Tom and Nate discuss two major OpenAI happenings in the last week. The popular one, the chat assistant, and what it reveals about OpenAI's worldview. We pair this with discussion of OpenAI's new Model Spec, which details their RLHF goals: https://cdn.openai.com/spec/model-spec-2024-05-08.html

This is a monumental week for AI. The product transition is completed, we can't just be researchers anymore.

00:00 Guess the Donkey Kong Character
00:50 OpenAI's New AI Girlfriend
07:08 OpenAI's Business Model and Responsible AI
08:45 GPT-2 Chatbot Thing and OpenAI's Weirdness
12:48 OpenAI and the Mystery Box
19:10 The Blurring Boundaries of Intimacy and Technology
22:05 Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality and the Impact of Technology
26:16 OpenAI's Model Spec and Its Objectives
30:10 The Unintelligibility of "Benefiting Humanity"
37:01 The Chain of Command and the Paradox of AI Love
45:46 The Form and Content of OpenAI's Model Spec
48:51 The Future of AI and Societal Disruptions

Tom and Nate discuss the shifting power landscape in AI. They try to discern what is special about Silicon Valley's grasp on the ecosystem and what other types of power (e.g. those in New York and Washington DC) will do to mobilize their influence. 

Here's the one Tweet we referenced on the FAccT community: https://twitter.com/KLdivergence/status/1653843497932267520

00:00: Introduction and Cryptozoologists
02:00: DC and the National AI Research Resource (NAIR)
05:34: The Three Legs of the AI World: Silicon Valley, New York, and DC
11:00: The AI Safety vs. Ethics Debate
13:42: The Rise of the Third Entity: The Government's Role in AI
19:42: New York's Influence and the Power of Narrative
29:36: Silicon Valley's Insularity and the Need for Regulation
36:50: The Amazon Antitrust Paradox and the Shifting Landscape
48:20: The Energy Conundrum and the Need for Policy Solutions
56:34: Conclusion: Finding Common Ground and Building a Better Future for AI

Tom and Nate cover the state of the industry after Llama 3. Is Zuck the best storyteller in AI? Is he the best CEO? Are CEOs doing anything other than buying compute? We cover what it means to be successful at the highest level this week. 

Links:
Dwarkesh interview with Zuck https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/mark-zuckerberg 
Capuchin monkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capuchin_monkey 

00:00 Introductions & advice from a wolf
00:45 Llama 3
07:15 Resources and investment required for large language models
14:10 What it means to be a leader in the rapidly evolving AI landscape
22:07 How much of AI progress is driven by stories vs resources
29:41 Critiquing the concept of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
38:10 Misappropriation of the term AGI by tech leaders
42:09 The future of open models and AI development

Tom and Nate catch up after a few weeks off the pod. We discuss what it means for the pace and size of open models to get bigger and bigger. In some ways, this disillusionment is a great way to zoom our into the big picture. These models are coming. These models are getting cheaper. We need to think about risks and infrastructure more than open vs. closed.

00:00 Introduction 
01:16 Recent developments in open model releases 
04:21 Tom's experience viewing the total solar eclipse
09:38 The Three-Body Problem book and Netflix
14:06 The Gartner Hype Cycle
22:51 Infrastructure constraints on scaling AI
28:47 Metaphors and narratives around AI risk
34:43 Rethinking AI risk as public health problems
37:37 The "one-way door" nature of releasing open model weights
44:04 The relationship between the AI ecosystem and the models
48:24 Wrapping up the discussion in the "trough of disillusionment"

We've got some links for you again:
- Gartner hype cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle 
- MSFT Supercomputer https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-plot-100-billion-stargate-ai-supercomputer 
- Safety is about systems https://www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-safety-is-not-a-model-property 
- Earth day history https://www.earthday.org/history/ 
- For our loyal listeners http://tudorsbiscuitworld.com/

Tom and Nate catch up on the ridiculous of Nvidia GTC, the lack of trust in AI, and some important taxonomies and politics around governing AI. Safety institutes, reward model benchmarks, Nathan's bad joke delivery, and all the normal good stuff in this episode! Yes, we're also sick of the Taylor Swift jokes, but they get the clicks.

The Taylor moment: https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1769817948930072930

00:00 Intros and discussion on NVIDIA's influence in AI and the Bay Area
09:08 Mustafa Suleyman's new role and discussion on AI safety
11:31 The shift from performance to trust in AI evaluation
17:31 The role of government agencies in AI policy and regulation
24:07 The role of accreditation in establishing legitimacy and trust
32:11 Grok's open source release and its impact on the AI community
39:34 Responsibility and accountability in AI and social media platforms

Tom and Nate sit down to discuss Claude 3 and some updates on what it means to be open. Not surprisingly, we get into debating some different views. We cover Dune 2's impact on AI and have a brief giveaway at the end. Cheers!

More at retortai.com. Contact us at mail at domain.

Some topics:
- The pace of progress in AI and whether it feels meaningful or like "progress fatigue" to different groups

- The role of hype and "vibes" in driving interest and investment in new AI models 

- Whether the value being created by large language models is actually just being concentrated in a few big tech companies

- The debate around whether open source AI is feasible given the massive compute requirements

- The limitations of "open letters" and events with Chatham House rules as forms of politics and accountability around AI

- The analogy between the AI arms race and historical arms races like the dreadnought naval arms race

- The role of narratives, pop culture, and "priesthoods" in shaping public understanding of AI

Chapters & transcript partially created with https://github.com/FanaHOVA/smol-podcaster.

00:00 Introduction and the spirit of open source
04:32 Historical parallels of technology arms races
10:26 The practical use of language models and their impact on society
22:21 The role and potential of open source in AI development
28:05 The challenges of achieving coordination and scale in open AI development
34:18 Pop culture's influence on the AI conversation, specifically through "Dune"

This week Tom and Nate cover all the big topics from the big picture lens. Sora, Gemini 1.5's context length, Gemini's bias backlash, Gemma open models, it was a busy week in AI. We come to the conclusion that we can no longer trust a lot of these big companies to do much. We are the gladiators playing the crowd of AI. This was a great one, I'm proud on one of Tom's all time best jokes. 
Thanks for listening, and reach out with any questions.

A metaphor episode! We are trying to figure how much the Waymo incident is or is not about AI. We bring back our Berkeley roots and talk about traditions in the Bay around distributed technology. Scooters and robots are not safe in this episode, sadly. Here's the link to the Verge piece Tom read from: https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/11/24069251/waymo-driverless-taxi-fire-vandalized-video-san-francisco-china-town

... and you should too. We catch up this week on all things Apple Vision Pro and how these devices will intersect with AI. It really turned more into a commentary on the future of society, and how various technologies may or may not tap into our subconscious. 
The only link we've got for you is DeepDream: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepDream 

Wow, one of our favorites. This week Tom and Nate have a lot to cover. We cover AI2's new OPEN large language models (OLMo) and all that means, the alchemical model merging craze powering waifu factories, model weight leaks from Mistral, the calling card for our loyal fans, and more topics.

We have a lot of links you'll enjoy as you'll go through it:

• The Mistral leak: https://huggingface.co/miqudev/miqu-1-70b/discussions/10 
• Writing on model merging: https://www.interconnects.ai/p/model-merging 
• Writing on open LLMs: https://www.interconnects.ai/p/olmo 
• The original mechanical turk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk 
• This Waifu does not exist: https://thisanimedoesnotexist.ai/ 
• The warriors film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--gdB-nnQkU 
• The Waifu Research Department: https://huggingface.co/waifu-research-department