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> To quote Ilya Sutskever from his testimony in the OpenAI vs. Elon Musk trial: 'If there is no funding, there is no big computer.' And without big computer, there can't be big model I think «who funds AGI if no oligopoly» is a serious question that can't be addressed with quips
Dean Ball took a lot of heat this week for calling open source decelerationist. Many people read this as him being personally anti-open source. I don't think that's true. This was my interpretation of what he was saying: if open source is sufficiently capable and ubiquitous, it will eventually destroy the big labs business models. This means they would no longer have funding. To quote Ilya Sutskever from his testimony in the OpenAI vs. Elon Musk trial: 'If there is no funding, there is no big computer.' And without big computer, there can't be big model. In my opinion, what would happen next in this scenario is that the United States Government would step in, nationalize the leading labs, consolidate them into a single federal entity, and then fund it directly through the Department of War under national security. To put into perspective how easily they could do this, the proposed 2027 defense budget is $1.5 trillion. Most people who strongly support open source would probably not see that outcome as ideal, or this future as a pleasant one. This doesn't mean we should abandon open source or stop wishing for its success. It simply means we should take the middle path. There is fire on both sides of us now, and that will likely remain true for the foreseeable future.
Notice that in a strict sense, this basically rules out the possibility of China doing AGI on their own with the current regime, because no their labs aren't state funded, and they have way less capital and an open source standard. It's important to think clearly on this
@AndrewCurran_ Is there a single example of high-quality open source products resulting in this kind of phenomenon historically? Have company stopped investing in word, processors or web browsers or operating systems.?
Dean Ball took a lot of heat this week for calling open source decelerationist. Many people read this as him being personally anti-open source. I don't think that's true. This was my interpretation of what he was saying: if open source is sufficiently capable and ubiquitous, it will eventually destroy the big labs business models. This means they would no longer have funding. To quote Ilya Sutskever from his testimony in the OpenAI vs. Elon Musk trial: 'If there is no funding, there is no big computer.' And without big computer, there can't be big model. In my opinion, what would happen next in this scenario is that the United States Government would step in, nationalize the leading labs, consolidate them into a single federal entity, and then fund it directly through the Department of War under national security. To put into perspective how easily they could do this, the proposed 2027 defense budget is $1.5 trillion. Most people who strongly support open source would probably not see that outcome as ideal, or this future as a pleasant one. This doesn't mean we should abandon open source or stop wishing for its success. It simply means we should take the middle path. There is fire on both sides of us now, and that will likely remain true for the foreseeable future.
@AndrewCurran_ Competition and a free market is everything but decelerationist. Many players advancing the state of the art together gets us faster to a prosperous future than few select players keeping everything for themselves.
@AndrewCurran_ i think this is the correct read of the post but i still think the conclusion is incorrect. i cant think of another analog where this has been the case and can think of several where the opposite is true .