Is OpenAI really open?
A curious point in Sam Altman’s interview with Lex Fridman’s podcast is the revelation that, if he could go back in time, he would change the company’s name. This happens because OpenAI is not that open. This is Elon Musk’s argument in his action against the company. The entity’s ultimate mission is to ensure that the discovery and development of artificial general intelligence (AIG) happens safely and that its benefits can be shared. Musk argues that the company’s launches are increasingly closed, leaving little room to understand how applications, like ChatGPT, are trained and implemented.
Altman argues that his understanding of “openness” is different: “putting powerful technology in people’s hands for free, as a public good.” That’s why, says the CEO, “we don’t show ads in our free version, nor do we monetize it in other ways.”
The free version of ChatGPT alone was revolutionary in showing the world the power of AI. In a way, it helped to give concreteness to the debate about the potential — and risks — involved in the development and availability of artificial intelligence tools. “[A IA não] changed the world, but the world’s expectations for the future”, ponders Altman.
And, when you think about expectations for the future, you can already imagine when the AGI will actually be achieved. On social media there is no shortage of speculation about Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI, having pushed for Altman’s dismissal because he would have seen that IAG would already be closer than one imagines. The question is “what did Ilya see?”. In the interview with Lex Fridman, Sam Altman makes it clear:
Ilya did not see IAG. None of us saw IAG. We didn’t build IAG
Sam Altman
