Hacker News Reader

Comment by magnio | Hacker News Reader

> Elon understood the mission did not imply open-sourcing AGI. As Ilya told Elon: “As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science...”, to which Elon replied: “Yup”.

Wow the most open OpenAI has ever been is when someone sue them.

On the other hand, this shows Elon doesn't care jackshit about the lack of openness from OpenAI. He's just mad only that he walked away from a monumental success.

View on HN

> The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science...

Based on this line of reasoning, ANY company that builds any given technology and intends to share (sell) it to the world, but not divulge how it was done, can call itself OpenWhatever.

They are clearly saying that the word “Open” in their name means nothing.

The online versions of Microsoft office apps are free. What if they renamed those to... OpenOffice?

I laughed out real loud after reading this xD

But really there is so much money in this, and if they can make it they are going to be the next Google.

It should be obvious they don't want to be 'open' in terms of really making this open source.

> They are clearly saying that the word “Open” in their name means nothing.

Similarly Microsoft makes incredibly large software and my letters about this have gone unanswered

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcomputer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Azure

Lots of microcomputers.

Microsoft made software for small computers (PCs) not diminutive software

But my PC is enormous compared to my watch

And tiny compared to a mainframe.

Points of reference change.

Any company could do that. If it would make sense for them to do that would depend on the market they were entering though. At the time OpenAI came about companies weren't sharing (selling) AI to the world. Doing so was a point of differentiation. There's Google over there hoarding all of their AI for themselves. Here's us over here providing APIs and free chat interfaces to the general public.

So sure the name means nothing now in a market shaped by OpenAI, where everyone offers APIs and has chat interfaces. It doesn't mean it meant nothing when they picked it or that they abandoned the meaning. The landscape just changed.

AI/AGI is a multiplier. There could have been a world where just Google builds that multipler and only uses it internally. Making that multiplier publicly available can be the "Open" part.

I understand that this particular audience is very sensitive about the term, but why are we being so childish about it? Yes, you can name your company whatever you want within reason. Yes, it does not have to mean anything in particular, asterisk. Companies being named in colourful ways is not particularly new, nor interesting.

I'm just surprised how the entire tech world has been fooled into thinking AGI is around the corner.

What you think "AGI" and "around the corner" means might very well not be.

> There could have been a world where just Google builds that multipler and only uses it internally.

Funny that you mention that, actually. Before OpenAI started generously... publicizing their models, Google was actually shipping their weights day-and-date with their papers. So honestly, I actually doubt that Google would do that.

> Making that multiplier publicly available can be the "Open" part.

Aw, how generous of them. They even let us pay money to generously use their "Open" resource.

> but why are we being so childish about it?

Why are you being so childish about it? "Open" means something - you can't contort OpenAI's minimalist public contributions into a defense of their "openness". You'd have better luck arguing that Apple and Microsoft support Open Source software ddevelopment.

The last significant contribution OpenAI open-sourced was GPT-2 in 2019. They are a net-negative impact on the world at-large, amassing private assets under the guise of public enrichment. If it was an option between OpenAI or nothing, I'd ask for nothing and pray for a better frontrunner. It's not the name, it's the way they behave and the apologism they garner.

By that analogy any company that uses prefix has to be open source?

OpenDoor?

Does 'Open' means anything in legal sense? It may not be in bad taste but it is your interpretation.

That's 100% the case, you can call your company OpenWhatever and keep everything closed. It's a brand, nothing else

> The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built.(even though sharing everything is definitely the right strategy in the short and possibly medium term for recruitment purposes).

"OpenSource". Open in open source means everyone should benefit from the fruits of source after it is built but it's totally OK to not share the source(Even though calling ourselves open is the right strategy for medium term recruitment and adoption purposes).

If anyone tries the same logic with "open" source, they will be ridiculed and laughed at, but here we are.

isn’t this the old: free as in speech, not as in beer

OpenAI isn't free either way, they don't let you do porn etc with their models.

What’s more, ChatGPT won’t even attempt to name controversial websites if you’ve forgotten their name.

"Free as in beer" : I doubt anybody is expecting OpenAI to give away their work for free or give free credits/tokens forever. Even when they do, it is no different from a free tier of any other *closed* commercial products.

"Free as in speech" : I'm not sure which part of openAI's actions show commitment to this part.

It's because they were whispering.

https://openai.com/research/whisper

>isn’t this the old: free as in speech, not as in beer

Hardly. Free beer and free speech do have different meanings, but freeware isn't something you have to pay for because it's "free as in beer".

In OpenAI's case, "open" isn't open as in anything normally associated with the word in the context.

Open as in private club during business hours for VIP members only is how they are trying to explain it, but understandbly, some people aren't buying it.

In my eyes this is a straw argument.

"[T]otally OK not to share the science." I think the reasonable average person would disagree with that. And, it would go against certain goal & financial transparency principles that the IRS demands to bestow the 501(c)3 designation.

(e.g. see here https://www.citizen.org/article/letter-to-california-attorne...)

Ilya's justification for that argument was to link to a SlateStarCodex blog post. We are doomed...

What’s wrong with slatestarcodex? I’ve never heard of them before

Lucky you! It's some of the best content on the internet. My favourite blog for sure. Same guy has continued on with his writing at https://www.astralcodexten.com which is also pretty good but doesn't reach the same highs.

What's wrong with it in context though is that as great as it is, it's just some guys blog. It's disconcerting that people would be working on technology they think is more dangerous than nuclear weapons and basing their approach to safety on a random blog post.

Although it's disconcerting to think of a committee deciding how it's approached, or the general public, or AI loving researchers, so it might just be a disconcerting topic.

If OpenAI or just Ilya think Scott is the best man to have thinking about it though, I would have at least liked them to pay him to do it full time. Blogging isn't even Scott's full time job, and the majority of his stuff isn't even about AI.

nobody said thats the only argument Ilya had, but the points from scott alexander are legitimate and could be addressed even before hiring scott on or having an academic paper written.

Speaking of, I have been wondering how much LLM breakthroughs were helped by Karl Friston ??

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/20/translating-predictive...

> I’ve never heard of them before

Begin here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

Where did you get that it was sent by Ilya? The to: field is redacted.

The name is not redacted, only the exact e-mail address.

I don't think it's correct. I think it's sent by redacted and ilya later responded to it. I don't think ilya linked the codex

“The core algorithms we use today have remained largely unchanged from the ~90s. Not only that, but any algorithmic advances published in a paper somewhere can be almost immediately re-implemented and incorporated.”

The fact that these two statements have opposing ideals really highlights the hypocrisy of these billionaires. Ilya’s statement is just them trying to convince themselves that what they’re working on is still a noble cause even if OpenAI isn’t actually “Open”.

Yeah seems pretty cut and dry. It'd feel pretty bad to see OpenAI doing what they're doing now after saying things like "My probability assessment of OpenAI being relevant to DeepMind/Google without a dramatic change in execution and resources is 0%."

He was right though, they did have a dramatic change in execution and resources the next couple of years when they prepared to sell out to Microsoft and that gave them a chance. Elon really gave them good advice there, even if it was snarky.

I don’t think anything about this is cut and dry. You may have a strong opinion on the matter, but at the most charitable it’s people doing their best in a murky situation

I did say it seems cut and dry. It just looks a certain way. I know that things may not be as they seem. Elon's complaints about OpenAI pulling a profit make sense in isolation, but look very different in light of these emails. This blog post is a very good move in OpenAI's favor.

The comments in this thread alone would indicate the the crowd is pretty split even after this blog post

This is misleading. Please read the actual source in context rather than just the excerpt (it's at the bottom of the blog). They are talking about AI safety and not maximizing profit.

Here's the previous sentence for context:

> “a safe AI is harder to build than an unsafe one, then by opensorucing everything, we make it easy for someone unscrupulous with access to overwhelming amount of hardware to build an unsafe AI, which will experience a hard takeoff.”

As an aside: it's frustrating that the parent comment gets upvoted heavily for 7 hours and nobody has bothered to read the relevant context.

I find it good that no one until now provided this bullshit lie as context. The "we need it to be closed for it to be safe" claptrap is the same reasoning people used for feudalism: You see, only certain people are great enough to use AGI responsibly/can be trusted to govern, so we cannot just give the power freely to the unwashed masses, which would use it irresponsibly. You can certainly trust us to use it to help humanity - pinky swear.

This is from an internal email, it was not written for PR. Whether he is correct or not about his concerns, it's clear that this is an honestly held belief by Ilya.

really makes the "Open" sound more sinister, like they're opening the ai.

Release the kraken.

Like they rub open the lamp to release the genie. To go with the metaphor, the genie obeys the person holding the lamp, not everybody

Yes. I think the same. Elon is just bitter he misjudged and now wants to claw back without seeming a giant a-hole.

He has celebrityitus — he is so far gone from knowing anyone that doesn’t suck up to him that he can help but look like a giant a-hole all the time because everyone round him will tell him that he is cool and right.

And it doesn’t take being that rich to have this problem. Even minor celebs in L.A. have this problem!

> this shows Elon doesn't care jackshit about the lack of openness from OpenAI. He's just mad only that he walked away from a monumental success.

Yup he's pretty transparently lying here.

He committed to fund for $1B dollars. Then when they wouldn't make him CEO and/or roll the company into Tesla he refused his commitment after paying out only 4% of it. Claimed the company would fail and only he could save them (again wrong).

And now is mad he doesn't control the top AI out there and because he chose to walk away from them.

And yet again people are falling for him. Elon talk never matches his action. And there is still a large portion of the internet that falls for his talk time and time again.

Whether it is Elon or Altman that controls it has nothing to do with how open or not openAI is. And it has become very clear that OpenAI is nothing but Microsoft in a trenchcoat.

No matter his motives, I applaud this lawsuit. Who cares if his talk doesn't match his action? His action, here, is good.

Musk's lawsuit is for breach of contract, but it looks like Musk agreed with what OpenAI did, which means the lawsuit will fail.

From the complaint:

> Together with Mr. Brockman, the three agreed that this new lab: (a) would be a non-profit developing AGI for the benefit of humanity, not for a for-profit company seeking to maximize shareholder profits; and (b) would be open-source, balancing only countervailing safety considerations, and would not keep its technology closed and secret for proprietary commercial reasons (The “Founding Agreement”).

The biggest beneficiary of this lawsuit is Google, which now gets more runway to bumble along to victory.

Do you also own a Tesla?

> He's just mad

This seems to be his natural resting state these days

> On the other hand, this shows Elon doesn't care jackshit about the lack of openness from OpenAI. He's just mad only that he walked away from a monumental success.

You really come to that conclusion from a "yup"? Damn.

At the time, all AI models were hidden inside big corporations. We saw research papers but couldn't use any. OpenAI allowed anyone to access modern LLMs. They were open in the sense that they give everyone access to the model.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com