Microsoft gets exclusive license for OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model

The important part is not the size and reach of the controlling entity. It is the motives of that entity. Microsoft is motivated by profit, but they are also motivated to continue to legally operate in almost every country in the world. They aren't going to use this technology in blatantly illegal ways and probably won't use it in actively harmful ways. Open sourcing this tech would allow it to fall into much more nefarious hands.

I don't know of any non-profit which has a condition like that in their constitution. However, they do often have an "asset lock", which would require assets are sold at fair market value, not given away, profits are not distributed etc.

Seems to me, an "intellectual property asset lock" could be constructed along similar lines, if people really wanted to. It might be a bad idea, though, if the non-profit folds, or would benefit from being restructured. Something allowing contribution to Open Invention Network or similar might be better for the long term.

In this case people were supporting AI research. Well... it worked :) GPT-3 is likely to open the AI chapter in history books.

For another example: you support cancer research and they find a cure. You can't expect everything else (trials, approval process, manufacture, distribution) to work on a donation model as well. I mean, probably there are 15 year olds who'd seriously ask "why not", but leaving them aside - going commercial means you won.

If this is indeed a problem, it's not a problem that's fixable by controlling the supply of propaganda (which for this discussion I am assuming to mean something like "false information that nevertheless convinces a lot of people of its truth"). It's only fixable by controlling the demand for propaganda--in other words, by reducing the number of people who can be convinced by it.

To look at it another way: trying to control the supply of propaganda means some authority has to have the power to judge that certain statements are propaganda and suppress them. How does that authority decide what is propaganda and what isn't? All you've done is transfer the propaganda problem to that authority, and that might make it, if anything, even harder to solve. Propaganda spread by Facebook posts and tweets is one thing. Propaganda spread by a recognized authority, especially under the guise of controlling propaganda spread by someone else, is quite another.

The only way out of this trap is for people to stop being convinced by anything that they cannot convince themselves of using their intelligence, common sense, and critical thinking skills.

(Also, the fact that only "violent far-right extremist ideologies and behaviors" are considered for people to be "radicalized" into points to an obvious bias on the part of the paper's authors. Which is an example of me not being convinced because I can apply my own intelligence, common sense, and critical thinking skills.)

I'm pretty sure OpenAI pays them even fatter salaries. I worked for a nonprofit at one point. People think that nonprofit automaticall means a pay cut, but they paid me about as much as Google did before, except it was all-cash. From the fiscal standpoint nonprofit merely means that all the revenues and donations get spent on programs and salaries, not that it pays a pittance. Organizationally, there are some interesting features to it, though: no stock, no owner, limits on control, etc. But financially nonprofits can pay very well indeed.

I think you might be confused about the subject here.

Disagree. "Safe spaces" are bubbles of like-thinkers, else they wouldn't be "safe". People in such bubbles tend to drift to extremes due to the lack of external constraint. Within the bubble any other opinions seem extreme.

GPT-3 is not an "everyday people", we don't have sentient AI and laws making robots defacto people just quite yet

Not with the subreddits it was hosting it didn't. The future of Reddit looked unviable as a business. I won't name names, but it's obvious that some of the content was wholly incompatible with mainstream acceptance and for good reason.

think of openai's work in three large buckets: (1) groundbreaking research; (2) preventing gpt-3 abuse; and (3) laying the foundation for an independent future.

put another way, there's a stark difference between doing research and commercializing research. openai must do both while carrying the additional burden of preventing abuse.

the angel's interpretation is that openai is outsourcing non-research, non-core activities to microsoft similar to how a developer might outsource customer sales and support to a MBA grad. this frees more attention and resources for research.

let's hope this is true, though i can understand many of the cynical viewpoints.