I love how everyone is so desperate to make Gabe to be a terrible person.
We acting like people in the art community weren’t hyped up over AI until they started generating images. Before chatgpt, it was all about automating coding/it and other jobs that arent considered art. Back then it was all about how everyone could pursue their passions. The only people not excited were all the transportation employees and factory workers that had been told by the general public how excited they were to replace them
As a social scientist, pre Chat GPT NLP was like opening a whole new world of possibilities. We could finally at scale analyze one of the richest sources of behavioural data in an empirical statistically driven manner.
Now, even as I do research with NLP to continue these goals, I can’t bring myself to every defend these tools. If they disappeared tomorrow, we’d lose a tool but we’d prevent so much undue suffering
Was this article commissioned by Tim Sweeney?
Altman took the money and then OpenAI abandoned the non-profit structure to become a for-profit entity (2 years ago)
The writing was on the wall for years. I remember memes about Altman in machine learning forums/chatrooms circa 2020, and especially 2021.
Nothing’s changed. Anyone in the space who actually looked at what he was doing, knew. Yet the bulk of the public (and investors) lapped the Tech Bro stuff up.
Aaron Swartz said Altman was a sociopath years before AI was a gleam in anyone’s eye.
The technologies with the worst potential outcomes will always be pioneered by people with no ethical or moral hangups getting in the way.
Which unfortunately are the same techs that will be elevated by our present economic structure, precisely because those traits are what enable them to make (or grift) a shitload of money.
see:
Leaded Fuel and CFCs - the same fuckin guy!? goddamn hope there is a hell
Obligatory reminder that billionaires are not our friends. But also, donating to AI research in 2018 is quite a different matter than if he had done so in recent years. Most people in tech were somewhere between neutral and enthusiastic towards machine learning back then and few foresaw the monster it would become. Doubt he’s as enthusiastic nowadays, considering what it did to Valve’s hardware ambitions.
Obligatory reminder that billionaires are not our friends.
Why does this even come up?
Because a lot of people equate “some are less harmful than others” with “I fucking love this guy and think he’s a harmless saint!”
Wellllllll, I dunno about this take seeing as he’s still very enthusiastic about it as of less than a year ago, with some very… hype-style statements about it.
If you can mentally separate the technology from the capitalist orgy around trying to shoehorn LLMs into every possible thing, he’s not wrong.
The technology has promise, but the reality of what it can be useful for is complete overshadowed by the hype frenzy declaring the end of all knowledge workers and creatives.
LLMs are significantly better at translation than anything we’ve been able to design, for instance. But that’s not flashy, it doesn’t generate seed funding or lure investors so it’s largely not what people think of when they hear “AI”.
Nah, sorry, if Gabe looked at the LLM mess of the last 5+ years and is still pumping it as ‘ermagerd this is technology that rivals the importance of the internet, or computers themselves’ he is cooked on marketing hype.
It’s still crap.
Its most promising commercial application in paid models (coding), is still writing code slower than professional coders, when actually measured in studies.
The only goals it’s hit is makinh a few jerks more wealthy, move that wealth inequality needle more towards the billionaires, and set us up for the next global financial crisis that we’ll all be bailing them out on and suffering global decades long recessions through.
I reckon 2027 it’ll hit, that’s looking like when the money guys will finally be completely out of wiggle room and there will be no more cash for the cash fire.
I mean, I probably would have invested in AI prior to seeing LLMs in action, too, hoping I was funding the cool kind of AI, not this lame shit.
At that time it was still kind of a research project than a “it’s going to take over everything” hype and FUD machine.
His opinions on AI today seem more enthusiastic than I would be, but well clear of the delusional level of AI-boosters.
Well aim FPS bro.
