OpenAI Moves Fast and Breaks Things

🏰 Europe to probe their bizarre conduct.

Hey Everyone,

So you want to be a Tech tycoon? OpenAI is not only going to face a mountain of lawsuits but anti-competitive probes.

But is this breaking things approach the right one in a sensitive era of AI? OpenAI is fighting legal battles over copyright infringement. The New York Times (NYT), Authors Guild, and others accuse OpenAI of illegally using their content.

Sam Altman might be seen as genius by some, but a fraudster who does some pretty shady things by others. OpenAI has said it would be "impossible" to build top-tier neural networks (LLMs) that meet today's needs without using people's copyrighted work.

So to make ChatGPT, OpenAI likely cut a lot of corners.

On January 9th, 2024 The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, said it’s embarking on a competition probe into virtual worlds and generative artificial intelligence. It’s not so funny Mr. Nadella.

“Virtual worlds and generative AI are rapidly developing,” Margrethe Vestager, the commission’s executive vice president in charge of competition policy, said in a news release. “It is fundamental that these new markets stay competitive, and that nothing stands in the way of businesses growing and providing the best and most innovative products to consumers.”

OpenAI has suggested its approach is the only way to build high-quality AI models. But what exactly has been there approach? They haven’t been open about how they built their models. They have been secretive and yet pretending that they herald the best for humanity? Yikes.

Silicon Valley can’t keep repeating the same patterns, and expect better results. "Move fast and break things" was a strategy that underpinned the exponential growth of the likes of Uber, Airbnb, and Facebook.