Is it important to be that self reliant? I wasn't in the workforce then, so I assume if you have an outsourced system with 99% reliability it would be an acceptable risk. Not sure if any AI system will reach that level, but for potential gains it could be worth it.
Former cofounder had a $60 million ARR payment platform on a big company. They saw the success and kicked them off the api and built the same product. Now it’s billions on there public filing income statement.
Not true at all. I interacted with Meena[1] while I was there, and the publication was almost three years before the release of ChatGPT. It was an unsettling experience, felt very science fiction.
The surprise was not that they existed: There were chatbots in Google way before ChatGPT. What surprised them was the demand, despite all the problems the chatbots have. The pig problem with LLMs was not that they could do nothing, but how to turn them into products that made good money. Even people in openAI were surprised about what happened.
In many ways, turning tech into products that are useful, good, and don't make life hell is a more interesting issue of our times than the core research itself. We probably want to avoid the valuing capturing platform problem, as otherwise we'll end up seeing governments using ham fisted tools to punish winners in ways that aren't helpful either
The uptake forced the bigger companies to act. With image diffusion models too - no corporate lawyer would let a big company release a product that allowed the customer to create any image...but when stable diffusion et al started to grow like they did...there was a specific price of not acting...and it was high enough to change boardroom decisions
Right. The problem was that people under appreciated ‘alignment’ even before the models were big. And as they get bigger and smarter it becomes more of an issue.
Well, I must say ChatGPT felt much more stable than Meena when I first tried it. But, as you said, it was a few years before ChatGPT was publicly announced :)
It was a surprise to OpenAI too. ChatGPT was essentially a demo app to showcase their API, it was not meant to be a mass consumer product. When you think about it, ChatGPT is a pretty awkward product name, but they had to stick with it.
Reduce the power of government if you want to reduce the power certain individuals have over society. Because government is such a single, extremely powerful lever it becomes a singular target of influence and corruption by the rich and influential. Why do you think so many of the rich and powerful move to DC or keep residences there?
The insistence of so many to take away power from Jeff Bezos, who won’t send armed goons to my house if I choose not to buy stuff from Amazon, and giving more power to the government that sent goons to Matt Taibbi’s house the same day he was giving Congressional testimony is an egregious case of missing the plot.
It would take one or two not especially complicated law taxing wealth and loans against equity. Congress could do this tomorrow but guess who controls congress. And cap political spending like every other sane democracy.
All you're doing is giving the power to someone else. Giving way more power to politicians like Donald Trump. The reality is, there will always be powerful people, with outsized control and dominion over others; it's baked into the fabric of reality. Thinking otherwise is a utopian fantasy.
For me this is the running I do. No phone accessible (still with me for safety). Just the repetitive sound of my feet and breathing, lets my mind wander and enjoy the isolation.
A little foil hat conspiracy i supposed, but the big companies saw nobodies become incredibly wealthy over the last decade, and this is the new companies protecting their position by limiting technology.
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