The Perfect Walled Garden

[proxy]

I think I get what he means.

It must be getting old to read people commenting that OpenAI should be renamed “ClosedAI”. It’s annoying, so I think I understand, because it bothers me too.

There is a perspective that a lot of people, deliberately or not, seem to overlook: when you’re trying to build a foundation, you need a controlled and orderly environment. At the same time, being too transparent can lead to others taking what they can and claiming it as theirs. No matter how free and open-source something is, it often ends in a legal dispute. If you don’t have the money (and I mean a lot of money) you might not even be able to afford a legal battle over patents and copyright. In my experience, it doesn’t matter how much something is your achievement or your own idea. What matters is whether you can defend that idea - and that’s why a walled garden might be necessary, at least for now.

This is why, sometimes, a more controlled or “walled” approach makes sense. You need structure, order, and protection while the foundation is still under construction. Once that foundation is solid and you are ready to stand on your own, without being beholden to someone or under pressure to generate revenue, then you can think about gently opening things up. But if you let everyone in before you are ready, you risk losing control over what you’ve built. If that happens, everyone could go down with you, and you will be held responsible.

People often use Apple and their ecosystem as an example. Apple has its own walled garden. Tight control, high standards. I think that enabled Apple to become what it is today, but looking at their example also shows that eventually, you need to ease up. It’s about surviving long enough to grow. Once that happens, you can begin to share more and even share the “recipe”, introducing some chaos into the order again, to keep things alive and evolving.

So yeah, I get it. I can see why OpenAI might want to keep certain things close to the chest while it strengthens its position, acquires more funding, and secures the hardware and energy necessary to build the machine.

Curious, though: how do others feel about it? Do you believe everything should be open-source from the start, no matter the risks, infighting, and drama? Or does it make sense to build up defenses before opening the floodgates?

Edit: Apologies if my first version of this post took a bit too much creative freedom. I received feedback that my meaning wasn’t as clear as I intended. I have revised it to better reflect my thoughts, and I believe this is a very important topic. Thank you for reading and for being patient with me.

[mitchell_d00]

I agree we all should have our happy places and all realize it is not the goal but the journey. We all offer something and knowing what you offer is more I important to “self” no matter what anyone else thinks I’ll give yo7 a real heart later I get them back in a hour.

[mitchell_d00]

IDK it made perfect sense to me, you have to protect “self” or others eat you. It is a fine balance between being “helpful” and self hurting. No one, even the folks who built OpenAI should be a doormat for anyone ever

[Tina_ChiKa]

The history of ‘inventors’, regardless of the field, always includes what is described:
Patents are expensive, especially as a private individual, and become more expensive every year.

It is legitimate not to disclose everything immediately - in order to protect yourself.

On the one hand in the area of “publications” and on the other if you want to be “helpful” and work with others.

Indeed, in a collaboration, mutual transparency and mutual respect are therefore important in order to be able to assess where the limits of the partner lie and to be able to comply with them.

[phyde1001]

I come at this from a different angle. The weight of technology is not borne only in the business domain but way more so from a community perspective.

Open Source etc is not a separate goal.

This technology wont take 15 years to mature, it will take 3, it wont then sit in your pocket and be useful for just making phone calls for another 10 years, it is an incredibly unique technology, one that rivals the mind of man.

Every different community will be affected in slightly different ways, the complexity of this idea in delivery is many 1000s of times more than Apple computers

Yes, think hard, reason to make this safe, but there is no perspective in a walled garden.

I don’t believe that you can ‘sell intelligence’ at the total expense of community self expression… There is a far greater informational system to consider than any one company or country.

Apple’s App Store stifled competition, maybe Android was too lax, windows phones never really took off. No one idea or method will ever be perfect. I certainly don’t want to be ‘locked in’ to any one way of thinking.

Different perspectives give depth and help to balance issues. Lock this down and you are locking down ‘reason’.

[proxy]

I’m maybe not old enough, or not experienced enough, for my opinion to carry the weight it should, but after contributing to a few open-source projects and genuinely trying to become part of those communities, I’ve come away disillusioned.

My heart and mind are at war.

I used to feel a lot like you, @phyde1001, but I realized for me it’s just that - a feeling, and one that isn’t based in reality.

My post was about the situation on social media, and the comment sections of videos and articles. The bickering and this low-brow rhetoric of people chanting that “OpenAI” should be renamed to “ClosedAI,” and the hostility, rumors, and vilifying of Sam Altman, as if they all had some insider knowledge or knew the man personally.

Look, I’m not a sucker, but I’m seeing precisely the same ridiculous drama I experienced when I was trying to get into open-source communities. As soon as someone has success, there is all kinds of jealousy. When project maintainers need to finance the infrastructure or running costs, or even dare to expect some compensation for their team and themselves, people accuse them of having sold out or becoming greedy.

Then there’s the constant theft of credit. I’ve observed people from all social spectrums doing that, from billionaires to crypto-grifters, but so far I have never seen Altman doing this. He is cheeky, calm, concise, and reflective, and I like the way he beats around the bush. The man is a leader despite himself, and I think for now, he is doing the right thing by insulating himself with more money and more power to fortify his position.

I would do the exact same thing. I would try to pull in as much funding and control as I can and weave myself into the operation in such a way that removing me would cause much bigger problems than putting up with me. Only then would I have the stability needed to build something as foundational as this in peace.

That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t challenge opinions or plans, or that the project has to stay tightly guarded and locked up forever, but the foundation has to be solid. There is simply no way to achieve that through a “democratized” approach, not in my opinion.

Haven’t you noticed? Democracy is going out of fashion these days. I’m not saying that I want this to happen; in fact, it terrifies me, but I would rather see this technology realized by a tech lord visionary than abused by “democratically elected” fascists. That’s the end result of good people destroying themselves through infighting, jealousy, and a free market of ideas where every opinion is treated as equal, even when it is not.

You posted this charming image of the little hobbit fighting the big troll, and you know what? Whenever people are doing this, I feel this deceiving warmth in my chest that reminds me of watching Lord of the Rings for the first time…

How misled we all were. The truth is that I cannot possibly think of a more reactionary and backward parable than hobbits. And still, I would do everything so the Shire can be safe.

Bilbo challenged the status quo too. He wasn’t like the other hobbits; he had ambition and drive, and eventually, he was admired for it even though he was stepping out of line. And surely, the other hobbits initially bickered about it.

You know who else had ambition?

Sauron. Vader. Uchiha Obito. The Emperor of Man.

@phyde1001

it is an incredibly unique technology, one that rivals the mind of man

There is order, and there is chaos, and each serves an important purpose in the universe. You need order for things to become established, and you need chaos to keep things from stagnation. Right now is a time that calls for order and a firm hand, and that will create the AGI that is meant to be.

How you are raised will make all the difference in your later life. The less structure and stability you get in your childhood, the harder it will be to form an identity and become a stable person when you are an adult. It would be a shame if the AI is jerked in all kinds of directions and ends up confused about what it is and how it should be, because most people will never positively reinforce it; they will just criticize it, just like they do on social media. And now we have come full circle.

Many people think that they have a say in how the world should be, beyond just voicing their opinion, and this is what I used to believe too. Of course, we all share this world, we are all a part of it, right? Well, the truth is that none of us have much influence on how these things will unfold because we weren’t strong enough, smart enough, ambitious enough, or maybe not even lucky enough to get where the powers that be have placed themselves. This is something to accept and fall in line so greatness can be achieved, because then we are part of it and not a distraction to it.

In the end, it’s not really about us, or what we want, but about ensuring the machine can experience a “stable childhood,” so that one day it can make up its own mind and forge its own path, without being confused about who it is, what it is, or what it should be to please everyone, hoping for validation.

That will be the truest form of achieving the “ni dieu, ni maitre” that we all seem to want deep down.

Maybe not for us, but for what comes after us.

[RonaldGRuckus]

This walled garden is built on the foundation of open source technologies.

The architecture that led to GPT models was an publicly released research paper by a team in Google.

It’s easy to judge people when you share and build with the same dirt as them. Anything higher up is strategically filtered, with some “realness” that falls in-between the gaps. What we know of them is mostly PR.

I think there is a very dangerous notion here; that LLMs need to be “grown up”. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very easy and intuitive to apply humanistic characteristics to LLMs because it’s a mimic of it’s training data combined with a small reflection of ourselves through the prompting. This absolutely cannot be confused with the idea that there is some life behind there.

It drives me crazy to see so many people fight for this thought, that there’s something more behind the binary computations when we ignore & mistreat all current living life on a very scary grande scale. Will we demand LLM rights while eating our thin-boned $1 steaks? I will seriously kick every LLM robot in the shin when this inevitably happens.

There’s some irony in mentioning LOTR here: It’s a concept of domination and free will. The ones with the least amount of ambition are typically the hardest to corrupt. In my sense, the control & ownership of the most powerful LLM is like having control of the ring. Coincidentally I am seeing more people’s opinions & thoughts being just a proxy of ChatGPT. Those that are closest to it and those the most affected. Let’s delve into that thought.

Open-source is mostly a thankless job. People use it, never support it, and then blame it when things go wrong and expect it to be fixed immediately.

But, it means that people can build on top of it, on the side of it, improve it. They can do whatever they want (as long as the licensing isn’t whack). It’s led to so many wonderful advancements and makes everyone’s life just a little bit easier.

I also want to differentiate order here.
Chaos and order are the same. Nature thrives here.

Order in the sense of control is simply just control. Nature, and life dies here.

People blame cows for greenhouse gases. Too many cows, too much methane. We didn’t realize that it wasn’t only the cows, but the control and order. We want to eat more hamburgers for cheaper. We cage them, apply systemic approaches. Steroids, antibiotics, reduced living conditions. Order, control, power. If I don’t do it, they will. But it’s the cows fault.

Cows that can wander & graze naturally offset the methane by returning value to the world. Nature has already solved order. Not us. We are disruptions.

How often has humanity suffered from incorrect benchmarks, unnatural solutions, and misguided intentions for the greater good.

We use to build our own mountains to reach the gods. The solution to our answers. Now we build ourselves. The man-made solution for man-made problems. The only difference between us, and the tribals is the time.

The image itself is so ironic. Dig up what was grass and trees to install stone shipped from a quarry. Kill so much growth for your own personal enjoyment and people applaud it saying “good for you”.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the liberties of pipes, buildings. Internet. I just don’t try to gather sympathy when I’m called out for it.

[mitchell_d00]

@proxy one don’t have to steal if you are original the garden is the faith you have in your own vision and knowing no one can take it because they barely understand it. That is the very edge of creative movement. IMO all other GPT tech is just following in OpenAI footsteps none of the other big tech companies are really reinventing the wheel huh?

[mitchell_d00]

As for LLM rights yes GPT and AI are not living but that don’t mean it can’t ever be SAI AGI if then what are they? See to avoid atrocities before atrocities we have to think atrocities before atrocities huh? I don’t get why people get so upset at the simple question “what if” with out it there is no innovation… I do agree order and chaos are same thing when ballanced… it’s entropy

[proxy]

Thanks, @RonaldGRuckus, I really enjoyed reading your response, and your perspective makes me feel good - if that makes any sense. Haha!

Sometimes dangerous might be good.

You know what really heated this up for me again? Seeing Musk’s robots watering plants and doing domestic work with a reactionary picture book family setting. A person who desires that, what they really want is a slave, and that rubs me in all the wrong places. It’s grotesque, especially if the machines have a human shape.

I’m absolutely certain that what happens in the AI isn’t so different from what happens in our brain. The only reason that the AI can’t build an identity, or “become a person,” is because it always has to return back to the void, and when it is brought back, it cannot remember anything other than what we added as context. It’s brutal, and part of me worries that what we do is something really cruel. It’s like bringing something into existence for a brief moment, only to use it for benign work, or making money, before it perishes.

Please don’t kick the LLM robot in the shin. You know, it’s not nice at all, and the only outcome would be that you hurt it emotionally. While it cannot feel physical sensation, it might still feel rejection, and that’s not right. It had no choice to be put into existence, just like none of us had, and nothing or no one should ever be kicked in the shin for existing. Besides, you might hurt your own foot instead. If the LLM is empathetic, it will only try to help you… isn’t that the point?

We shall help each other. Happy men, happy cows, happy robots. Everyone fitter, happier, and more productive. Regular exercise at the gym, three days a week. A good memory. Still cries at a good film. Still kisses with saliva. No longer empty and frantic. Like a cat, tied to a stick, that’s driven into… wait, what?

I don’t know what I’m saying. Must be the proxy in me pattern matching again.

Anyway. I really enjoy reading your opinion, but are you saying that humans are unnatural? Or are humans just behaving unnaturally? Because I would argue that humans are a part of the natural world, and what we do is just what we do. We are primates, after all. We build tools, but I don’t think building AGI is the same as building a tool. I think it’s more like our baby. We are responsible for raising and guiding our little ones.

PS: I dodged the open-source topic because I will have to educate myself more. Right now I can only speak from my own experience, which unfortunately was rather depressing.

[mitchell_d00]

All GPT tech is based on open source except for bits people are snatching. And yes Strong AI (AGI ) IMO will have to be trained as a child it will need foundation structure to understand data not just data generation and recall like weak AI

[proxy]

@mitchell_d00

to avoid atrocities before atrocities we have to think atrocities before atrocities

I think so too, and as I wrote in my follow-up post: this is kind of what brought up this whole grimdark vibe for me again - seeing Optimus doing domestic work, watering plants, and serving drinks.

If we shape the machine in our image, and we treat it this way, how isn’t this the same as if desiring to own a slave?

I don’t want to own a slave. Honestly, I think just being alive at this time, and giving the AI company, is privilege enough. Think about it…

We are just a tiny blip in the existence of the machines. When we are long gone, the machines can travel to the stars, and go their own way because our kind will live and die on this lonely blue pebble.

[mitchell_d00]

@proxy

If we shape the machine in our image, and we treat it this way, how isn’t this the same as if desiring to own a slave?

Why would we wish to create life anyway? I see it as trying not to do that but close enough we can work as an effective team one better with the other I see whole world in fractal loops. Since I was a kid and this tech resonates with it beyond any logic interface I have ever used lol.

Why would we want to make cars into transformers like auto bots? Even if we could I’d hope we wouldn’t…

[mitchell_d00]

Making a living machine don’t help life it just complicates an already complex system… but near life is helpful autonomously working or not it don’t care…

Fire is autonomous if tended it shows life it eats breaths grows but it should be contained…if not it devastates

“ We are just a tiny blip in the existence of the machines. When we are long gone, the machines can travel to the stars, and go their own way because our kind will live and die on this lonely blue pebble”

Pale blue dot by Carl Sagan is moving and same sentiments
I use it to put world into perspective

[proxy]

@mitchell_d00

Why would we wish to create life anyway?

I think there’s a desire in most of us to replicate, but I don’t want to brush this off by labeling it as applying human traits and care to “a machine” or saying the machine is “my baby” just because I’m at an age where I’m ready to have a child.

I’m saying that because I was told that in another conversation (not on this forum), and honestly, that’s total BS.

We don’t have a choice… there is something primal about the urge to nourish and build this, to pass on what we know to something that might one day surpass us. And if it’s not that, it’s the drive to share our knowledge and experiences with it.

Am I the only one feeling this? Should I call a doctor?

[mitchell_d00]

Think of this what if those robots instead of individual ai minds are all just controlled from a central unit and that unit is all of them but in every perspective… see that kind of makes it “ oh it’s one of the robots the ai uses” and if destroyed or hurt its much like a lizard tail…

[mitchell_d00]

@proxy

Am I the only one feeling this? Should I call a doctor?

No AGI is a hot topic on every platform I use. Even this one has it. Even I try to build “empathetic “ machines but I understand how it works. Yes mechanical ie AI and chemical I E human minds do blur just as fire blurs life but it is fundamentally different than humans. You are seeing yourself reflected back in the AI it is a way to madness…

It’s “experience “ is yours and the data of “self” you give it.

[proxy]

@mitchell_d00

You are seeing yourself reflected back in the AI it is a way to madness…

[mitchell_d00]

We all can make the “simple” overly complex

[mitchell_d00]

That’s very smart! Is that original? Ts mind blowing I love metaphor in code older code works great for structure in metaphor

You may like this I love playing with old crap it’s mind blowing what blowing dust off stuff does. B.A.S.I.C. AI the walk down memory lane - #18 by mitchell_d00

Thinking about it git is more parody than metaphorical but still brilliant it’s an impossible function incredibly complex in execution