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> That and avoiding openAI and Anthropic copying our results and leaving us with nothing to show for six months of work. Isn't the POINT of publishing research

> That and avoiding openAI and Anthropic copying our results and leaving us with nothing to show for six months of work. Isn't the POINT of publishing research because you want others to copy it?

willmadden 2mo ago
Anthropic and OpenAI have proven themselves to be aspiring monopolists through their positions and actions. Why would you want to share your research with them?
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
notRobot 2mo ago
And crucially, you should want to others to build upon it, like you build upon so many that came before you.
- sigmoid10 2mo ago
  If your perception of a moat is worth more than the GDP of most countries, publishing anything must seem like a bad idea. Much less helping others build upon your work.
xienze 2mo ago
There seems to be this mentality among a large number of people who publish open data/research/software that everything is fine as long as no one else makes money using it. The second that happens, they're furious and act as though someone unfairly profited off of their "unpaid labor" (read: that thing they did purely for the love of the game). I think it has to be some sort of feeling of resentment and/or stupidity that _they_ were the person with a million dollar idea that let it slip through their fingers.
- fluoridation 2mo ago
  It's not that difficult. You invest effort into research in the hope it'll give you a competitive edge. If someone else can come along and reproduce your results practically at a much lesser cost, then you lose that competitive edge. You're back at square one, except you've lost the cost of the research.
  - olalonde 2mo ago
    Hence why most companies don't publish research and most software is proprietary. Publishing and open source only make sense in certain situations.
    - 1718627440 2mo ago
      Open source doesn't mean, it's available to the general public.
      - fluoridation 2mo ago
        What's your point?
        1718627440 2mo ago
        That the point he is making does not apply to open source, but rather to freeware (which is open source too). Open source can be completely B2B, without releasing it to third parties. Also open source is not free software, so you can also forbid your costumers from sharing the source further. EDIT: That's crap. I only thought about the aspect of continuing sharing, but if you also don't want your direct customers to know, then of course open source is very much relevant.
        fluoridation 2mo ago
        The point is "most companies don't publish research and most software is proprietary [because that entails giving up the competitive edge]". I don't see anything in there about price. Also, I think most people would say that if you have to pay an exorbitant license fee to see the source code then the software is still proprietary. I don't see how it's not true that most companies keep their software proprietary to retain a competitive advantage.
paytonjjones 2mo ago
That's not really a common attitude in academia, unfortunately. The most common attitude is something closer to "I want to be well known and respected by smart and influential people". In short, prestige. People using your work is a side effect of success, but simultaneously threatens your ownership of your "brand". If they significantly improve upon the thing you did, your work could be made irrelevant, your prestige ruined.
- MichaelZuo 2mo ago
  Huh? Wouldn’t their prestige be improved if some other group spent a lot of effort improving on it? That would clearly demonstrate it had real substance beyond hot air or puffery.
  - perpetuallunch 2mo ago
    You could be proven wrong and wither in to obscurity. Better to silo yourself and move in to the penthouse.
  - zdragnar 2mo ago
    I would presume that if their results end up being more impactful or interesting, you end up being a footnote and lose the spotlight.
lenerdenator 2mo ago
For researchers, yes. For startups, no, because the point of that is to make money.
- geysersam 2mo ago
  So why is op trying to publish?
  - perpetuallunch 2mo ago
    Arguably, the point of a startup isn’t to make money, it’s to attract attention and then investors. Once the business is making money it’s not really a startup any more, it’s a going concern. OP is an undergrad student. Attracting attention is what will make them stand out. And sharing research at this stage will probably expose them to research others don’t want to publish but do want to share with other researchers.
    - lenerdenator 2mo ago
      > Arguably, the point of a startup isn’t to make money, it’s to attract attention and then investors. Investors with money.
      - perpetuallunch 2mo ago
        What do you mean by this? What are investors who don’t have money? Perhaps I should have said investors and speculators, but this doesn’t help you here.
        lenerdenator 2mo ago
        I'm saying that there's no difference between doing it for money and doing it for the attention of investors, because investors are also money. OP's startup is publishing because they think there's an economic advantage to doing so. That's not good or bad; it just is. Very, very few things in the tech world are done "just because". Even fewer things when we're talking about AI being developed in the US. For better or for worse, the leadership in that segment of our field has established profit motive as their god.
r3trohack3r 2mo ago
If you want people to copy it, but want a 20 year temporary monopoly, you can publish an open source step-by-step guide for someone to recreate what you’re doing with the patent office.
- jandrewrogers 2mo ago
  The patents are effectively unenforcible. People stopped patenting frontier computer science research 20 years ago. That is the current reality.
  - sheeshkebab 2mo ago
    good.
    - jandrewrogers 2mo ago
      The downside is frontier computer science in several domains is decades beyond the state-of-the-art from academic literature. This is the situation that patents were designed to disincentivize. There is not an obvious path to making this research public again. That's the reality. For open source to be competitive it needs to be approximately as efficient as the best systems we design.
      - elictronic 2mo ago
        Legislation?????? Listing on stock exchange of ai product requires open sourcing parts or all of your publicly trained stack. Double or triple taxes on companies that do not provide for public good. Will this happen, probably when the market crashes and people want companies and individuals to pay. Really matters if it’s a 2008 crash or a 1929 crash where the bankers and stock brokers were jumping out of upper stories.
    - make3 2mo ago
      Do you want companies to have incentives to pay researchers even if NDAs and non competes are basically unenforceable? Do you want any communication of knowledge from corporations? Should companies not be allowed to benefit from sometimes huge investments in research?

> That and avoiding openAI and Anthropic copying our results and leaving us with nothing to show for six months of work. Isn't the POINT of publishing research because you want others to copy it?

willmadden 2mo ago

Anthropic and OpenAI have proven themselves to be aspiring monopolists through their positions and actions. Why would you want to share your research with them?

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

notRobot 2mo ago

And crucially, you should want to others to build upon it, like you build upon so many that came before you.

sigmoid10 2mo ago
If your perception of a moat is worth more than the GDP of most countries, publishing anything must seem like a bad idea. Much less helping others build upon your work.

xienze 2mo ago

There seems to be this mentality among a large number of people who publish open data/research/software that everything is fine as long as no one else makes money using it. The second that happens, they're furious and act as though someone unfairly profited off of their "unpaid labor" (read: that thing they did purely for the love of the game). I think it has to be some sort of feeling of resentment and/or stupidity that _they_ were the person with a million dollar idea that let it slip through their fingers.

fluoridation 2mo ago
It's not that difficult. You invest effort into research in the hope it'll give you a competitive edge. If someone else can come along and reproduce your results practically at a much lesser cost, then you lose that competitive edge. You're back at square one, except you've lost the cost of the research.
- olalonde 2mo ago
  Hence why most companies don't publish research and most software is proprietary. Publishing and open source only make sense in certain situations.
  - 1718627440 2mo ago
    Open source doesn't mean, it's available to the general public.
    - fluoridation 2mo ago
      What's your point?
      - 1718627440 2mo ago
        That the point he is making does not apply to open source, but rather to freeware (which is open source too). Open source can be completely B2B, without releasing it to third parties. Also open source is not free software, so you can also forbid your costumers from sharing the source further. EDIT: That's crap. I only thought about the aspect of continuing sharing, but if you also don't want your direct customers to know, then of course open source is very much relevant.
        fluoridation 2mo ago
        The point is "most companies don't publish research and most software is proprietary [because that entails giving up the competitive edge]". I don't see anything in there about price. Also, I think most people would say that if you have to pay an exorbitant license fee to see the source code then the software is still proprietary. I don't see how it's not true that most companies keep their software proprietary to retain a competitive advantage.

paytonjjones 2mo ago

That's not really a common attitude in academia, unfortunately. The most common attitude is something closer to "I want to be well known and respected by smart and influential people". In short, prestige. People using your work is a side effect of success, but simultaneously threatens your ownership of your "brand". If they significantly improve upon the thing you did, your work could be made irrelevant, your prestige ruined.

MichaelZuo 2mo ago
Huh? Wouldn’t their prestige be improved if some other group spent a lot of effort improving on it? That would clearly demonstrate it had real substance beyond hot air or puffery.
- perpetuallunch 2mo ago
  You could be proven wrong and wither in to obscurity. Better to silo yourself and move in to the penthouse.
- zdragnar 2mo ago
  I would presume that if their results end up being more impactful or interesting, you end up being a footnote and lose the spotlight.

lenerdenator 2mo ago

For researchers, yes. For startups, no, because the point of that is to make money.

geysersam 2mo ago
So why is op trying to publish?
- perpetuallunch 2mo ago
  Arguably, the point of a startup isn’t to make money, it’s to attract attention and then investors. Once the business is making money it’s not really a startup any more, it’s a going concern. OP is an undergrad student. Attracting attention is what will make them stand out. And sharing research at this stage will probably expose them to research others don’t want to publish but do want to share with other researchers.
  - lenerdenator 2mo ago
    > Arguably, the point of a startup isn’t to make money, it’s to attract attention and then investors. Investors with money.
    - perpetuallunch 2mo ago
      What do you mean by this? What are investors who don’t have money? Perhaps I should have said investors and speculators, but this doesn’t help you here.
      - lenerdenator 2mo ago
        I'm saying that there's no difference between doing it for money and doing it for the attention of investors, because investors are also money. OP's startup is publishing because they think there's an economic advantage to doing so. That's not good or bad; it just is. Very, very few things in the tech world are done "just because". Even fewer things when we're talking about AI being developed in the US. For better or for worse, the leadership in that segment of our field has established profit motive as their god.

r3trohack3r 2mo ago

If you want people to copy it, but want a 20 year temporary monopoly, you can publish an open source step-by-step guide for someone to recreate what you’re doing with the patent office.

jandrewrogers 2mo ago
The patents are effectively unenforcible. People stopped patenting frontier computer science research 20 years ago. That is the current reality.
- sheeshkebab 2mo ago
  good.
  - jandrewrogers 2mo ago
    The downside is frontier computer science in several domains is decades beyond the state-of-the-art from academic literature. This is the situation that patents were designed to disincentivize. There is not an obvious path to making this research public again. That's the reality. For open source to be competitive it needs to be approximately as efficient as the best systems we design.
    - elictronic 2mo ago
      Legislation?????? Listing on stock exchange of ai product requires open sourcing parts or all of your publicly trained stack. Double or triple taxes on companies that do not provide for public good. Will this happen, probably when the market crashes and people want companies and individuals to pay. Really matters if it’s a 2008 crash or a 1929 crash where the bankers and stock brokers were jumping out of upper stories.
  - make3 2mo ago
    Do you want companies to have incentives to pay researchers even if NDAs and non competes are basically unenforceable? Do you want any communication of knowledge from corporations? Should companies not be allowed to benefit from sometimes huge investments in research?