ScientiaEtVeritas t1_jcahkze wrote
I think we should value much more what Meta & Google are doing. While they also potentially don't release every model (see Google's PaLM, LaMDA) or only with non-commercial licenses after request (see Meta's OPT, LLaMA), they are at least very transparent when it comes to ideas, architectures, trainings, and so on.
OpenAI itself changed a lot from being open to being closed but what's worse is that OpenAI could be the reason that the whole culture around AI research changes as well, which is sad and pretty ironic when we consider its name. That's why I'm generally not very supportive of OpenAI. So, as a research community, we should largely ignore OpenAI -- in fact, they proactively opted out of it, and instead let's value and amplify open research from Meta, Google, Huggingface, Stability AI, real non-profits (e.g., EleutherAI), and universities. We need counterbalance now.
I_will_delete_myself t1_jcb0o9g wrote
OpenAI naming is like the People's Republic of China. Totally for the people and chosen by the people.
amhotw t1_jcbm37m wrote
OpenAI has been open initially. From history books, it looks like RC was never P's.
I_will_delete_myself t1_jcbmqn5 wrote
Whole purpose is to communicate how their naming isn't matching what they are actually doing.
amhotw t1_jcbpd9z wrote
I understand that. I am pointing out the fact that they started on different paths. One of them was actually matching its name with what it was doing; the other was a contradiction from the beginning.
Edit: Wow, people either can't read or don't read enough history.
[deleted] OP t1_jcebuo4 wrote
Not entirely true tbh, I'm willing to bet that most Chinese were supportive of the CCP when it first came to power
NoScallion2450 t1_jcal75g wrote
It seems like many researchers would feel the same way.
satireplusplus t1_jcbpgio wrote
They should rename themselves to ClosedAI. Would be a better name for what the company is doing now.
Caskla t1_jcb6kc8 wrote
Not sure that ignoring OpenAI is really an option at this point.
professorlust t1_jccjn4t wrote
If you can’t replicate their results, then they’re not useful for research
VelveteenAmbush t1_jcd760v wrote
They're purposefully withholding the information you'd need to use their results in research. This proposed research boycott is sort of a "you can't fire me, I quit" response.
professorlust t1_jcddvx5 wrote
Agreed
eposnix t1_jccpohv wrote
How many companies could realistically replicate their results though? We already have a pretty good idea of what's going on under the hood, but would knowing the intricacies of GPT-4 help anyone smaller than Google?
professorlust t1_jcdeiux wrote
The argument from a research perspective is that scale isn’t likely the Holy Grail.
It’s undoubtedly important, yes.
BUT for a researcher, the quest is to determine how important scale truly is AND how to determine ways that help reduce dependence on scale.
BrotherAmazing t1_jcdloe7 wrote
You can still replicate results in private under a non-disclosure agreement or verify/validate results without it getting published to the world though.
I like open research but research that happens in private still can be useful and is reality.
professorlust t1_jce19sb wrote
What researcher is signing an NDA?
That’s literally the opposite of what replication research is supposed to accomplish.
Operating under an NDA is for primary research, not replication
BrotherAmazing t1_jce3zky wrote
I would be happy to sign an NDA if Google allowed me to have access to verify, validate, and run some of their most prized models they keep secret and have not released, and it is incredibly rare for an NDA to last forever.
Also, a lot of research goes on behind closed doors among people who have signed NDAs. They still replicate each other’s work and verify and validate it, they just don’t publish it for you to read.
This thread isn’t specifically about “replication research” across the broad range international community either, is it? OP did not indicate that, and primary research a company performs and then successfully transitions it into a system that empirically outperforms the competition is validation enough that need not be replicated by their competitors. In fact, the whole point is you don’t want anyone to replicate it but it is still did valid useful research if you bring a product to market that everyone demands and finds useful.
When you work for Google or nearly any company and nove away from academia, you don’t have an ability to publish everything the company ever has done that you learn about or everything you do at the company automatically. Are you really under that impression? Have you ever worked in the Corporate world??
professorlust t1_jce4rv6 wrote
Check out Axriv if you think there’s only academic researchers publishing
BrotherAmazing t1_jch1gll wrote
I never said they don’t publish, re-read.
I can tell you firsthand what they publish has to get approval, and a lot of things do jot get approval to publish and are held as trade secrets. It boggles my mind this sub clearly has so many people who have never worked on the Corporate side of this industry and have these strong ideas that the Corporate side is or has ever been fully transparent and allows employees to publish anything and everything. The is so far from the truth it’s not funny.
For every model and paper published, there exists another model and many other papers that are not approved to be published and many exist in a different format as internal publications only. Other internal publications get watered down and a lot of extra work is omitted in order to get approval to publish. or they publish “generation 3” to the world while they’re working on “generation 5” internally.
VelveteenAmbush t1_jcbu8nr wrote
> While they also potentially don't release every model (see Google's PaLM, LaMDA) or only with non-commercial licenses after request (see Meta's OPT, LLaMA), they are at least very transparent when it comes to ideas, architectures, trainings, and so on.
They do this because they don't ship. If you're a research scientist or ML research engineer, publication is the only way to advance your career at a company like that. Nothing else would ever see the light of day. It's basically a better funded version of academia, because it doesn't seem to be set up to actually create and ship products.
Whereas if you can say "worked at OpenAI from 2018-2023, team of 5 researchers that built GPT-4 architecture" or whatever, that speaks for itself. The products you release and the role you had on the teams that built them are enough to build a resume -- and probably a more valuable resume at that.
the_mighty_skeetadon t1_jccdzgr wrote
Many of the interesting developments in deep learning have in fact made their way to Google + FB products, but that those have not been "model-first" products. For example: ranking, personalization, optimization of all kinds, tech infra, energy optimization, and many more are driving almost every Google product and many FB ones as well.
However, this new trend of what I would call "Research Products" which are light layers over a model -- it's a different mode of launching with higher risks, many of which have different risk profiles for Google-scale big tech than it does for OpenAI. Example: ChatGPT would tell you how to cook meth when it first came out, and people loved it. Google got a tiny fact about JWST semi-wrong in one tiny sub-bullet of a Bard example, got widely panned and lost $100B+ in market value.
VelveteenAmbush t1_jccksp9 wrote
Right, Google's use of this whole field has been limited to optimizing existing products. As far as I know, after all their billions in investment, it hasn't driven the launch of a single new product. And the viscerally exciting stuff -- what we're calling "generative AI" these days -- never saw the light of day from inside Google in any form except arguably Gmail suggested replies and occasional sentence completion suggestions.
> it's a different mode of launching with higher risks, many of which have different risk profiles for Google-scale big tech than it does for OpenAI
This is textbook innovator's dilemma. I largely agree with the summary but think basically the whole job of Google's leadership boils down to two things: (1) keep the good times rolling, but (2) stay nimble and avoid getting disrupted by the next thing. And on the second point, they failed... or at least they're a lot closer to failure than they should be.
> Example: ChatGPT would tell you how to cook meth when it first came out, and people loved it. Google got a tiny fact about JWST semi-wrong in one tiny sub-bullet of a Bard example, got widely panned and lost $100B+ in market value.
Common narrative but I think the real reason Google's market cap tanked at the Bard announcement is due to two other things: (1) they showed their hand, and it turns out they don't have a miraculous ChatGPT-killer up their sleeves after all, and (2) the cost structure of LLM-driven search results are much worse than classical search tech, so Google is going to be less profitable in that world.
Tech journalists love to freak out about everything, including LLM hallucinations, bias, toxic output, etc., because tech journalists get paid based on engagement -- but I absolutely don't believe that stuff actually matters, and OpenAI's success is proving it. Google's mistake was putting too much stock in the noise that tech journalists create.
noiseinvacuum t1_jcd2xzt wrote
Completely agree with you on this. This will get much worse IMO, specially with big investment from Microsoft in OpenAI and the fact that MS is now openly and directly challenging Google. This whole AI Alpha aggressive posturing from Satya Nadella has put Google in a difficult spot, I can't see how Google will continue to justify sharing their research openly to its investors.
Majesticeuphoria t1_jccmti9 wrote
Anthropic is another good org to support for AI safety research: https://www.anthropic.com/research
bert0ld0 t1_jcd5w2f wrote
From all of this I wonder where is Apple, did they completely missed the boat?
Smallpaul t1_jcdn6lf wrote
What a wasted lead with Siri.
That said, apple has an even higher reputation around polish and accuracy than Google does. They would need something different than ChatGPT. A lot more curated.
Beatboxamateur t1_jcdm84x wrote
Apple seems to be betting a lot on their upcoming XR projects, which will probably have a lot of AI integrated with the software, similar to Meta's vision. They're hugely hardware focused, so I don't think they'll ever be marketing some kind of LLM on it's own, it'll almost always be built in to support their hardware.
Purplekeyboard t1_jcc7cuo wrote
But without OpenAI, who would have spent the billions of dollars they have burned through creating and then actually giving people access to models like GPT-3 and now GPT-4?
You can use GPT-3, and even versions of GPT-4, today. Or you can stand and look up at the fortress of solitude that is Google's secret mountain lair where models are created and then hoarded forever.
Fidodo t1_jccjaf0 wrote
Lesson is that to be successful you need to actually ship something. You can't stay in research land forever. Who would have thought?
LegacyAngel t1_jcd1idr wrote
>But without OpenAI, who would have spent the billions of dollars they have burned through creating and then actually giving people access to models like GPT-3 and now GPT-4?
Other companies are providing access. OpenAI is just being reckless.
usual disclaimer here
[deleted] OP t1_jcbei6j wrote
[deleted]
ScientiaEtVeritas t1_jcbiupk wrote
It's not only about the model releases, but also the research details. With them, others can replicate the results, and improve on them and that might also lead to more commercial products and open-sourced models that have a less restrictive license. In general, AI progress is certainly the fastest when everyone shares their findings. On the other hand, with keeping and patenting them, you actively hinder progress.
RareMajority t1_jcbku9g wrote
Is it a good thing though for companies to be open-sourcing things like their weights? If there's enough knowledge in the open to build powerful un-aligned AIs that seems rather dangerous to me. I definitely don't want anyone to be able to build their own AGI to use for their own reasons.
ComprehensiveBoss815 t1_jcbowt3 wrote
OpenAI isn't even publishing the architecture or training method. Let alone the weights. They are in full on closed mode but have gall to still ask people to give them free training data.
RareMajority t1_jcbqi56 wrote
I'm not referring to OpenAI here. Meta released the weights to Llama and now anyone can build an AI based on that model for any purpose and without any attempt at alignment. Maybe there's middle ground between the two approaches.
noiseinvacuum t1_jcd41kc wrote
From a research perspective, imo, it's 1000x better to follow the Meta model of release code + architecture openly and share weights with researchers than to be completely closed and call yourself Open. I understand that there are genuine risks with weights been available to adversaries but I think it's still better for the progress of the very young field of AI.
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments