OpenAI isn't open AI
This post is extra
OpenAI's name has confused many folks. OpenAI is open, right? If we're for open AI, why aren't we supporting OpenAI? Turns out OpenAI isn't very open.
OpenAI's founding goal was to develop AI for the public. In their own words:
"we believe AI should be [...] as broadly and evenly distributed as possible"
"researchers will be strongly encouraged to publish their work [...] and our patents will be shared with the world"
And they did develop it - within the first year, they published 12 papers and a lot of corresponding code. However, in the years to come, their releases would slow and eventually stop.
GPT-2, their next language model, had a staged release due to safety concerns - you couldn't download the full model until nearly 9 months after the original release . And from there, everything went private. Post-GPT-2 models, like GPT-3, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4, are only available over OpenAI's official access channels.
This is clearly contrary to OpenAI's name, and arguably not necessary when safety can be achieved in other ways. Whether or not it's OpenAI's right is more complicated - recently Elon Musk sued OpenAI based on the claim that they violated a Founding Agreement , but OpenAI argues that there was no Founding Agreement that binds them to being a nonprofit.
So is OpenAI open? No, since around 2019 their models haven't been public.