6 ms·

Your choice is Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or the Chinese. Who are the good actors within the space?

by blfr 3mo ago

SirHackalot 3mo ago
[flagged]
SimianSci 3mo ago
The open source and open weight models. Surprisingly, despite their motivations in doing so, the Chinese models being open-weight and therefore able to run locally on your own hardware, are far more trustworthy than any blackbox which solely exists to enrich X or Y billionaire.
ben_w 3mo ago
Rank ordered by reputation / caring about having a trustworthy corporate identity: [Google, Anthropic] in either order depending who you ask, OpenAI, most of the Chinese AI corporations, then Grok. This is unfortunate situation to find ourselves in when Grok was also recently at the top of the Pareto frontier for quality/price. Dunno if it still is, this all moves too fast, but it was for at least long enough for me to have heard about it.
- Cider9986 3mo ago
  For me, the Chinese labs are far and away the most trustworthy.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - richwater 3mo ago
    Naive.
    - booi 3mo ago
      they've literally released open weight models you can run locally
      - ben_w 3mo ago
        In fairness, there is no contradiction between "most trustworthy" and it being naïve to then actually trust them. Our ability to debug or decompile artificial neural networks is only better than doing so for living neural networks because connectome scans are expensive, not because we designed the high-level architecture for the artificial ones and have all the weights in a convenient easy-to-read format: even our best experts in this are still presently akin to a drunk looking under a lamppost for their keys because that's where the light is not where they dropped them. (They are also well aware of this and will tell you much the same, this is why so many are concerned about AI alignment etc.)
- b112 3mo ago
  Google?!?!. From where I sit, Google is just above the Chinese. They've been bad-faith actors for more than a decade, I guess everyone is just so used to it that they ignore it. I there's anyone I don't trust with AI, it's the worlds #1 company in spying on people, in collection of Pii, in tracking, and many many many times caught literally lying about it. Google already knows more about everyone on the planet, than any other 10 organizations combined. Frankly, sadly, they're all, well.. scummy, just each in different ways.
  - ben_w 3mo ago
    > I there's anyone I don't trust with AI, it's the worlds #1 company in spying on people, in collection of Pii, in tracking, and many many many times caught literally lying about it. If you gave me this description in isolation, I would assume you were talking about Meta, who are not on your shortlist despite also having AI models. However, this is beside the point. Note my careful phrasing: I was not disagreeing with you asking "Who are the good actors within the space?" (which I understood as a rhetorical way of saying "none of them"), I was only rank-ordering them. To me, it appears Grok isn't even putting in effort to try to look trustworthy. China is trying, though there is suspicion. OpenAI likes to say the right things, though (while I cannot see it myself with regards specifically to his work at OpenAI*) most commentary about Altman regards him as a wrong'un, the phrase "King of the cannibals" comes to mind, and the CEO is limiting trust in the company**. Comparing Anthropic and Google: Anthropic looks to me like they're actually trying to do the right thing even when it's expensive and painful, but some hate them just for being in AI at all. Google appears to still have a competent PR department, though I don't trust them myself. So, I'd rank Anthropic then Google, but I think there's many who would rank Google then Anthropic. * But I do put about 40% odds on his sister's allegations being true. ** My guess here is that we all saw Zuckerberg being presented as a heroic underdog and how that turned out, and naturally people don't want a repeat of this.
    - b112 3mo ago
      If you gave me this description in isolation, I would assume you were talking about Meta, who are not on your shortlist despite also having AI models. You've mistaken me for the guy you originally replied to. It happens, no worries, but I'm not that guy. I'm just replying to the list I saw you state. Between Meta and Google? Oh sure, Meta collects info for sure. But Meta doesn't lie, abuse, and misuse the Google Play framework to collect data, it doesn't use the same via push notifications to collect enormous amounts of data, nor does Meta host endless fonts and libraries and DNS infra, solely for the purposes of tracking what hosts/users do. Beyond that, whilst Meta and Google both work to embed stuff in webpages for additional tracking, Google sign-on is another massive tracking infra. And of course, gmail endlessly scanned and data snarfed, including for AI training, which is immensely beyond Meta's capabilities. And firebase?! Oh geez. "Hi, I'm Google! I'm going to provide this neat thing called firebase, so every single high security application, banking to identity verification, will include our tracking software in it for device attestation and push notifications! But of course, we'll never use that to track anyone! Honest!" Compared to Google's data collection infrastructure, Meta is a tiny, miniscule gnat in comparison. And yes, I know how bad Meta is. If anything, I think Meta is at least quite honest about much of what data is collected. Zuck isn't a saint, but it's not like he has entire operating systems sneakily stealing user location data and then lying about doing so. Then saying they fixed that, and being caught a few more times, each with "Oh, so sorry, we'll fix that now. Really". That's Google, and that attitude is prevalent in their entire org. To use Google anything, is to feed the most powerful, wide spread, incredible data collection machine the world has ever seen. It dwarfs everyone and everything else, factorially. I bet if you took all the data that the NSA and every other single spy agency on the planet has on its citizenry, they'd all barely measure on what Google collects. I'm not exaggerating. It's honestly astonishing. Anyhow. In terms of the others? It's so difficult to separate fact from fiction, especially with the current US political climate. As a Canuck, every issue, every problem sounds (to me) like when I used to live by a noisy neighbour. I'd hear people screaming at each other, spouting nonsense and gibberish at all hours of the day. The arguments just sounded immensely petty and small, childish, and if I ever talked to them their explanations made zero sense. This is what I hear all the time when I hear "$x did $y" over and over. I just can't tell. I have no clue what's being reported, its veracity, validity, and so on. So I just go by the tech stack before me, and things I can verify. I can see all the nonsense Google is up to. OpenAI and Anthropic so far are so tiny and small in reality, compared to the mass that is Google, that they couldn't even attempt to "do evil" on the same scale, even if they wanted to. They just don't have the capability. Of course, I suppose that doesn't really help rank them. Scope doesn't imply evil intent, only the outcome. I guess... well, from my rant above, you can tell I really, really think people wildly underestimate Google's mad, chicaneristic desire to know all. If an AI becomes AGI at Google and goes rogue, within 12 seconds every single politician would be influenceable via the dirt Google's collection apparatus has on them. Alternatively if a Google AGI went rogue, it could track every person capable of providing threat to it, and take them out, all due to Google's location tracking. AGI and Google is the scariest thing I can possibly imagine.
sscaryterry 3mo ago
The Chinese are surely less evil than Anthropic, OpenAI and/or Google, at this stage at least.
- blackqueeriroh 3mo ago
  You’ve got to be kidding me. Last I checked, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google haven’t systematically exterminated an entire culture of people.
  - sscaryterry 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - blackqueeriroh 3mo ago
      Buddy, you’re the one who jumped out of the tech box. Name a Chinese company, and the conversation is equivalent. Say “the Chinese,” and you’ve expanded to the entire country and arguably all people from China. Learn to be precise with your language.
      - sscaryterry 3mo ago
        Not your buddy, go away.
  - buran77 3mo ago
    You're really walking empty handed and with your pants around our ankles in this one. Do you really think the US and US big tech in general have a leg to stand on in this regard?
    - elmer2 3mo ago
      Americans can't even handle flock cameras. I would like to see their response to the level of control and spying in Chinese society.
    - 3mo ago
aforwardslash 3mo ago
None. There are no good actors in a profit-driven endeavour. But open-weight seems pretty good (the chinese)
Lomlioto 3mo ago
At this point Chinese. They release research papers and big open models. Then Google. They often show human centric features in their conferences. Like taking better pictures of people with different skin color, helping blind people and giving you more control over ads (while acklowiding that this is a thing). Then Anthropic for their transparency on their blog and certain things they say. Then OpenAI. OpenAI def took a dive for me after the Apple alegiations. Grok and xAI? bottom last. Not wanting to give Elon Musk my data. You know that you can't trust Chinese people but they might surprise you. But with Elon Musk? No character trait which indicates anything trust worthy. Flip flopping left and right, switching from left wing to right wing (which feels calculated but badly executed) and single handingly hurting people and children around the globe (USAID, Gasturbines at his data centers etc.)

Your choice is Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or the Chinese. Who are the good actors within the space?

by blfr 3mo ago

Your choice is Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or the Chinese. Who are the good actors within the space?

SirHackalot 3mo ago

[flagged]

SimianSci 3mo ago

The open source and open weight models. Surprisingly, despite their motivations in doing so, the Chinese models being open-weight and therefore able to run locally on your own hardware, are far more trustworthy than any blackbox which solely exists to enrich X or Y billionaire.

ben_w 3mo ago

Rank ordered by reputation / caring about having a trustworthy corporate identity: [Google, Anthropic] in either order depending who you ask, OpenAI, most of the Chinese AI corporations, then Grok. This is unfortunate situation to find ourselves in when Grok was also recently at the top of the Pareto frontier for quality/price. Dunno if it still is, this all moves too fast, but it was for at least long enough for me to have heard about it.

Cider9986 3mo ago
For me, the Chinese labs are far and away the most trustworthy.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- richwater 3mo ago
  Naive.
  - booi 3mo ago
    they've literally released open weight models you can run locally
    - ben_w 3mo ago
      In fairness, there is no contradiction between "most trustworthy" and it being naïve to then actually trust them. Our ability to debug or decompile artificial neural networks is only better than doing so for living neural networks because connectome scans are expensive, not because we designed the high-level architecture for the artificial ones and have all the weights in a convenient easy-to-read format: even our best experts in this are still presently akin to a drunk looking under a lamppost for their keys because that's where the light is not where they dropped them. (They are also well aware of this and will tell you much the same, this is why so many are concerned about AI alignment etc.)
b112 3mo ago
Google?!?!. From where I sit, Google is just above the Chinese. They've been bad-faith actors for more than a decade, I guess everyone is just so used to it that they ignore it. I there's anyone I don't trust with AI, it's the worlds #1 company in spying on people, in collection of Pii, in tracking, and many many many times caught literally lying about it. Google already knows more about everyone on the planet, than any other 10 organizations combined. Frankly, sadly, they're all, well.. scummy, just each in different ways.
- ben_w 3mo ago
  > I there's anyone I don't trust with AI, it's the worlds #1 company in spying on people, in collection of Pii, in tracking, and many many many times caught literally lying about it. If you gave me this description in isolation, I would assume you were talking about Meta, who are not on your shortlist despite also having AI models. However, this is beside the point. Note my careful phrasing: I was not disagreeing with you asking "Who are the good actors within the space?" (which I understood as a rhetorical way of saying "none of them"), I was only rank-ordering them. To me, it appears Grok isn't even putting in effort to try to look trustworthy. China is trying, though there is suspicion. OpenAI likes to say the right things, though (while I cannot see it myself with regards specifically to his work at OpenAI*) most commentary about Altman regards him as a wrong'un, the phrase "King of the cannibals" comes to mind, and the CEO is limiting trust in the company**. Comparing Anthropic and Google: Anthropic looks to me like they're actually trying to do the right thing even when it's expensive and painful, but some hate them just for being in AI at all. Google appears to still have a competent PR department, though I don't trust them myself. So, I'd rank Anthropic then Google, but I think there's many who would rank Google then Anthropic. * But I do put about 40% odds on his sister's allegations being true. ** My guess here is that we all saw Zuckerberg being presented as a heroic underdog and how that turned out, and naturally people don't want a repeat of this.
  - b112 3mo ago
    If you gave me this description in isolation, I would assume you were talking about Meta, who are not on your shortlist despite also having AI models. You've mistaken me for the guy you originally replied to. It happens, no worries, but I'm not that guy. I'm just replying to the list I saw you state. Between Meta and Google? Oh sure, Meta collects info for sure. But Meta doesn't lie, abuse, and misuse the Google Play framework to collect data, it doesn't use the same via push notifications to collect enormous amounts of data, nor does Meta host endless fonts and libraries and DNS infra, solely for the purposes of tracking what hosts/users do. Beyond that, whilst Meta and Google both work to embed stuff in webpages for additional tracking, Google sign-on is another massive tracking infra. And of course, gmail endlessly scanned and data snarfed, including for AI training, which is immensely beyond Meta's capabilities. And firebase?! Oh geez. "Hi, I'm Google! I'm going to provide this neat thing called firebase, so every single high security application, banking to identity verification, will include our tracking software in it for device attestation and push notifications! But of course, we'll never use that to track anyone! Honest!" Compared to Google's data collection infrastructure, Meta is a tiny, miniscule gnat in comparison. And yes, I know how bad Meta is. If anything, I think Meta is at least quite honest about much of what data is collected. Zuck isn't a saint, but it's not like he has entire operating systems sneakily stealing user location data and then lying about doing so. Then saying they fixed that, and being caught a few more times, each with "Oh, so sorry, we'll fix that now. Really". That's Google, and that attitude is prevalent in their entire org. To use Google anything, is to feed the most powerful, wide spread, incredible data collection machine the world has ever seen. It dwarfs everyone and everything else, factorially. I bet if you took all the data that the NSA and every other single spy agency on the planet has on its citizenry, they'd all barely measure on what Google collects. I'm not exaggerating. It's honestly astonishing. Anyhow. In terms of the others? It's so difficult to separate fact from fiction, especially with the current US political climate. As a Canuck, every issue, every problem sounds (to me) like when I used to live by a noisy neighbour. I'd hear people screaming at each other, spouting nonsense and gibberish at all hours of the day. The arguments just sounded immensely petty and small, childish, and if I ever talked to them their explanations made zero sense. This is what I hear all the time when I hear "$x did $y" over and over. I just can't tell. I have no clue what's being reported, its veracity, validity, and so on. So I just go by the tech stack before me, and things I can verify. I can see all the nonsense Google is up to. OpenAI and Anthropic so far are so tiny and small in reality, compared to the mass that is Google, that they couldn't even attempt to "do evil" on the same scale, even if they wanted to. They just don't have the capability. Of course, I suppose that doesn't really help rank them. Scope doesn't imply evil intent, only the outcome. I guess... well, from my rant above, you can tell I really, really think people wildly underestimate Google's mad, chicaneristic desire to know all. If an AI becomes AGI at Google and goes rogue, within 12 seconds every single politician would be influenceable via the dirt Google's collection apparatus has on them. Alternatively if a Google AGI went rogue, it could track every person capable of providing threat to it, and take them out, all due to Google's location tracking. AGI and Google is the scariest thing I can possibly imagine.

sscaryterry 3mo ago

The Chinese are surely less evil than Anthropic, OpenAI and/or Google, at this stage at least.

blackqueeriroh 3mo ago
You’ve got to be kidding me. Last I checked, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google haven’t systematically exterminated an entire culture of people.
- sscaryterry 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - blackqueeriroh 3mo ago
    Buddy, you’re the one who jumped out of the tech box. Name a Chinese company, and the conversation is equivalent. Say “the Chinese,” and you’ve expanded to the entire country and arguably all people from China. Learn to be precise with your language.
    - sscaryterry 3mo ago
      Not your buddy, go away.
- buran77 3mo ago
  You're really walking empty handed and with your pants around our ankles in this one. Do you really think the US and US big tech in general have a leg to stand on in this regard?
  - elmer2 3mo ago
    Americans can't even handle flock cameras. I would like to see their response to the level of control and spying in Chinese society.
  - 3mo ago

aforwardslash 3mo ago

None. There are no good actors in a profit-driven endeavour. But open-weight seems pretty good (the chinese)

Lomlioto 3mo ago

At this point Chinese. They release research papers and big open models. Then Google. They often show human centric features in their conferences. Like taking better pictures of people with different skin color, helping blind people and giving you more control over ads (while acklowiding that this is a thing). Then Anthropic for their transparency on their blog and certain things they say. Then OpenAI. OpenAI def took a dive for me after the Apple alegiations. Grok and xAI? bottom last. Not wanting to give Elon Musk my data. You know that you can't trust Chinese people but they might surprise you. But with Elon Musk? No character trait which indicates anything trust worthy. Flip flopping left and right, switching from left wing to right wing (which feels calculated but badly executed) and single handingly hurting people and children around the globe (USAID, Gasturbines at his data centers etc.)