OpenAI Is Now Everything It Promised Not to Be: Corporate, Closed-Source, and For-Profit
hubie writes:
OpenAI is today unrecognizable, with multi-billion-dollar deals and corporate partnerships:
OpenAI is at the center of a chatbot arms race, with the public release of ChatGPT and a multi-billion-dollar Microsoft partnership spurring Google and Amazon to rush to implement AI in products. OpenAI has also partnered with Bain to bring machine learning to Coca-Cola's operations, with plans to expand to other corporate partners.
There's no question that OpenAI's generative AI is now big business. It wasn't always planned to be this way.
[...] While the firm has always looked toward a future where AGI exists, it was founded on commitments including not seeking profits and even freely sharing code it develops, which today are nowhere to be seen.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research organization by Altman, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, among other tech leaders. In its founding statement, the company declared its commitment to research "to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return." The blog stated that "since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact," and that all researchers would be encouraged to share "papers, blog posts, or code, and our patents (if any) will be shared with the world."
Now, eight years later, we are faced with a company that is neither transparent nor driven by positive human impact, but instead, as many critics including co-founder Musk have argued, is powered by speed and profit. And this company is unleashing technology that, while flawed, is still poised to increase some elements of workplace automation at the expense of human employees. Google, for example, has highlighted the efficiency gains from AI that autocompletes code, as it lays off thousands of workers.
[...] With all of this in mind, we should all carefully consider whether OpenAI deserves the trust it's asking for the public to give.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
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