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Comment by throwaway4837 | Hacker News Reader

I think all of the "AI alignment" talk is mostly fearmongering. It's a cunningly smart way to get ignorant people scared enough of AI so they have no choice but to trust the OpenAI overlords when they say they need AI to be closed. Then OpenAI gets a free pass to be the gatekeeper of the model, and people stop questioning the fact that they went from Open to Closed.

AI being tuned to be "safe" by an exceedingly small set of humans is the thing we should be afraid of. It's the effective altruism effect: if you bombard people enough with "safety" and "alignment" speak, they will look past the fact that you're mainly interested in being a monopoly. My bigger conspiracy theory is that Bill Gates getting behind "AI alignment" is a calculated move to get people to look past Microsoft's unilateral involvement.

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I don't know what press releases you've been reading, but the model is closed so they can make money off it, that's pretty obvious.

I think that is a simple take and underestimates the insidious nature of the AI alignment initiatives. Or maybe I'm overestimating it.

At this point I'm really not sure what they're up to in terms of grand strategy. I don't even know that making money is their ultimate goal. At a certain level of ambition money is just a tool to get what you really want.

It's interesting to note that Altman has no equity in the company. One of the primary motives of being a for-profit company that was espoused was to be competitive with big-tech AFA bringing in top-level research talent.

I don't think that Altman's lack of equity position in OpenAI means anything at all when it comes to what OpenAI's goals are.

We know what their immediate goals are: to make as much money as possible. The only question is what their longer-term goals are.

Seems like it would make sense for that to be the real reason, and the safety concerns to be a convenient scapegoat, although from talking with several people who work at OpenAI, they really do seem to believe the safety/alignment issue deep in their bones. I could almost be led to believe that the massive business advantage of keeping it closed is a happy side effect for them and not the actual reason.

> they really do seem to believe the safety/alignment issue deep in their bones

The employees are usually they are "in on the message". All you have to do is get your employees to believe the message. This is easy when the company is growing exponentially. CEO's word is gospel.

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