What if those expert just published the stuff freely online instead. Surely that would be more productive and trustworthy. Reality is truly stupid.
That kind of work also sounds incredibly boring. They probably have to pay their experts a lot more than it would normally cost to hire the same caliber of experts. Which would mean they are not generating very much private data.
Because nobody else is willing to pay them to do that. Research grants, peer review publications, etc, are not set up to reward stuff like “produce one thousand random examples of expressing thoughtful uncertainty with respect to questions relevant to your discipline for which there is currently no consensus answer”
> What if those expert just published the stuff freely online instead. Surely that would be more productive and trustworthy.
I’m sure many of them would be happy to do so if someone is paying them
A "realistic-sounding, 80% correct version of an expert opinion" only costs US$20/month–and if you are willing to compromise a bit on correctness and/or privacy, you can even get it for free. No way you are getting a real expert at that price.
Whereas, pool $20/month across millions of subscribers, and suddenly you have enough money – and, more importantly, future revenue growth prospects with which to convince investors to give you even more money – to afford roomfuls of real experts to try to get that "80% correct" percentage higher.
We are not. Open AI is