Comment by horsawlarway
4 hours ago
Where do you draw the line here?
What happens when your car stops working because you're driving a tesla, but you're working on EVs for Honda or Ford?
What happens when your macbook stops working, because you decided to commit to changes to ARM software, or RISC-V?
Tools should be neutral. The idea that a tool can only be wielded in a manner that its manufacturer approves of is... scary.
That's a real quick hop and a jump to a really, really ugly spot, societally speaking.
And sure - technically Anthropic is selling a service, but even that idea makes me quietly upset. The only reason they don't sell a product as a tool itself is that they have more control over the model as a service, and expect to be able to extract even more profit from their customers with this route.
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My real hope is that open models FUCKING CRUSH them. Because almost nothing is scarier than a self-righteous, moral zealot.
> What happens when your car stops working because you're driving a tesla, but you're working on EVs for Honda or Ford?
> What happens when your macbook stops working, because you decided to commit to changes to ARM software, or RISC-V?
These sound similar, but aren't the same thing I'm talking about. It's more similar to a rideshare company refusing to serve you, or a cloud PC cutting your access.
It's not the same thing as DRM, which is when invasive malware attempts to control what you do with your devices -- your property -- and your resources, that you own. A car that can be shut off remotely, or that can detect competitive conditions and cease operation, is not the same as a hosted service refusing to have you. It is DRM.
Likewise, a MacBook that stops working based on your affiliations or your activity is not the same either. It is DRM. (Technically, Apple Activation Lock is DRM. So are locked Android bootloaders that can't be flashed with custom verified-boot signing keys, etc.)
When you're using someone else's private resources, someone else's private infrastructure, by default they have the right to simply no longer serve you, at any time.
DRM, by contrast, is when a machine or software you already own decides it will no longer function for you.
Yes, this is scary. We are already confronting this right now. Faceless corporations abruptly cut your access, or ban you for life from really important things. PayPal steals your money and pockets it instead of giving it back. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars (or whatever) gone because they said so. It's awful. It ruins lives.
But this happens because you need to draw a different line. Not whether one should be allowed to refuse services ever, but when. It's not okay that PayPal can steal tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more from you with no recourse, just because something looked suspicious, and you'll never know what it was even if you bankrupt yourself with arbitration costs (since their terms of service say you are simply not allowed to sue them anymore, and for some reason companies are allowed to just say this now and have it be legally binding).
A refusal at that point can be devastating, especially when it's for no fucking reason. Or when it's for a completely shitty and unjust reason, like in banning all accounts that have been involved in buying or selling adult content. There are cases where you can ruin someone's life by suddenly refusing to serve them with no recourse, and those are the cases that shouldn't be allowed to continue.
So push for that. Businesses shouldn't all have to serve every customer, but they shouldn't be able to just suddenly ruin someone's life. That's the scary part.
> The only reason they don't sell a product as a tool itself
...it's not the only reason. You can't exactly run trillion-parameter-scale models on the kinds of hardware people tend to already have in practice. And who's gonna pay tens of thousands of dollars up-front for their own inference hardware for the thing? (If you sold it as a hardware product.)
> My real hope is that open models FUCKING CRUSH them.
I would like this too!