> Apple has no by-laws committing itself to being an apple.
Does OpenAI have by-laws committing itself to being "open" (as in open source or at least their products freely and universally available)? I thought their goals were the complete opposite of that?
Unfortunately, in reality Facebook/Meta seems to be more open than "Open"AI.
This is spot on. Open was the wrong word to choose for their name, and in the technology space means nearly the opposite of the charter's intention. BeneficialAI would have been more "aligned" with their claimed mission. They have made their position quite clear - the creation of an AGI that is safe and benefits all humanity requires a closed process that limits who can have access to it. I understand their theoretical concerns, but the desire for a "benevolent dictator" goes back to at least Plato and always ends in tears.
> In reality, we can and should be outraged when corporations betray their own statements and supposed values.
There are only three groups of people who could be subject to betrayal here: employees, investors, and customers. Clearly they did not betray employees or investors, since they largely sided with Sam. As for customers, that's harder to gauge -- did people sign up for ChatGPT with the explicit expectation that the research would be "open"?
The founding charter said one thing, but the majority of the company and investors went in a different direction. That's not a betrayal, but a pivot.
I think there’s an additional group to consider- society at large.
To an extent the promise of the non- profit was that they would be safe, expert custodians of AI development driven not primarily by the profit motive, but also by safety and societal considerations. Has this larger group been ‘betrayed’? Perhaps
Also donors. They received a ton of donations when they were a pure non-profit from people that got no board seat, no equities, with the believe that they will stick to their mission.
> There are only three groups of people who could be subject to betrayal here
GP didn't speak of betraying people; he spoke of betraying their own statements. That just means doing what you said you wouldn't; it doesn't mean anyone was stabbed in the back.
It does seem that the hypocrisy was baked in from the beginning. In the tech world 'open' implied open source but OpenAI wanted to benefit from a marketing itself as something like Linux when internally it was something like Microsoft.
Corporations have no values whatsoever and their statements only mean anything when expressed in terms of a legally binding contract. All corporate value statements should be viewed as nothing more than the kind of self-serving statements that an amoral narcissitic sociopath would make to protect their own interests.
This line of argument is facile and destructive to conversation anyway.
It boils down to, "Pointing out corporate hypocrisy isn't valuable because corporations are liars," and (worse) it implies the other person is naive.
In reality, we can and should be outraged when corporations betray their own statements and supposed values.