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OpenAI scrapped a promise to disclose key documents to the public

(www.wired.com)
614 points nickthegreek | 1 comments | 24 Jan 24 19:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.244s | source
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mgreg ◴[24 Jan 24 19:55 UTC] No.39121867[source]▶
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]

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ertgbnm ◴[24 Jan 24 20:58 UTC] No.39122564[source]▶
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.

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boringuser2 ◴[25 Jan 24 00:39 UTC] No.39124695[source]▶
I wonder if your lesson is "Sam Altman should/would have been fired but for market forces".
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1. ertgbnm ◴[29 Jan 24 17:30 UTC] No.39179185[source]▶
I don't know whether Sam should be fired because no one has published the reason that he was in the first place.

All I know is that the first time that the authority of the board was used to make an unpopular decision in what presumably the board members thought was in the interest of protecting the values of OpenAI, there was an insurrection that succeeded in having the board reverse the decision. The board exists to make unpopular decisions that further the core mission of OpenAI as opposed to furthering the bottom line. But the second that the core mission and the bottom line came into conflict with one another, it became clear which one actually controls OpenAI.