On his recent tour of Europe, sam altmanCEO of OpenAI, has made it clear that the idea of releasing GPT-6 as open source is not in their immediate plans.
During a talk at IE University in Spain, Altman asked the public about their opinion about the regulation of future versions of GPT, as well as the possibility of turning them into open source models. Although the audience expressed support for both proposals, Altman’s response was forceful: “Well, we don’t agree there.”.
Subsequently, in a similar talk at the Technische Universität München in Germany, Altman once again polled public opinion on releasing future ChatGPTs as open source software. To the majority of hands raised, the CEO of OpenAI responded with a hint of irony: “Oh wow… well, we’re not going to. But it’s interesting to know”.
However, Altman elaborated on his response, arguing that their preference is to open source the OpenAI language models “a few years later” from their releaseonce any security issues that may arise have been addressed.
Controversy over Altman’s words
According to a report from beta geneAltman’s remarks have not gone unnoticed, drawing criticism from leading AI experts including Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist.
LeCun stated that most people want the basic models to be open source, “except for a small group in Silicon Valley and those within governments who are scared by fears about AI”.
Well, obviously.
Everyone wants open source base models except a few folks in Silicon Valley, a handful of AI doomers, and whoever they manage to scare in governments, https://t.co/reJmZxAMln— Yann LeCun (@ylecun) May 25, 2023
For his part, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, has also expressed his disagreement with Altman’s position, although in a more concise way.
It should be remembered that OpenAI was founded with the initial goal of creating open source AI by Elon Musk and Sam Altman, among others.. However, after disagreements between the founders, Musk left the organization and Altman assumed leadership, coinciding with OpenAI’s transition from nonprofit to enterprise.