RobertM's Shortform

RobertM

RobertM's Shortform — LessWrong

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Vaguely feeling like OpenAI might be moving away from GPT-N+1 release model, for some combination of "political/frog-boiling" reasons and "scaling actually hitting a wall" reasons. Seems relevant to note, since in the worlds where they hadn't been drip-feeding people incremental releases of slight improvements over the original GPT-4 capabilities, and instead just dropped GPT-5 (and it was as much of an improvement over 4 as 4 was over 3, or close), that might have prompted people to do an explicit orientation step. As it is, I expect less of that kind of orientation to happen. (Though maybe I'm speaking too soon and they will drop GPT-5 on us at some point, and it'll still manage to be a step-function improvement over whatever the latest GPT-4* model is at that point.)

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RobertM2y20

Yeah, "they're following their stated release strategy for the reasons they said motivated that strategy" also seems likely to share some responsibility. (I might not think those reasons justify that release strategy, but that's a different argument.)

2jmh2y

I wonder if that is actually a sound view though. I just started reading Like War (interesting and seems correct/on target so far but really just starting it). Given the subject area of impact, reaction and use of social media and networking technologies and the general results socially, seems like society generally is not really even yet prepared and adapted for that inovation. If all the fears about AI are even close to getting things right I suspect the "allowing society to prepare and adapt" suggests putting everything on hold, freezing in place, for at least a decade and probably longer. Altman's and OpenAI's intentions might be towards that stated goal but I think they are basing that approach on how "the smartest people in the room" react to AI and not the general public, or the most opportinistic people in the room.

4Matthew Barnett2y

I'm not sure if you'd categorize this under "scaling actually hitting a wall" but the main possibility that feels relevant in my mind is that progress simply is incremental in this case, as a fact about the world, rather than being a strategic choice on behalf of OpenAI. When underlying progress is itself incremental, it makes sense to release frequent small updates. This is common in the software industry, and would not at all be surprising if what's often true for most software development holds for OpenAI as well. (Though I also expect GPT-5 to be medium-sized jump, once it comes out.)

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RobertM's Shortform

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RobertM's Shortform

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