Take a very impressive research achievement (large LSTM on byte-level language modeling/GPT-2). present it in a hyperbolic manner ("we've discovered a single neuron that captures sentiment", "the full GPT-2 is too dangerous to release"). wait for the press to eat it up, and if the technical press calls them out on misleading claims, even better, because it'll get even more traction then. Wait for defenders to show up stating that the original research achievement was impressive. Make no effort to clarify misleading claims.
The misleading word here is "solve", which can have two meanings: to derive a solution for a Rubik's cube, or to manipulate a Rubik's cube into a solved state. The casual reader absolutely assumes the former (which also appears as a challenging, intellectual task), whereas the technical achievement here is the latter. But of course, a press released titled "Solving Rubik's Cube with a Robot Hand" sounds much more impressive than "Manipulating Rubik's Cube with a Robot Hand".
I say this as a person who has benefited from their great research output and models: please stop playing this terrible PR game. You do your research work a disservice by muddying the waters like this.
"Too dangerous to release" itself seems like a somewhat misleading summary of OpenAI's position? Figuring out how to do AI research responsibly is a core part of their mission, not a PR game they're doing just to make headlines.
I think he's more likely referring to Elon Musk's predictions about Autopilot and Tesla. Elon Musk has been promising "full self-driving" capability for years now (by which I mean he has already missed his first public deadline by years). I also find The Boring Company to be a little overly ambitious, as well as many other public comments Musk has made over the years.
I don't think there are many people saying Elon Musk hasn't done some absolutely amazing things. But he's famous for being late to deliver on just about everything, and some of his comments about self-driving cars are considered truly pie-in-the-sky by experts.
Take a very impressive research achievement (large LSTM on byte-level language modeling/GPT-2). present it in a hyperbolic manner ("we've discovered a single neuron that captures sentiment", "the full GPT-2 is too dangerous to release"). wait for the press to eat it up, and if the technical press calls them out on misleading claims, even better, because it'll get even more traction then. Wait for defenders to show up stating that the original research achievement was impressive. Make no effort to clarify misleading claims.
The misleading word here is "solve", which can have two meanings: to derive a solution for a Rubik's cube, or to manipulate a Rubik's cube into a solved state. The casual reader absolutely assumes the former (which also appears as a challenging, intellectual task), whereas the technical achievement here is the latter. But of course, a press released titled "Solving Rubik's Cube with a Robot Hand" sounds much more impressive than "Manipulating Rubik's Cube with a Robot Hand".
I say this as a person who has benefited from their great research output and models: please stop playing this terrible PR game. You do your research work a disservice by muddying the waters like this.