"OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it “Open” AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.
Not what I intended at all." - Elon
You can think what you want of Elon, but he is in the right here.
It originally meant "based on your own beliefs," usually in the context of sticking to your guns despite unpopularity. Which is/was the cool thing to express on 4chan.
"Based" is a catchphrase of the extremely online right. It basically means "cool" but with a subtext of "is annoying to libs/normies who just don't get it."
Words become political when you start injecting politics in them. It originally meant "cool" and had no political connotations to it. It originated on 4chan. And just because some group happens to use a word more frequently doesn't suddenly turn you into a NAZI if you happen to like using the same word.
I’m not sure why people are still talking about it as some insular 4chan slang. Like much of 4chan culture, it’s spread to most of the rest of the internet by now. Hell I’ve seen “based” comments on HN.
I shun most of the internet these days. HN and (German) reddit are the only "socials" I use. I have no clue what is happening on the wider Anglo speaking internet, especially Twitter and such is completely alien to me.
The thing about language is that it isn't static, it changes over time. Sometimes a previously dominant usage will become eclipsed by a new one that emerges.
There's nuance to the etymology of any word of course. In fact I sometimes see the extremely online left try to (ironically?) appropriate "based." But I think in the context we can all figure out which connotation Elon was using.
Yes I get that. My argument is, when some group you don't like starts adopting a word, your reaction should not be to politicize the word and shun it and pretend they stole it. Just keep using the word as you intend it and who cares about what some other dumbfucks think.
Because the primary purpose of language is communication and if you aren't accomplishing that then you have some other reason for using it. Slang changes all the time -- no one says 'true dat' anymore.
Lil B
(based ≈ doing your own thing (in a good way)
not swayed by critics)
↙ ↘
Gen Z 4chan
(based ≈ cool) ("based and redpilled"
≈"unswayed by pop rhetoric"
and "sees the world beyond the 'illusion'", resp.)
> "Based" is a catchphrase of the extremely online right. It basically means "cool" but with a subtext of "is annoying to libs/normies who just don't get it."
It is also a catchphrase of the extremely online left with exactly the same in-group vs. out-group implication (and, amusingly—because of the different meanings of “liberal” and “lib” favored by the two sides—usually identical meaning with regard to “libs/normies”.)
Yeah I had no clue what his deal was, but I decided to search his tweets for "openAI" and it became clear pretty quickly. Interestingly, for the same reason as the article.
He is definitely right there. At this point, I consider OpenAI partially acquired by Microsoft, since it is almost majority controlled by them. It is essentially a Microsoft AI division.
It is similar to what Microsoft did with Facebook in the early days of slowing acquiring a stake in the company. But this is an aggressive version of that with OpenAI. What you have now is the exact opposite of their original goals in: [0]
Before:
> Our goal is 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. [0]
After:
> Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence—AI systems that are generally smarter than humans—benefits all of humanity. [1]
The real 'Open AI' is Stability AI, since they are more willing to release their work and AI models rather than OpenAI was supposed to do.
I don't understand. He's listed as one of the founders, and I always assumed he had some say. If that's really how he thinks, why wouldn't he have done something?
Do we have any reason to believe this isn't just more empty grifting from him to optically distance himself from a unethical company he profits from?
>In 2018, Musk resigned his board seat, citing "a potential future conflict [of interest]" with his role as CEO of Tesla due to Tesla's AI development for self-driving cars, but remained a donor
I don't think he counts as an investor, and I'd imagine he has stopped donating.
The irony here is that Musk resigned in order to pursue his own closed-source for profit AI businesses and is now complaining about OpenAI being closed-source and for profit AI.
If people are feeling conflicted about who the asshole is in this situation, don't be, they are all morally bankrupt assholes who all already have many lifetimes of unimaginable wealth yet must take ever more. These are not people who should have any power in our world.
And resigning because he was working on a competitor was completely the right thing to do. It would have been a conflict of interest. How often does that type of integrity even happen nowadays?
The whole "ELON MUSK BAD NOW" change to the zeitgeist is alarming to me. He was the darling of the left for years because of Tesla and SpaceX, but now he's completely persona non grata for...reasons?
Might it also have to do with his positions on almost everything conflicting with most people's? A lot of people didn't realize what a narcissistic manchild he was until recently.
We'd have to believe that he means what he said about starting the company. Maybe he meant it, maybe it was just corporate philanthropy BS. Which do you think is really the case?
He is, but it is weird given the history he has. He was kicked out of Paypal because he wanted to use the MS tech stack instead of LAMP at the time. Now some decades later here he is.
You've got the story wrong. He wasn't kicked out because of the stack debate, but because he sold PP to eBay (making enough money in the process to fund Tesla and SpaceX).
Yes, he's technically correct. But it's pretty obvious he's really just jealous. Inferring that from his past behavior is not rocket science, as they say.
Well, he's only right in the observation that OpenAI is no longer what it originally claimed it would be (OTOH with a couple of the founders being venture capitalists, one has to wonder how sincere that intention ever was).
It seems a bit ironic that "evil" Google openly published the paper ("Attention is all you need") that desribes the "Transformer" architecture that now anyone such as OpenAI with the money and inclination can use to build their own ChatGPT. Turns out it's about money (10,000 GPUs + tons of data to train this thing) not any secret sauce.
And now Musk's concern has changed from AI being in too few hands to the fact that it's "woke" so he wants to create another AI company to create the racist/threatening non-woke AI that he thinks the world needs. Or, at least the one that he needs, to keep himself at the center of attention.
Isn't that the point though? Tesla in not called OpenSelfDriving because it takes serious cash at this time in history to fund development of that tech. The fact that OpenAI happens to have a name that suggests otherwise doesn't change that fact. And Elon knows that. Therefore, he's just playing the media game right now and trying to detract from their success. Either that or he's just jealous (more likely IMHO) because he can't go along for the ride or claim much real involvement. I say thank God for that. We dodged a collective bullet with that stroke of luck.
On a philosophical level, I agree. But I also recognize that life doesn't always line up nicely with philosophy. In any case, it seems to me that most of the work that led to ChatGPT was done in the open. How ChatGPT works is not really a great mystery.
That is marketing spin, his offer was freely licencing their patents in exchange for free usage from other big automakers which he knew would never happen.
Not what I intended at all." - Elon
You can think what you want of Elon, but he is in the right here.