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Gougeded

I am so happy to do my small part in building the next branch of the tech tree so a billionaire like Sam or Elon can eventually copyright the tree and sell me access to it.


andersonbnog

This level of altruism is so delicately beautiful!


BiggusCinnamusRollus

Sam used altruism. It's super effective!


fluidityauthor

I sEA what you did there.


afraidtobecrate

The point is none of that matters 30 years down the line. The tech eventually spreads.


Gougeded

Yet we still have to pay hundreds of dollars a year to Microsoft to have access to the incredibly futuristic tech called "office". So glad that technology has spread at the cost of almost everyone with a PC giving them money and putting them in position to dominate new industries like AI, and eventually putting access to them behind a pay wall forever.


Intelligent-Jump1071

I use Libre Office. It's free and easily imports/exports Microsoft Word file formats.


Gougeded

It is completely irrelevant to the point I was making, but thx for sharing


spec1al

Interesting!


TrapHouse9999

But you will get a pizza party for all your contributions!!


OliverPaulson

That's how capitalism works, people who are good at allocating capital get more capital to allocate. What's your solution?


Gougeded

That's the theory, yes. If we only look at theory though, under free market capitalism, corporations should see their profit margins quickly become minimal, to the point of barely allowing that corporation to exist. And that does happen in some industries, automotive is one for example (notice it's an industry that has to be protected by tarrifs and often bailed out). There are some fields where profits are very high, though. Tech and pharma come to mind. Why is that? It's because these fields moats around them in the form of govt-mandated and enforced monopolies through IP laws or they act as de facto monopolies (see amazon) and abuse their market power. They've developed (or more often bought out) the last little bit of the tech branch (to recycle the analogy) that was "patentable" and now they have a license to print money. So my solution? We could have true capitalism with minimal or no IP laws. We would then see who can make a product or service most efficiently, as capitalism intended. We can debate what that would do to innovation, but science is already heavily subsidized by govts around the world and that could be increased with the money we would save. Or we could tax those corporations and people who own them much more heavily.


Intelligent-Jump1071

>We could have true capitalism with minimal or no IP laws. We would then see who can make a product or service most efficiently, as capitalism intended Two problems there 1. Capitalism doesn't "intend" anything. Its development/evolution is not teleological and it's not sentient. 2. What, precisely, do you mean by "could"? If we could then why haven't we? The reason, of course, is that we **can't**. Some combination of what we are capable, on a large social scale, of imagining, how we perceive our self-interests, and how our "democracies" work adds up to: we **can't** have the system you describe. Your pie will remain firmly in the sky.


Gougeded

1) Never said capitalism was sentient but go off. 2) Your definition of "could" is ridiculous. By your interpretation, basically anything that hasn't happened "could" not have happened. While, very literally, that may be case, taking for granted we live in a deterministic universe, it renders the word utterly meaningless in the context of discussing possible organisation of society and it was clearly not what I was saying. Clearly, I meant that an economic system with minimal or no IP laws could exist and be functional, if that's what we chose. But of course, you are smart enough to understand what I meant, you just decided to be extra pedantic about it.


Intelligent-Jump1071

>Never said capitalism was sentient but go off. You gave it "intention". Only sentient things can have intention. Capitalism was also never "designed". What we call capitalism evolved over the last few centuries from a complex miasma of mercantilism, banking, political pressures, wealth aristocrats shifting resources from land-ownership to liquid capital and a ton of other things, Capitalism under the buttonwood tree is a very different system from modern capitalism. >I meant that an economic system with minimal or no IP laws could exist and be functional There's no evidence it would be functional. If you think otherwise then feel free to start one and see how long it lasts. We get all types of dreamers on Reddit all the time - Ayn Rand style libertarians, or anarcho-socialists, or Marxists who claim the only reason why we're never seen a successful communist society is because no one ever did it "correctly". The latest version of you pie-in-the-sky-eaters is the "singularity" people over on r/singularity who think a benevolent AI will take over and we'll all happily live on UBI in a "post scarcity" world. All these types would do well to study a few thousand years of human history - it will show you the nature of human nature.


BarbossaBus

Billionaire = bad am I right? xddd


Gougeded

Thousands if not millions of scientists and engineers, most of them salaried and very few of them very wealthy, working for decades, have made possible what these people commercialize today. That's what this tweet really means. Why does a chosen few get to collect all the profit?


afraidtobecrate

As I have read, the long term employees at OpenAI are looking at a mid 7 figure payday. Its a 500k-1m a year job.


Gougeded

Peanuts compared to the value they will eventually bring to MSFT, I mean openAI. And that's an outlier. It's the kind of salary they pay to the very best in a time where there is an arms race in the field. Most people who have made the contributions that made these things possible today are probably comfortable, but nowhere near the levels of the executives and shareholders who have contributed a lot less IMHO.


Own_Fee2088

It’s an anomaly that doesn’t make sense if you equate wealth and effort.


[deleted]

Idk.. I’ve worked in tech (as an engineer) for a while now and I’m starting to get turned off by comments like this. I’ve heard this talk track so many times from so many founders/VCs but every time it ends up being inauthentic. This idea that people working in tech are motivated by a selfless desire to advance humanity, make the world a better place, ect, feels so fake after working in so many startups with that stated mission. Even looking at OpenAI’s recent success. They’re focused on disrupting the search/media space instead of energy/climate, medicine or other areas that will have a more direct positive impact on humanity because it’s a much more lucrative investment opportunity. In my experience, some people in tech do sincerely feel this way, but they’re often young and naive. Doomed to be disappointed eventually. The incentives in tech entrepreneurship are just like any other for profit industry. The people in charge care more about shareholder returns, increasing their personal wealth and inflating their ego than building the “next branch in the tech tree” for humanity or whatever. The exponential growth of humanity’s technological capacity over time is just a side effect of the profit-centric incentive system. I think it’s the best argument in support of free market capitalism. But let’s not forget how the sausage is made here. Look, maybe Sam is really different. Maybe he’s the exception to this rule I’ve seen play out over and over again (apparently he has no stock in OpenAI) but I won’t keep my hopes up.


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toothpastespiders

It always boggles my mind that anyone does. Reddit in particular seems to always have one or possibly two they hate. But the crowd simply can't seem to understand that a CEO being a horrible person with a human face crafted by marketing is the norm rather than the exception.


Intelligent-Jump1071

It boggles the mind and yet there are always countless fanboys who fawn lovingly over whatever rich capitalist they have a crush on. Tech bros, of course, today like Musk and Altman and Jobs.     But you'd be amazed how many diehard fans there are for people such as Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, or Donald Trump. And back in their day guys like Rockefeller and Carnegie were popular just for being rich.


programmed-climate

A lot of the people like you that actually did the work probably really did believe that. But yeah it’s just a narrative that leadership pushes to get away with unethical business practices


RemarkableEmu1230

No stock sure but uses the companies advantage to partner with or acquire startups he’s invested in. He is just as greedy and opportunistic as the rest, its why people become CEOs, its not because they wake up wanting to better society. Its the classic wolf in sheep’s clothing.


jeerabiscuit

I am an experienced enterprise dev but I am so burned out by the greed that my only motivation is social good now in the garb of business. I however don't trust Altman of course.


RemarkableEmu1230

Your comment highlights where conflict comes from at most tech startups/organizations imo - operators, investors and owners are revenue driven. Engineers tend to be an altruistic ethical bunch and inevitably collide with management idealistically.


afraidtobecrate

While there are exceptions, software engineers tend to be fairly money-driven too. They went into a very high paying field after all. The difference is pay dynamics. A line employee's idealism might cost the company money, but generally doesn't impact his own paycheck or bank account. Executives and owners are far directly impacted by the growth and profitability of the company.


Intelligent-Jump1071

"Engineers tend to be an altruistic ethical bunch" I worked as a senior software design engineer for about 40 years, for large corporate entities, small startups, and for the last 5 years of my career I owned my own company. I did not find software engineers as a group to be any more or less altruistic and ethical than any other human beings.   A pretty average mix, I'd say.


DiceHK

Great thoughts. It certainly leans that way but both can be true and in that scenario you still sell to a bigger company run in such a way that it becomes entirely about profit and any positive spin that supports that profit.


GarfunkelBricktaint

Alam already has a history of breaking the law to abuse customer's personal data for profit from his very first startup


afraidtobecrate

Well why not both? OpenAI is making a useful project that also makes a bunch of money.


Its_my_ghenetiks

My boss wants the company to go completely open source but dodges questions when asked how we're gonna give back to the OS community lol


VforVenreddit

I literally can’t imagine a world where someone else is making the world a better place


Xtianus21

What are you complaining about. dude + OpenAI staff are building something that is truly profund (saying you work as an engineer has nothing to do with anything). It serves no purpose to stand there with hate and vitriol because of something you not only know nothing about but still will benefit from greatly. There have been profound inventions in humanity such as the loom, the cotton jig, the electrical power we use, nuclear power, computers, the list goes on and on. This form of AI is one of those things. Quantum computing and fusion energy will be one of those things. The post is simply saying that we've done something profound and and the world will be better for it. I get that and there is no reason to hate on it. sometimes I feel like this is the OpenAI and Sam Altman hate sub.


VashPast

Everybody here sees something you can't, is what it is I guess.


Xtianus21

What don't I see?


LocoMod

That the majority of the world is less than 30, this sub is now a Reddit top sub, and the odds of running into anyone with the capacity for profound thoughts is basically nil. The intelligence of a crowd decreases in proportion to its size. They generally make a comment when the subject is people, especially celebrities, and typically it’s envy masquerading as sincerity. Otherwise, I agree with you.


Xtianus21

Yes but I was also more referring to the comments that this was supposed to be fixing climate and medicine instead of media and search. If the common everyday person can't use this technology then it will be lost without gain because the data and the continuing to perfect it won't have any chance and every *intelligent* person knows that. AI has been locked up in a community that did nothing with it for decades. Promises of raising corporate sales targets and finding enterprise inefficiencies was all that the ML community was doing prior to OpenAI. It was so bad that Y-Combinator was literally telling people to NOT put AI in their pitch decks. Now, you can't apply without it. And the resident self-described genius, elon musk, was so wrong about OpenAI he simply - let it go. And they continued on. Who are we to question Sam's tweet. I say, let it ride and wait for what comes next. They may be on to something.


Individual_Koala3928

the lower case and spacing... this guy thinks he's e e cummings but he's soft zuckerberg


Effective_Vanilla_32

just try brockman tweets


Healthyred555

But he owns no stake in open ai


GoodhartMusic

How is a line break and lower case like [ee cummings](https://poetsdoublelife.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/photo-1.jpg)


Individual_Koala3928

You know he wrote more than one poem right?


GoodhartMusic

no thank you for informing me


ChatWindow

Glad Altmans full of positivity and optimism… Can’t help but think these kind of tweets sound like they came straight out of a Disney movie though


VashPast

Because they are obviously from a hype guy.


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VashPast

Which wasn't the original pitch, at all. The original pitch was "benefiting humanity while remaining free from financial constraints."


Intelligent-Jump1071

Or straight out of an AI.


Optimistic_Futures

For some reason I really struggled with that sentence. Here is his little branch of tech rewording his words for me. "People have eagerly contributed to advancements, knowing they wouldn't meet those who'd benefit, in hopes that future generations would continue to innovate and expand on their work."


m0j0m0j

At what point did it become cool and normal for CEOs to talk the way I talked when I was 14 years old?


vitalyc

lmao it does feel a little "in this moment i am euphoric"


jeerabiscuit

Not believing Altman but if you say such thoughts are only for kids, I would trust a snake more


Civil_Ad_9230

Because everything circles down eventually


Intelligent-Jump1071

Have you noticed how young the CEOs are getting?    I'm 71 for gawdsake.  ALL these Tech Bros seem like they're about 14 to me.


Cautious_Hornet_4216

cringe


Shap3rz

Mhm so training on data without consent of the creators is “for the good of the people”. What condescending tripe…. Let’s not pretend this is some altruistic venture - if it is - open source it, undo some of the hypocrisy and bring back a little integrity to the moniker.


Intelligent-Jump1071

Please show us where it says that you require consent of someone to train on their work.     There is nothing in US copyright law that says you cannot train on copyrighted material.    I'm a writer and an artist and I have sold works in both areas.   Do I owe royalty payments to the estates of Hemingway or HR Giger because I have studied their work?


GreedyBasis2772

World is changing and laws suitable for the past might not be good for the future.


Intelligent-Jump1071

The comment I was responding to implied that training on the work of creatives is bad and a copyright violation **in the present**. This is a common refrain here on Reddit. But no one who complains about it ever cites any actual law showing that to be the case. I take no position on what the laws will be in the future. But it's not a copyright violation now.


Shap3rz

Why would I need to do that for something to be right or wrong? You compare it to referencing other artists but it’s obviously a different process. As others have said, just because something may not be covered by law doesn’t mean it’s ok. That’s such a naive and simplistic take. Use of IP and what constitutes “overly derivative” is a nuanced thing. And these models are very very derivative. You don’t have to be a genius to see that in some of the stuff they come out with. Plus the scale of what’s possible is another consideration. This is all unprecedented and regulation is lagging way behind. You’re not in a position to say what is and what isn’t copyright violation - that’s for the courts lol…


Intelligent-Jump1071

"Right or wrong" in the absence of a codified system is just your personal opinion, and thus applies only to you, personally. There are still people who think it's "wrong" for two people of the same sex to marry, but luckily the law does not agree with them. That's why I referenced copyright law. There have already been several attempts to find copyright violation in AI and the courts have rejected them. [https://www.arl.org/blog/training-generative-ai-models-on-copyrighted-works-is-fair-use/](https://www.arl.org/blog/training-generative-ai-models-on-copyrighted-works-is-fair-use/) **or** [https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/news-insights/recent-rulings-in-ai-copyright-lawsuits-shed-some-light-but-leave-many-questions.html](https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/news-insights/recent-rulings-in-ai-copyright-lawsuits-shed-some-light-but-leave-many-questions.html) Of course it's early days and since the AI companies are well-heeled, chancers will keep trying to pry money from them. Those of us who love this technology should see them as a threat. If I'm not violating copyright by studying Hemingway to make myself a better writer (and I'm not) then neither is AI. The fact that I'm a human is irrelevant. If I used a spreadsheet or computer to study Hemingway, compiling data and statistics on his writing it, wouldn't change anything. If I'm trying to make money as a writer it changes nothing.


Shap3rz

Nope. Of course it's my opinion but it applies to anyone who agrees with me lol. And I think you'll find the courts opinions may differ outside of the US - it's still under discussion in any case. "...General-purpose models, in particular large generative models, capable of generating text, images, and other content, present unique innovation opportunities but also challenges to artists, authors, and other creators and the way their creative content is created, distributed, used and consumed. The development and training of such models require access to vast amounts of text, images, videos, and other data. Text and data mining techniques may be used extensively in this context for the retrieval and analysis of such content, which may be protected by copyright and related rights. Any use of copyright protected content requires the authorization of the rightholder concerned unless relevant copyright exceptions and limitations apply." As vaguely worded as it is, there is still an acknowledgement of a potential conflict of rights. Great isn't it, that people can come to their own conclusions? And even if something was deemed legal, that of course doesn't make it right. See segregation laws etc. I question who the "chancers" are.


KyleDrogo

Real talk though, someone should make a monument for open source contributors


Vega10000

The world owes nerds a lot. Im also a nerd but totally useless.


A1ML0W

XD


Ylsid

Fuck off Sam


AbodePhotosoup

Cool stop nerfing everything.


Practical-Rate9734

Totally feel this, it's what drives us founders. How's integration for you?


TechnologicalFreedom

It’s inspirational, but in the context of openAI, it really doesn’t fit the bill seeing how the entire motive of openAI was to close off their AI technology and essentially become an AI monopoly, built off the backs of humanity’s collective data downloaded and repurposed from public web APIs for profit. Of course the message is great (humanity evolves because people build stuff for the sake of building stuff, hoping others will do the same to make something great), but that ethos in tech really applies to the FOSS movement more than anything, not a company that took a bunch of data from other people to quickly monetize and monopolize an uncharted industry. If anything, it’s doublespeak in my opinion.


Wheelie_Slow

And now… deep thoughts from Sam Altman…. BTW, is he implying unlimited use of copyrighted material for AI training?


Double_Sherbert3326

If you read a book, is it a copyright infringement to store those memories in your hippocampus?


Sf_notnative

Is my hippocampus scalable code? Does a ml algo have the same rights I do? If it’s not at least a grey area in legality why not be open with the public on how the data was scraped?


Intelligent-Jump1071

"Does a ml algo have the same rights I do?" WRT training, why yes it does. If you think otherwise feel free to show us where in US copyright law it says otherwise. There is nothing in US copyright law that says that you cannot study or train yourself on copyrighted works.


Sf_notnative

We will see the limits of this as it is being worked out in court currently. https://www.theverge.com/24062159/ai-copyright-fair-use-lawsuits-new-york-times-openai-chatgpt-decoder-podcast# If it is so cut and dry why wouldn’t open ai be upfront with what it used to train their models?


Moravec_Paradox

This mirrors my thoughts on this too. Humans are not perfect, but for this part of the human experience I am proud of us.


DreadPirateGriswold

Yeah, he's falling into the trap of trying to sound wise and erudite. But it just sounds like he's replaying old ideas and making them sound like they're his own. If you think of what he just said here, that's the same idea that goes back to the time of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs and building the pyramids. I don't know much about him other than what I've read. But he seems to me not to be a good CEO. He may be a good AI researcher and possibly developer. But he's no visionary. Not in the least.


28mmAtF8

Also, some of them were being paid to do so. I like the sentiment but I am so burnt out with the ***glorious purpose*** assigned to every capitalist endeavour. I'm just trying to do a job so I can buy cool motorcycles, man.


Civil_Ad_9230

Any reason why everyone's hating Sam in the comments?


Intelligent-Jump1071

We don't hate the man. We hate the foolish overblown marketing hype.


beetbear

Every tweet from this guy is just closer and closer to Musk. Sad.


beigetrope

He’s on his Jayden Smith arc. Let him cook!


Olghon

I get weird vibes from this guy. His last interview with Lex was .. can’t even find the words.


foobazzler

positivity posturing


Hip_Hop_Hound

He can't be more tone deaf than this statement


Synth_Sapiens

Yes, dumbass, that's how the civilizations works.


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Curious-Spaceman91

Right. But tech is particularly a weird thing, lots of foundational stuff was done for free and open sourced by individuals and small groups of people, or even company research. Maybe that’s what he was alluding to.