I think OpenAI tried to be Open, but then ran into two problems:
First, turns out that neural nets get better when you throw more compute at them. OpenAI was full of researchers looking to push the state of the art, and the state of the art became less and less accessible to the average person, who could not afford the supercomputers necessary to train GPT-3. "Democratizing deep learning" became less important as a goal, since it conflicted with the true priority internally: improving the state of the art in deep learning.
Second, it looks like they lost the interest of their initial funders. The execs were left with a big money hole in their budget, and had to go looking for some way to fill it. Bingo bango bongo, and now they are a for-profit looking for income streams.
I don't feel critical of them. It's very hard to do something both altruistic and expensive. Money doesn't just flow to those looking to do good in the world.
First, turns out that neural nets get better when you throw more compute at them. OpenAI was full of researchers looking to push the state of the art, and the state of the art became less and less accessible to the average person, who could not afford the supercomputers necessary to train GPT-3. "Democratizing deep learning" became less important as a goal, since it conflicted with the true priority internally: improving the state of the art in deep learning.
Second, it looks like they lost the interest of their initial funders. The execs were left with a big money hole in their budget, and had to go looking for some way to fill it. Bingo bango bongo, and now they are a for-profit looking for income streams.
I don't feel critical of them. It's very hard to do something both altruistic and expensive. Money doesn't just flow to those looking to do good in the world.