Sam is not OpenAI. He's not the one who worked on voice mode, and he's not the one who worked on FrontierMath (I know both groups of people). If you believe Sam has caused OpenAI to lie about these for years, you either have to believe (a) Sam does all the work and keeps the incriminating details hidden all the employees, or (b) Sam directs everyone to lie and they all just nod along without pushing back, whistleblowing, anonymously leaking to the media, or resigning. Even if you're evil (and we are not), this is a dumb strategy, because as soon as it leaks, it will blow up in your face and kill company morale. I can't imagine a team of lawyers, comms people, and researchers who worked on these projects all sitting around nodding that we should conspire to lie to everyone, stacking lie after lie after lie. Many key people who worked on voice mode and FrontierMath have since been hired away by competitors - they'd have every incentive to expose the conspiracy if it existed, and yet none has. This is just not a realistic model of company misbehavior, imo.
To me, it's not unreasonable to believe that when launching a voice AI product, the CEO of the company mentions the most famous movie about a voice AI product, and even briefly explores whether there is a marketing opportunity its star. I don't think it's evidence of a conspiracy to copy her voice and cover it up.
If it's any evidence in the opposing direction, I promise to immediately resign from OpenAI if it ever comes out we lied about Johansson voice copying or FrontierMath eval cheating. I feel very safe making this promise.
I really think you are missing the point and the frustration of why people are so hostile to OpenAI. Your defense is kinda irrelevant and very confusing. Why are you defending OpenAI so aggressively?
Sam Altman represents OpenAI whether you want him to or not. The market and public perception hinges on his often questionable actions. The CEO’s job is in large part as a salesman. Him posting “her” on Twitter to try and promote GPT-4o’s voice features is hard to believe that he didn’t know what he was doing and the market and Scarlett Johansson reacted accordingly. A competent person would not have made such an inflammatory statement after she had explicitly declined to permit OpenAI the use of her voice.
Your CEO is going on podcasts and going around saying that AGI is here and also AGI is not important. What blithering marketing is going on here?
My comments regard the hypotheses that OpenAI conspired to cover up stealing mathematicians’ private progress on Navier-Stokes, stealing Johansson’s voice, and cheating on FrontierMath.
If you disapprove of someone’s tweets or podcasts, that's a different question and I have nothing to say there.
Edit: Apologies for any defensiveness or aggression that came across. I think for me it can be a bummer to see us acting honestly internally, share what happened externally, and still be accused of lying a bunch of times in a row (by different people). But I get it - no one knows the truth, no one is perfectly transparent or free of bias, and it's always good to be skeptical of companies. I'll stop posting in this thread.
If a law is going to treat 5 year olds differently from 50 year olds then a line has to be drawn somewhere. 18 is arbitrary, but no more arbitrary than any other age you could pick.
The whole purpose of law is to be a uniform system of justice. At best it could offer guidelines for how to evaluate people: perhaps level of education attained, demonstrated ability to take responsibility for themselves, etc. But the evaluation under those guidelines would
still have to be made by humans.
There is precedent for such a system, e.g. minors can petition to be emancipated which allows them to be treated in many regards like an adult.
> perhaps level of education attained, demonstrated ability to take responsibility for themselves, etc.
Yes, that is what I meant. Choosing some arbitrary magic number like 18 and declaring that anyone under that age is too dumb or too irresponsible to decide is about as stupid as declaring that anyone over 65 is incapable of decision making because they might have Alzheimer's.
Ok, but this doesn’t scale well. It takes a nontrivial amount of time to evaluate each person, and it would have to be done repeatedly as they age. You would need an entire government bureaucracy devoted to it. Then people will want an appeals process for when decisions don’t go their way—both parents and children.
My theoretical self 15 years ago absolutely would have believed the increased authoritarian overreach part (in US/CA/European business and political context). I would not have believed the "multiple ostensibly competing Chinese research labs are giving this away free to run on your own Linux computer, and it's very close to state of the art in capability competing with US-based paid SaaS".
Today marks 25 years minus one day since the US really kicked the destruction of privacy into high gear. Soon after, framing this revocation of rights using the name PATRIOT.
> I've heard some people say the model's solution is quite different from theirs (but I have no clue how to personally assess the spiritual truth of this, so please give it zero weight)
Why would you include a statement that you want us to give zero weight to, unless you don’t actually want us to give it zero weight?
I hardly think it’s fair to label an objection so old that Turing included it (and discussed it at length) in the list of objections to thinking machines in 1950 “moving the goalposts.”
> These arguments take the form, “I grant you that you can make machines do all the things you have mentioned but you will never be able to make one to do X”. Numerous features X are suggested in this connexion. I offer a selection:
> Be kind, resourceful, beautiful, friendly (p. 448), have initiative, have a sense of humour, tell right from wrong, make mistakes (p. 448), fall in love, enjoy strawberries and cream (p. 448), make some one fall in love with it, learn from experience (pp. 456 f.), use words properly, be the subject of its own thought (p. 449), have as much diversity of behaviour as a man, do something really new (p. 450). (Some of these disabilities are given special consideration as indicated by the page numbers.)
This is a weird conversation. Python was a strange choice back then, but is now probably the most popular programming language in existence. If anything the choice of Python (and C++) was remarkable foresight / luck.
If Eve were green-fielded today, there is a 0% chance they would choose Python anywhere in the service layer for an online game. Zero chance.
Python is a fantastic "glue" programming language. A duct-tape language. It's awesome for little scripts, or for gluing together some AI scripts, where you're basically atomically gluing a series of calls to giant native C/C++ libraries like pytorch that are then doing a series of calls to giant native C/C++ libraries like CUDA. Where the overhead of python is negligible compared to some heavy lifting being done by a better language/system.
The simple fact that we're talking about a service that was stuck on Python 2 two decades after it was replaced, half a decade after it was fully deprecated, reveals this to be 100% just debt. The fact that they talk about millions of lines of Python code, and that Python 3 represents a big speedup for their operations, again betrays it to be nothing but debt. They have Python code in the critical flow, not just as a light glue over intensive code, and they have almost certainly spent untold dollars on extra hardware, delivering a worse experience for their users, because they had a "python enthusiast" in a critical position decades ago.
The mandatory policy was part of the codebase that the agent was working on. The agent didn’t feel like figuring out how to make the new feature it was working on respect that policy, so it just changed the policy.
People I know personally were strongly ostracized after leaving Jehovah's Witnesses (in the US) and the Catholic church (in Latin America). Cut out of their existing social circles, immediate family members refusing to attend their wedding over it, etc.
JWs do i as a matter of policy, but I would not call them mainstream.
Not my experience of the Catholic Church at all, having left it myself (and getting married in a registry office etc.), and having friends who have done so in more than one country. Not one of us as had any friend or relative hold it against us.
It might be a feature of a particular region or culture, or reflective of controlling family, but not of the Catholic Church in general.
My ex-Catholic's friend's mother refused to speak to him until his first child was born, at which point the draw of a grandchild overcame her aversion I guess. They've (mostly) reconciled now.
JW was the first one I thought of by that definition.
I was raised Southern Baptist. When I stopped going, the church contacted me a couple of times to say they missed us and asked if everything was OK, and to say they'd love to have us back if we wanted to come back sometime. My parents weren't thrilled but that's less religion, more family dynamics: it was much the same when they found out I didn't support their preferred political party anymore. That was about it, though. The church didn't lean on us in any way, or tell people to stop talking to us, or use any other means to cajole or punish us.
My thinking on cults is very similar to all this, plus another distinguisher. A cult typically requires you to join before you get all the information about what you're signing up for. I've never been a Muslim, but know that if you walk into a mosque, someone will cheerfully greet you and load you up with a Koran and all kinds of other reading material. Same with any mainstream Protestant church, or the Catholic church, or Hindu, or Buddhist, etc. In fact, many/most churches won't let you join until you've shown that you understand that church's beliefs. Compare and contrast with, say, Scientology, which is notoriously different.
>The church didn't lean on us in any way, or tell people to stop talking to us, or use any other means to cajole or punish us
Southern Baptists officially teach that eternal damnation is a literal, conscious, and everlasting punishment in Hell for anyone who dies without personal faith and salvation in Jesus Christ. If the threat of eternal torment is not coercive control, I'm not sure what is.
I also disagree that Catholic church happily gives you all the information upfront. I didn't grow up Catholic but my parents did, and at least back then Catholic teachings (they both went to Catholic school) very heavily discouraged individuals from reading the Bible. My parents also grew up going to mass in Latin, a language they don't understand. Things are different nowadays.
Southern Baptists don't specifically believe you have to be a Southern Baptist to be saved though, do they? And they believe in salvation by grace alone. Plus, the whole "once saved, always saved" thing. It's hard to argue it is coercion if they say you can be saved independent of being a Southern Baptist or obeying them, because they don't seem to be holding a whole lot of power then.
I was raised in an SBC church, though I've long since come to my senses. I have plenty of issues with such places, but your average Baptist church -- even ones still proudly tied to the SBC -- does not meet any of the criteria usually offered for cult status.
astura says ..."Catholic teachings (they both went to Catholic school) very heavily discouraged individuals from reading the Bible. My parents also grew up going to mass in Latin, a language they don't understand. Things are different nowadays.
" Almost completely wrong (ask your parents, astura).
It is true that the Catholic Church did not emphasize the Old Testament (OT). They instead emphasized the New Testament (NT) (both NT and OT are parts of the Bible). We were educated about the Protestant Reformation and the differences in faiths. I think the problem is that the Catholic Church has generated so much structure and associated doctrine that they barely have time for OT! In any case, much of this fell into one or more of my Church History classes, hardly my favorite subject.
FWIW I had a completely Catholic education from grade school thru university and nobody ever refrained from referencing the Bible. I've long since left the faith but I kept my sense of humor. Here's my favorite OT joke:
Q: Who's the strongest man man in the Bible (hint: it isn't Samson)?
A: Abraham. He tied his ass to a tree and walked up a mountain!
As for the Latin mass, yes it was there, and if you wanted to know what was said then you could always find out - nobody was hiding anything. I was an "altar boy" (assisted the priest in the rituals) so I learned the Latin mass and, since I went to Catholic schools, I later studied Latin. Latin is a useful language to know as an English speaker and it helps in understanding the so-called "romance languages" (it even aids in understanding English - many word roots are from Latin).
FWIW the traditional Latin mass is still celebrated! Some have stuck to the old Latin rites b/c of their love of the old rituals, the music is better in Latin (got to agree on this one!), etc.
> As for the Latin mass, yes it was there, and if you wanted to know what was said then you could always find out
Latin prayer books usually have the translation side by side. Attendants of the traditional Mass find value in it - it's truly Catholic since you take part into it like anybody else worldwide, praying the same prayers, regardless of your native language, that have been prayed over the last ~5 centuries, some of which are 10, 15 or almost 20 centuries old.
<conspiracy_theory> The Vatican Council II's original purpose wasn't in fact to abolish the traditional Mass, but to help with increasingly difficult evangelization. What happened was instead largely due to the worldwide infiltration of the Church by the freemasons. </conspiracy_theory>
<reality_check>
Pope John Paul I publicly declared upon being elected, that he'd expose and get rid of them - freemasons weren't in fact allowed as members the Church - priests, bishops, cardinals - and have never been, since they are obviously against the Church, but he knew they were there still.
On the evening before he died, the Pope received Pecorelli, a journalist that was a member of the masonic P2 lodge, who famously gave him a list of Catholic bishops and cardinals that were members of the freemasonry.
The Pope died a few hours after reading his list, his death never really investigated. The list disappeared; Pecorelli died a few months later in a car accident.
The P2 lodge was involved in other scandals, and as a consequence, some of its then members' names were exposed, and are now public - including some of the most powerful Italian politicians, entrepreneurs etc. of the time; now, after four decades, most of them are dead anyway - everything else is history.
Freemasonry in Italy came well before they entered the Vatican though - it's not even too far fetched to think that Italy itself was created by them - Garibaldi was the founder of the main Italian FM branch, of which he became the Grand Master (with the "33th degree") - the Grande Oriente d'Italia. Mazzini and other famous "fathers of the country" were also freemasons as well.
Ironically, Freemasonry - probably the most powerful, concealed, deceiving cult in the world - has not even a minor mention in this list. <sad />
</reality_check>
You can read about all of this on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
>Almost completely wrong (ask your parents, astura)
Dude, My parents are in their 70s and haven't been practicing Catholics in 50+ years, they don't know the current teachings. It's a fact that at the time they went to Catholic school they very heavily discouraged individuals from reading the Bible. That's a fact.
"Southern Baptists officially teach that eternal damnation is a literal, conscious, and everlasting punishment in Hell for anyone who dies without personal faith and salvation in Jesus Christ. If the threat of eternal torment is not coercive control, I'm not sure what is."
You have to be careful with blanket statements like this. Southern Baptist churches are entirely self-run enterprises with no top-down doctrinal control from anyone else. Consequently, there are congregations who would qualify as high-control, culty organizations and there are congregations who welcome LGBTQ folks and such (although it's increasingly true that welcoming / progressive congregations are self-sorting into their own categories/groupings such as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship).
I don't know of any SB churches that preach specifically that THEIR church is the One True Church, which is usually what that kind of control requires.
Certainly many folks in the SBC church of my youth moved from church to church, or even to other denominations, and nobody thought that was soul-risking behavior. A central tenet of MOST Baptist churches is the primacy of the adherent's personal relationship to the almighty, which is unknowable to others by default, so this tracks.
Furthermore, the SBC believes that you have to have a personal relationship with God, but doesn't obligate you to join any church. If you go there and "get saved", then never return, they'll still be delighted that they helped to get you into Heaven (in their beliefs). Their main goal is to get you on the right foot religiously, not to get you to join their church.
Its more accessible nowadays, as everything is on the web for free, but the Catholic Church has a long history of publishing its doctrines. I agree the Latin mass was an impediment, but everything else was very open and public.
> If the threat of eternal torment is not coercive control, I'm not sure what is.
If you cease to believe in it why would it bother you? If they do not try to cut you off etc. after you leave its very different from cults that order you family to cease contact.
I think a difference would be a Cult focuses on making the cult congregation member feel like their real family is the Cult, which could or could not be related to your biological family.
Leaving whatever you define as your family is always difficult.
The rhetoric from the DNC and Republicans can get pretty out there but I don't think anyone thinks of DNC or Republican party members as their actual family ( I hope )
Not really. Both mainstream political parties don't like each other, but by and large they don't attack someone for leaving the party (from what I've seen).
Perhaps if you are saying attacks of politicians switching parties, which I could see. But I don't think I've ever heard of republicans talking about exrepublicans or democrats talking about exdemocrats. I personally have switched from voting republican to voting democrat. It's not something my family really cares about and I still have good relations with them even though a number of them are pretty MAGA.
Cults will actually have lessons and classes about the evils of ex members. Someone brought up JWs and that's a pretty good example of what I'm thinking of.
I think you’re correct that mainstream leaders of the parties try not to talk about each other in that way and mostly succeed. But I absolutely do know family members and friends treat it with that level of zeal.
I think that's true of just darn near everything. People are tribal and tend to get uncomfortable when people around them change:
* Their political parties
* Their religions
* Their diets (meat => vegan, or vice versa)
* Their music
* Their computer OS
None of those compare to cult shunning, which is more systematic and absolute. I mentioned in another comment that my parents were sad when I stopped going to church. That's got nothing on having one's entire family and support groups ceasing to publicly acknowledge their existence.
It always apologizes when caught, of course.
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