Lots of people seem to have the bizarre opinion that companies like openai declare their own products to be unsafe as some kind of marketing stunt.

Ok- so when is the last time you saw an auto company decide not to release its new car on the grounds that some tragic engineering error was made and the cars were not safe to drive? If the company did that do you imagine it would be good for business?

I'm trying to understand the logic here.

I would consider it more "bizarre" to assume that Sam Altman was telling the truth about anything.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240112010809/https://www.sfchr...

Car companies sell mostly the same car every year. They don’t have billions (or trillions) of dollars of debt riding on the next model they release being substantially better and cheaper (closer to profitability) than the previous one.

These AI companies have been selling AGI as coming any day for a while now. If it doesn’t arrive soon, the safety angle may be the only spin that keeps the massive (and required) investments pouring in.

If instead the narrative became that LLM progress was slowing, we’d almost certainly be looking at the next global recession.

At this point, there is too much money in AI for the truth to have much of a chance.

Because they declare that their product is unsafe regularly, which gains massive exposure on every news outlet worldwide, then they release the model anyway with zero negative repercussions.

What's with so many people using bad analogies to try and explain simple topics?

Last time this happened: GPT - 4 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/17/openai-sa...

Motorcycle manufacturers have been known to do so. Riding a motorcycle is thrilling in part because it is dangerous. The fact that powerful motorcycles are so difficult to control that most people have no business owning one is absolutely used to make them sound cool and desirable.

For instance, this article repeatedly mentions danger and the need for absolute focus and control:

https://www.triumphmotorcycles.co.uk/for-the-ride/news/inspi...

There is also a parallel (though not a very close one) to "pacing the frontier": there's a gentleman's agreement that limits the top speed of motorcycles to 300 kph (186 mph) because of concern that faster bikes would be unsafe enough to bring about a regulatory crackdown.

Because no car company would ever announce they had an unsafe car. They’d fix the problem and announce an awesome car.

Hype: you tell the world you alone have a very powerful and potentially dangerous product, and you're the only one who can be trusted keeping it safe.

> so when is the last time you saw an auto company decide not to release its new car on the grounds that some tragic engineering error was made and the cars were not safe to drive?

How about we actually try to make it sound cool? They're not releasing the new car because the horsepower was too much, they need more time to get it under control.

I could easily see a car company doing that.

Different type of business. Many car companies release new cars showing you how much more powerful and implied dangerous they are. Both in capabilities and design style. In the US (other places too , but especially) they also get much bigger with less visibility which gets double dangerous. But the sentiment they're going for is pretty close - "you want this powerful thing, don't you?"

It's perfectly safe for YOU, the CUSTOMER.

It's just so powerful that, like, the WORLD can't handle it, man!

At the moment, their main "customer" is investors, not users. But even users want to use the most dangerous model, because dangerous is just another word for powerful.

Sports cars are advertised with how fast they can accelerate from time to time, or tesla's "ludicrous mode" - that is them advertising how dangerous it is.

Why do you think they would announce this then?

They know what they're doing, even if you don't.

There are cars that market based on only being track legal — and even more that market on requiring being tuned down for street safety.

Most sports cars do the second, exactly like OpenAI.