught flat footed and how ChatGPT became the household name. Dubious moral decision but an excellent business one. Perhaps the benefit of hindsight where ChatGPT didn't cause immediate societal collapse helps here.

draw_down 2y ago
I was with you until “immediate societal collapse”, what?
- jeremyjh 2y ago
  Obviously safety is not a problem if the lack of it doesn't cause an immediate end to civilization. /s
strogonoff 2y ago
Aside from becoming the opposite of the values their name suggests, there’s two main mistakes OpenAI made in my view: violate copyright when training, and rush to release the chatbot. Stealing original work is going to bite them legally (opening them to all sorts of lawsuits while killing their own ability to sue competitors piggy-backing off their model output, for example), and is a special case of them being generally shortsighted and passing on an opportunity to make a truly Apple- or Amazon-scale business by applying strategy and longer term thinking (even if someone else got to release an LLM chatbot before them, they could—as in, had the funds and the talent to—build something higher level, properly licensed, and much more difficult to commoditise). If this was the fault of Altman, it is understandable that certain people would want him out.
- john_texas 2y ago
  [dead]
- Terretta 2y ago
  > violate copyright when training If we could incrementally update our own brains by swapping cells for chips, what percentage of our brain has to be chips before us learning from a book is a violation of copyright? When learning to recite a recent children's poem in kindergarten, what level of accuracy can a child attain before their ability to repeat it privately to one other person at a time is a copyright violation?
  - anileated 2y ago
    > If we could incrementally update our own brains by swapping cells for chips, what percentage of our brain has to be chips before us learning from a book is a violation of copyright? The same percentage at which you stop qualifying to be human and become an unthinking tool, fully controlled by its operator to do whatever they want, without free will of its own and without any ethical concerns about abuse and slavery, like is the case with all LLMs. (Of course, it is a moot point, because creating a human-level consciousness with chips is a thought experiment not grounded in reality.) > When learning to recite a recent children's poem in kindergarten, what level of accuracy can a child attain before their ability to repeat it privately to one other person at a time is a copyright violation? Any level thanks to the concept called human rights and freedoms, famously not applied to machines and other unthinking tools.
    - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
      This seems short sighted. The idea of when a "mechanical man" should be given the same rights as a man has been explored for a long time, as an echo of the past when people had the same debate about women and non-Europeans.
      - anileated 2y ago
        The ideas of FTL travel or existence of bearded people in the sky were also explored for a long time. > as an echo of the past when people had the same debate about women and non-Europeans. If you need help spotting the difference between skin color or gender variation and an imagined ability to imbue something we cannot even define (like consciousness) onto arbitrary substrates, I am not the right person for that.
- bcoates 2y ago
  Do the copyright claims have any legs at all? ianal, but I thought it was pretty settled that statistical compilation of copyrighted works (indexes, concordances, summaries, full-text search databases) were considered "facts" and not copies. (This would be separate from the contributory infringement claim if the model will output a copyrighted work verbatim)
  - strogonoff 2y ago
    1. Google was, and still is in some developed countries, under fire for as much as summarising search results too much, so I think yes, the claims have legs. > This would be separate from the contributory infringement claim if the model will output a copyrighted work verbatim 2. Commercial for-profit models were shown to do that, and (other legal arguments aside, such as model and/or its output being a derivative work, etc.) in some cases that was precisely the smoking gun for the lawsuit, if I recall correctly. I have not seen any conclusive outcome, I suppose it will depend on jurisdiction.
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      I can guarantee you if one jurisdiction limits AI training via copyright law, another one won’t, and it will have a huge competitive advantage as a result. That competitive advantage alone means you either have to leave the race or change your laws.
      - strogonoff 2y ago
        > I can guarantee you if one jurisdiction limits AI training via copyright law, another one won’t, and it will have a huge competitive advantage as a result. What is the competitive advantage of using chatbots, exactly? Any advantage from ML that I can think of comes from advanced applications that require pre-existing knowledge, like biotech, metamaterials, etc. — I fail to see how being able to use ML to cheat on a test or to avoid learning something (including command of own language) provides an advantage. — I can see how requiring an LLM trained on unlicensed work to be opened up and free for everyone to use could provide an advantage. — I can see how lack of regulation in this industry could result in a quick reduction of the number of jobs in a number of industries and therefore be a disadvantage to the economy, in the worst case benefiting a small number of for-profit corporate operators.
lolinder 2y ago
ChatGPT is already out when the story picks up, it's talking about concerns about GPT-4. And the story isn't about that single incident of Altman dodging review and working behind the backs of the board—it's about a pattern of deception and toxic management practices that culminated in Altman lying to Murati about what the legal department had said, which lie was given to the board as part of a folio of evidence that he needed to be ousted. You're trying to distill a pattern of toxicity and distrust into a single decision, which ameliorates it more than is fair.
- stogot 2y ago
  The question then remains: if you have a lying, toxic, manipulative boss, who would want to work for them ? Especially the direct reports of one
  - lolinder 2y ago
    From the story it sounds like the direct reports generally did not want to work with Altman, Brockman excluded. Even Murati was one of the primary instigators of the firing, but she changed her mind for reasons that the article doesn't really explore.
    - Philpax 2y ago
      My interpretation is that she realised the blowback was going to be worse than reinstating Altman, but her grievances didn't really change, which is why she left to start Thinking Machines.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Money.
- _delirium 2y ago
  Yeah to me the overt lying is more damning than any particular decision. If he owned the decision to bypass ethics review and release a model, fine, we can argue if that was prudent or not, but at least it's honest leadership. Lying that the counsel said it was ok when they hadn't is a whole other thing! When someone starts doing that repeatedly, and it keeps getting back to you that stuff they said was just outright false, you can't work with them at all imo. If this is something he's been doing for years, it becomes clearer why Y Combinator fired him, though they have been kind of cagey about it.

draw_down 2y ago

I was with you until “immediate societal collapse”, what?

jeremyjh 2y ago
Obviously safety is not a problem if the lack of it doesn't cause an immediate end to civilization. /s

strogonoff 2y ago

Aside from becoming the opposite of the values their name suggests, there’s two main mistakes OpenAI made in my view: violate copyright when training, and rush to release the chatbot. Stealing original work is going to bite them legally (opening them to all sorts of lawsuits while killing their own ability to sue competitors piggy-backing off their model output, for example), and is a special case of them being generally shortsighted and passing on an opportunity to make a truly Apple- or Amazon-scale business by applying strategy and longer term thinking (even if someone else got to release an LLM chatbot before them, they could—as in, had the funds and the talent to—build something higher level, properly licensed, and much more difficult to commoditise). If this was the fault of Altman, it is understandable that certain people would want him out.

john_texas 2y ago
[dead]
Terretta 2y ago
> violate copyright when training If we could incrementally update our own brains by swapping cells for chips, what percentage of our brain has to be chips before us learning from a book is a violation of copyright? When learning to recite a recent children's poem in kindergarten, what level of accuracy can a child attain before their ability to repeat it privately to one other person at a time is a copyright violation?
- anileated 2y ago
  > If we could incrementally update our own brains by swapping cells for chips, what percentage of our brain has to be chips before us learning from a book is a violation of copyright? The same percentage at which you stop qualifying to be human and become an unthinking tool, fully controlled by its operator to do whatever they want, without free will of its own and without any ethical concerns about abuse and slavery, like is the case with all LLMs. (Of course, it is a moot point, because creating a human-level consciousness with chips is a thought experiment not grounded in reality.) > When learning to recite a recent children's poem in kindergarten, what level of accuracy can a child attain before their ability to repeat it privately to one other person at a time is a copyright violation? Any level thanks to the concept called human rights and freedoms, famously not applied to machines and other unthinking tools.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    This seems short sighted. The idea of when a "mechanical man" should be given the same rights as a man has been explored for a long time, as an echo of the past when people had the same debate about women and non-Europeans.
    - anileated 2y ago
      The ideas of FTL travel or existence of bearded people in the sky were also explored for a long time. > as an echo of the past when people had the same debate about women and non-Europeans. If you need help spotting the difference between skin color or gender variation and an imagined ability to imbue something we cannot even define (like consciousness) onto arbitrary substrates, I am not the right person for that.
bcoates 2y ago
Do the copyright claims have any legs at all? ianal, but I thought it was pretty settled that statistical compilation of copyrighted works (indexes, concordances, summaries, full-text search databases) were considered "facts" and not copies. (This would be separate from the contributory infringement claim if the model will output a copyrighted work verbatim)
- strogonoff 2y ago
  1. Google was, and still is in some developed countries, under fire for as much as summarising search results too much, so I think yes, the claims have legs. > This would be separate from the contributory infringement claim if the model will output a copyrighted work verbatim 2. Commercial for-profit models were shown to do that, and (other legal arguments aside, such as model and/or its output being a derivative work, etc.) in some cases that was precisely the smoking gun for the lawsuit, if I recall correctly. I have not seen any conclusive outcome, I suppose it will depend on jurisdiction.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    I can guarantee you if one jurisdiction limits AI training via copyright law, another one won’t, and it will have a huge competitive advantage as a result. That competitive advantage alone means you either have to leave the race or change your laws.
    - strogonoff 2y ago
      > I can guarantee you if one jurisdiction limits AI training via copyright law, another one won’t, and it will have a huge competitive advantage as a result. What is the competitive advantage of using chatbots, exactly? Any advantage from ML that I can think of comes from advanced applications that require pre-existing knowledge, like biotech, metamaterials, etc. — I fail to see how being able to use ML to cheat on a test or to avoid learning something (including command of own language) provides an advantage. — I can see how requiring an LLM trained on unlicensed work to be opened up and free for everyone to use could provide an advantage. — I can see how lack of regulation in this industry could result in a quick reduction of the number of jobs in a number of industries and therefore be a disadvantage to the economy, in the worst case benefiting a small number of for-profit corporate operators.

lolinder 2y ago

ChatGPT is already out when the story picks up, it's talking about concerns about GPT-4. And the story isn't about that single incident of Altman dodging review and working behind the backs of the board—it's about a pattern of deception and toxic management practices that culminated in Altman lying to Murati about what the legal department had said, which lie was given to the board as part of a folio of evidence that he needed to be ousted. You're trying to distill a pattern of toxicity and distrust into a single decision, which ameliorates it more than is fair.

stogot 2y ago
The question then remains: if you have a lying, toxic, manipulative boss, who would want to work for them ? Especially the direct reports of one
- lolinder 2y ago
  From the story it sounds like the direct reports generally did not want to work with Altman, Brockman excluded. Even Murati was one of the primary instigators of the firing, but she changed her mind for reasons that the article doesn't really explore.
  - Philpax 2y ago
    My interpretation is that she realised the blowback was going to be worse than reinstating Altman, but her grievances didn't really change, which is why she left to start Thinking Machines.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Money.
_delirium 2y ago
Yeah to me the overt lying is more damning than any particular decision. If he owned the decision to bypass ethics review and release a model, fine, we can argue if that was prudent or not, but at least it's honest leadership. Lying that the counsel said it was ok when they hadn't is a whole other thing! When someone starts doing that repeatedly, and it keeps getting back to you that stuff they said was just outright false, you can't work with them at all imo. If this is something he's been doing for years, it becomes clearer why Y Combinator fired him, though they have been kind of cagey about it.