OpenAI scrapped a promise to disclose key documents to the public

Unsurprising but disappointing none-the-less. Let’s just try to learn from it.

It’s popular in the AI space to claim altruism and openness; OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI (the new Musk one) all have a funky governance structure because they want to be a public good. The challenge is once any of these (or others) start to gain enough traction that they are seen as having a good chance at reaping billions in profits things change.

And it’s not just AI companies and this isn’t new. This is art of human nature and will always be.

We should be putting more emphasis and attention on truly open AI models (open training data, training source code & hyperparameters, model source code, weights) so the benefits of AI accrue to the public and not just a few companies.

[edit - eliminated specific company mentions]

The botched firing of Sam Altman proves that fancy governance structures are little more than paper shields against the market.

Whatever has been written can be unwritten and if that fails, just start a new company with the same employees.

I'm not sure why you attribute that as a shield against the market. That seemed much more like an open employee revolt. And I can't think of a governance structure that is going to stop 90% of your employees from saying, for example, we work for Sam Altman, not you idiots...