> GPT2 was considered too dangerous to release

This is how ridiculous this industry is. Regulation-seeking panic over nothing. Drama in search of a moat.

Everything is "too dangerous". GPT2 is going to invent a time machine and break crypto and genetically engineer super rabies.

They sell knives, guns, combustible materials, and multi-ton heavy machinery in stores. That's what's actually dangerous.

What are your thoughts on the HuggingFace incident?

Well, no. Without controls, a language model can drive sensitive individuals to violence or suicide. The idea of releasing a frontier model without RL is frightening based on what we have learned.

I agree that this should be something that researchers reflect on. GPT-2 is one of the primary models to research on nowadays, and many recent developments have come from studying it as a test bench.

Imagine if CRISPR was considered "too dangerous" to publish because of the potential ethical ramifications, and that only a special few should be aware. It is utter self-righteousness, and it is shameful behaviour. The world cannot adjust itself to what it cannot see, so you risk greater catastrophe by keeping it secret.

The open dissemination of knowledge at every increment is the only way for society to truly deal with what is to come.

My impression at the time was they were perhaps overly cautious but this was a bunch of researchers who wanted to self-regulate. Anthropic didn’t exist, deepmind was also much less product-focused and relatively cautious. Chinese models weren’t really a factor either.

Government regulation was really not in the picture either in 2020 or 2021 tbh. The government was still trying to beat a pandemic. Some of the Biden admin eventually wanted to but it wasn’t very serious.