[HN Gopher] What OpenAI really wants
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What OpenAI really wants
Author : skilled
Score : 65 points
Date : 2023-09-05 11:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20230906183334/https://www.wired....
| [deleted]
| ACV001 wrote:
| Please remind me what exactly is "Open" in this enterprise?
| [deleted]
| boredemployee wrote:
| our wallets in their A(P)Is.
| smfugit wrote:
| "A Wealth of Information produces a Poverty of Attention" The
| real need is an efficient allocation of Attention. That has not
| been solved. And is far away from being solved if you pay
| attention to the kind of things people pay attention too today.
|
| What is apparent is OpenAI is run by totally clueless mindlessly
| ambitious one dimensional buffoons.
| [deleted]
| mym1990 wrote:
| An efficient allocation of attention would be the exact
| opposite of the goal of basically any social media company(or
| any attention based company). The problem of attention
| allocation comes down to the individual deciding not to
| participate in the never ending cycle of bite sized clips of
| information. The companies are unlikely to make this easier for
| you.
| ugjka wrote:
| > Riding with Altman, I can almost hear the ringing, ambiguous
| chord that opens "A Hard Day's Night"--introducing the future.
| Last November, when OpenAI let loose its monster hit, ChatGPT, it
| triggered a tech explosion not seen since the internet burst into
| our lives. Suddenly the Turing test was history, search engines
| were endangered species, and no college essay could ever be
| trusted. No job was safe. No scientific problem was immutable.
|
| ChatGPT craze has wore off for me, because of constant
| hallucinations when you ask for something slightly more
| esoterical. And I can't justify paying 20$ for GPT-4 to have more
| convincing hallucinations
| wafflemaker wrote:
| Saying that ChatGPT sucks after trying only the free version is
| like saying that pizza sucks after trying only the frozen pizza
| because you don't want to spend $20 on a pizza in a good
| Italian restaurant.
| moonchrome wrote:
| I think he's saying he can't justify keeping the
| subscription.
|
| I'm in the same boat - whenever I think it would be faster to
| use chatgpt it usually ends up being a waste of time and flow
| breaker. And it got worse over time. At some point a few
| months ago I realized I haven't used it once in a month, so
| why keep paying ?
|
| Copilot is way more useful to me.
| [deleted]
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Bing Chat, which uses GPT-4, is free.
| ugjka wrote:
| asks for edge
| blibble wrote:
| "It's rare that an industry raises their hand and says, 'We are
| going to be the end of humanity'--and then continues to work on
| the product with glee and alacrity." OpenAI rejects
| this criticism.
|
| imagine that
|
| for humanity's sake I really hope that Altman is another
| Elizabeth Holmes
| rmbyrro wrote:
| It's because Salt Man doesn't believe it. He knows it's not the
| end of anything, it's the start of an insanely lucrative
| market.
|
| What he really wants is to capture as much of this pie as he
| possibly can.
|
| In order to do that, he needs a monopoly or olygopoly. To
| achieve it, he needs the state to regulate the market, I mean,
| "to save humanity".
|
| That's why he's meeting with heads of state. And preaching the
| end of the world, so that the populace will support
| politicians' stupid regulatory proposals, carefully curated by
| Salt Man himself.
| [deleted]
| kepano wrote:
| A 9,500 word article about what OpenAI and Sam Altman want
| without mentioning Worldcoin/UBI is quite a feat... especially
| since it seems to be a major part of the end state he's aiming
| for. See the description in Sam's blog post "Moore's Law for
| Everything"[1] (cf. "dividend")
|
| The dichotomy of aggressively pursuing "AGI" while simultaneously
| warning that it is an "extinction-level threat" is bait for
| regulators who might think centralized AI + a CBDC-delivered UBI
| is the right path forward.
|
| [1]: https://moores.samaltman.com
| [deleted]
| cushpush wrote:
| "Here's something incredibly dangerous in the left hand, and
| here, something equally potentially catastrophic in the right
| hand." And regulators will, clap hands? Oh boy.
| skilled wrote:
| https://archive.ph/E1A1j
| monkeydust wrote:
| Parking what you might think of OpenAI There is something to be
| said about an organisation that is so mission focussed as them,
| yes many firms will claim to be but seems this is so deeply
| engrained in their people as well as their contracts!
| swyx wrote:
| i highlighted this last night which seems to be making the rounds
| - https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1699369076529971545
|
| Alec's CV (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alecradford/) seems to be:
|
| - 2011-2016 BSc Eng from Olin College
|
| - 2013+ started a data/AI consultancy as a sophomore that turned
| into a vague startup/product?
|
| - 2015 first paper on GANs coauthored with soumith
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.06434.pdf%C3
|
| - 2016 first GAN paper under openai email
| https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2016/file/8...
|
| - 2017 the generative reviews paper mentioend in the Wired
| article, with Ilya https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.01444.pdf
|
| - 2017 coauthor on PPO paper (precursor to instructgpt/rlhf)
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.06347.pdf).
|
| - 2018 lead author on GPT1
| https://www.mikecaptain.com/resources/pdf/GPT-1.pdf
|
| - 2019 lead author on GPT2 https://insightcivic.s3.us-
| east-1.amazonaws.com/language-mod... blog
| https://openai.com/research/better-language-models
|
| - 2019 coauthor on RLHF https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.08593.pdf)
|
| - 2020 coauthor on gpt3 https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165
|
| - 2020 coauthor on scaling laws
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.08361.pdf%E4%B8%AD%E5%BE%97%E5%88...
|
| - 2021 coauthor on DallE
| http://proceedings.mlr.press/v139/ramesh21a/ramesh21a.pdf
|
| - 2021 coauthor on Codex
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/2107.03374.pdf?trk=public_post_comment...
|
| - 2023 lead author on Whisper
| https://proceedings.mlr.press/v202/radford23a/radford23a.pdf
|
| name a more successful 7 year CS career post undergrad...
|
| Update: FYI openai just announced a "developer day" in Nov -
| somehow not blessed by the HN gods
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37408234
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I had an opportunity to interview with Indico and some of the
| people around Alex (i.e. Slater). Still not sure if not
| pursuing that further was a mistake or not.
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| They all have crazy CVs. If you're really talented in the US
| you can get very far on talent alone. If he was in Germany he's
| be a Ph.d or Postdoc toiling in some outdated research field
| that nobody cares about.
|
| The CTO has an even crazier CV. Born in the poorest European
| country, BSc at Dartmond (is that considered a good uni? idk),
| internship at GS, a stint at Tesla, couple of startups and hits
| gold with OpenAi. A BSc in mechanical engineering wouldn't even
| get you a job in Germany.
| sdeframond wrote:
| > If you're really talented in the US you can get very far on
| talent alone
|
| While this seems true, I wonder how much selection bias is
| involved here. I mean, we wouldn't know about talented people
| that kept failing, right?
|
| Edit: since they failed, they must be dumb, right? No matter
| how many PhDs they have. (I am being sarcastic, ofc)
| borroka wrote:
| As somebody who grew up in Europe and moved to the US for a
| postdoc and then started working in tech and never left, the
| main difference is the lack of venture capital ecosystem in
| Europe. Why there is no VC ecosystem is a topic for another
| day. You can have a brilliant idea, but with debt financing,
| start-ups are not an inviting business for banks, whether the
| founders have the "right" credentials or not.
| swyx wrote:
| maybe Europe needs to lighten up a little on the
| credentialism. (i am not at all saying this is exclusive to
| europe tho)
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| Definitely, but it is not our only problem. We don't get
| those lucrative internships and neither do we get the
| boatloads of startup capital.
|
| It's all caused by the same risk averse mentality, though.
| nxm wrote:
| Most importantly, it's bankruptcy laws in the US that
| encourage and reward risk taking which push technology
| forward. Last I've heard Europe is trying to update its
| laws for this exact reason
| cushpush wrote:
| The "risk averse" mentality is insightful to me,
| attempting to comprehend what cultural differences my
| (European issue) parents engage the world with
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| Oh, it's definitely one of the most distinctive
| difference between US and Europe. Of course it is not all
| the same. Germans are on the more conservative side,
| while the Dutch are known to be more entrepreneurial. But
| overall none is on the same level as you Americans.
| troupo wrote:
| It's caused by "a business that loses billions of dollars
| a year for over a decade isn't a sustainable business"
| mentality. The US is the exact opposite.
|
| Even OpenAI, however amazing it is, is not a business
| (yet?). It's a money sink.
| cushpush wrote:
| "Loss-leader" is the term, I believe
| calderwoodra wrote:
| Can you point to an example of a country that had/has a
| similar mentality to the US and it backfired?
| nashashmi wrote:
| This is true. But this is also what happens when there is
| too much money at play, and not enough of a try-and-fail
| approach.
| [deleted]
| api wrote:
| I am very happy to see an actual researcher and innovator get a
| significant piece of the proceeds from their work. This used to
| be a fairly rare event. The fact that it's becoming more common
| is a sign of progress.
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| Definitely. It is why I like to say that when it comes to the
| upper two quarters of income/wealth, there is way way way
| more upwards economic mobility in the US than in Europe.
|
| Here in Germany it is very easy to go from broke to middle
| class if you are talented. But going from talented to rich is
| impossible. There is no access to capital so people fight
| over the few good paying corporate positions and even there
| you mostly get the position through nepotism.
| calibas wrote:
| Let's not romanticize business too much, they want money.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| They want monopoly. Or, worse case, olygopoly. Which leads to
| an unrivaled, long-term money making machine and power.
| tough wrote:
| moneypoly
| [deleted]
| mkii wrote:
| OpenAI is technically a non-profit :-)
| mmanciop wrote:
| The just want tons of moneys
| JamesBarney wrote:
| The Open AI corporation is owned by a non-profit.
| trwaw wrote:
| Open Ai is a cash grab that's shitting on everything the open
| source movement used to stand for. They have single handedly
| done more damage to the open source ecosystem in 4 years than
| Microsoft did in 40.
| samvher wrote:
| Can you say more? It sounds like you're referring to more
| than just the contamination of the word "open".
| stonogo wrote:
| Irrelevant. The non-profit is controlled by the same people,
| and only existed to class their massive startup capital as
| 'donations.'
| kaycebasques wrote:
| > "In order to take advantage of the transformer, you needed to
| scale it up," says Adam D'Angelo, the CEO of Quora, who sits on
| OpenAI's board of directors.
|
| Ah, OK. So Quora is probably an input data source for OpenAI.
| Hadn't seen that connection before.
|
| Edit, yes, they explicitly say it a little further down:
|
| > To build it, they drew on a collection of 7,000 unpublished
| books, many in the genres of romance, fantasy, and adventure, and
| refined it on Quora questions and answers, as well as thousands
| of passages taken from middle school and high school exams.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| In this thread, people accuse Sam Altman of pursuing purely
| financial gain while he holds no equity in OpenAI.
| mym1990 wrote:
| As if equity is the only possible way to get rich. Sam has
| plenty of money, his next goal is likely an indirect
| accumulation of power, for better or for worse.
| beardedwizard wrote:
| They want us to believe the hype, all of it. So much fawning in
| this article I had to stop reading.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Pretty tough to read, yes. A Beatles comparison, seriously?
| Nonetheless, quite a few interesting nuggets of data in
| there...
| [deleted]
| mangecoeur wrote:
| I was waiting for the part where the journalist gave sam a bj
| AnonCoward42 wrote:
| > The air crackles with an almost Beatlemaniac energy as the star
| and his entourage tumble into a waiting Mercedes van. They've
| just ducked out of one event and are headed to another, then
| another, where a frenzied mob awaits. As they careen through the
| streets of London--the short hop from Holborn to Bloomsbury--it's
| as if they're surfing one of civilization's before-and-after
| moments. The history-making force personified inside this car has
| captured the attention of the world. Everyone wants a piece of
| it, from the students who've waited in line to the prime
| minister.
|
| A lot of words for saying absolutely nothing regarding the topic.
| And the article goes on like this. Thanks for nothing.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| " _Please don 't pick the most provocative thing in an article
| or post to complain about in the thread. Find something
| interesting to respond to instead._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| I found the quote and the comment interesting. All through
| the article I was wondering "is this dreadful, or just me?"
| Purple prose at it's very finest, and well worthy of top
| billing in Pseuds Corner in the magazine Private Eye.
| echelon wrote:
| I also dislike this writing style in most of the places it gets
| employed.
|
| Unless you're writing an engaging essay about adventurers
| climbing Everest, the plight of local doctors in war-torn
| countries, etc., I don't need effervescent language. It's
| distracting and hinders communication.
|
| Keep the article factual and succinct. No fancy picture needs
| to be painted.
|
| I'm trying to quickly analyze and synthesize into my world
| view. Not soak in it.
| noud wrote:
| > What OpenAI really wants
|
| 1. Get lots of users; 2. monetize everything; 3. go public; 4.
| sell all shares and get super rich?
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| That's if they are not ambitious. Might also be trying to
| become the new Google, or at least put the O in MANFANGO.
| stavros wrote:
| Jesus, can we find a phrase like "tech giants", rather than
| changing the acronym according to the stock market?
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Reminds me of 2SLGBTQ+
| bob1029 wrote:
| I typically use "F100" or "F500" to refer to the space of
| all large corporations. This feels to me like a happy blend
| between explicit naming and including everyone with an LLC.
| stavros wrote:
| I think the difference there is that FAANG+ refers
| explicitly to tech companies, rather than things like
| Exxon or whatnot.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Lol I did always wonder how Netflix qualified for FAANG but
| little ol' Microsoft didn't.
| jedberg wrote:
| FAANG was coined by Jim Cramer, a stock pundit. It was the
| five biggest tech earners that year. Microsoft was flat
| which is why it wasn't there, while Netflix was the single
| biggest gainer in the S&P500 that year.
|
| It has nothing to do with tech, salary, talent, or anything
| like it. It's purely based on stock growth in 2012/2013.
| paulddraper wrote:
| How the turn tables
| anurag6892 wrote:
| higher comp at Netflix
| isanjay wrote:
| FANMANGO. has mango
| jstummbillig wrote:
| It's fairly striking how okay it is to simply paint someone
| with power in any corner you please. You can basically make any
| claim you want, and be just fine with it, societally.
|
| I also notice, how the effortlessness with which it is done
| increasingly provides a solid estimate for how lame the
| painters are.
| stonogo wrote:
| That's a very florid unsubstantiated ad-hominem. You could at
| least attempt to refute the actual claim being made. Several
| of OpenAI's "founding donors" feel burned by the taking-it-
| private shenanigans, so it's not exactly an outlandish take.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
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