OpenAI’s “Own Goal”
We recorded 7 claims from this post. 3 were checked against evidence. 4 can’t be checked. 4 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (7)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI may fail, or even get dismissed.”
What we tested: Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI may fail or even be dismissed.
Assessment: SupportedSaid
“Almost nothing is known about the precise internal mechanisms of GPT-4 or what it has trained on.”
What we tested: Almost nothing is known about the precise internal mechanisms of GPT-4 or what it has been trained on.
What happened: The same paragraph expressly withholds detailed architecture, size, hardware, compute, dataset construction, and training methods. It nevertheless identifies a Transformer-style model, next-token pretraining, public and licensed data, and reinforcement learning from human feedback. (OpenAI, )
Assessment: SupportedSaid
“They knew they were misleading people and failed to take an opportunity to correct.”
What we tested: OpenAI knew it was misleading people into believing it meant open-sourced AI and failed to take an opportunity, at a May 2016 meeting, to correct that belief.
What happened: Amodei described a belief that OpenAI would release its AI source code publicly. Altman acknowledged that universal release was not the plan and then asked that the misconception not be corrected. (The New Yorker, )
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“The two facts that have come out make it look like they never really intended to follow their own charter.”
What we tested: The revealed facts suggest OpenAI never really intended to follow its charter.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“Leopards rarely change their spots.”
What we tested: Marcus applies the proverb 'leopards rarely change their spots' to OpenAI, expressing distrust of its character.
Assessment: SupportedSaid
“And the apparent copyright infringements that Reid Southen and I discussed in early January continue apace two months later, as I found in a quick experiment this morning:”
What we tested: The apparent copyright infringements that Marcus and Reid Southen discussed in early January 2024 were continuing apace two months later, based on a quick experiment Marcus ran on the morning of the post.
What happened: The article reports its own reproduction of the described Elsa images with Copilot Designer and identifies DALL-E 3 as the underlying model. This is firsthand corroboration published on March 6; the article does not give a separate test timestamp. (The Verge, )
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“But casting a blind eye to covert racism, apparent copyright infringement, and violent and degrading outputs is not.”
What we tested: OpenAI should not turn a blind eye to covert racism, apparent copyright infringement, and violent or degrading outputs.
Held from this post (4)
These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.
- The two reviews reached different assessments. Our reading, not assessed: OpenAI has almost entirely abandoned open source and is among the least open AI companies.
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews reached different assessments. Our reading, not assessed: The released email shows OpenAI knew for years it did not intend to be as open as its name and statements suggested.