The Kyle File

Over the past few days I've been seeing posts in various places mentioning something called ChatGPT. It looks pretty nice, right through OpenAI's video that tries to tell us that they are a non-profit that just wants to make AI safe and open to everyone for the benefit of humanity. But these quotes paint a very different picture.

"We are excited to introduce ChatGPT to get users’ feedback and learn about its strengths and weaknesses. During the research preview, usage of ChatGPT is free."

OK so what does this mean? It sounds to me like they intend to get the whole world used to using it and then pull the rug out from under us. If they really were doing this for the benefit of humanity, ChatGPT would be a free open source project that we could all use, host on our own if desired, contribute to, etc. Instead, they have made it a for-profit venture that will eventually pad the pockets of a few, as by this quote it has done already.

"ChatGPT and GPT 3.5 were trained on an Azure AI supercomputing infrastructure."

Of course. That explains it all. Microsoft is obviously behind this, not some non-profit out to benefit humanity after all. If anyone believes that Microsoft wants AI to benefit humanity rather than padding the already fat pockets of Microsoft, then that person has obviously been living under a rock for the last 50 years.

"You can choose to enter the ChatGPT Feedback Contest for a chance to win up to $500 in API credits."

Sounds like a commercial venture to me all day long. They're gonna get hundreds, thousands, or maybe millions of people to send them feedback only to maybe give one lucky winner $500 worth of some kind of as yet undefined proprietary API credits. For a company that calls itself OpenAI and claims to be a non-profit, they look pretty damn for-profit and closed off from where I'm sitting. This is yet another walled garden AI, this time sponsored at least in part by Microsoft.

For now, even though the latest prebuilt units are a bit pricey, my money is still on Mycroft, as I can run their whole suite of tools on my own computer, and it is all open source and free to use. If I'm understanding things correctly, it is no longer even necessary to have an account on their website, as even the server part can now be self-hosted. Yes, Mycroft still needs a bit more work, and it's more like Alexa or Google Assistant than it is like a chat bot, but it's a far cry from a completely for-profit Microsoft-sponsored proprietary walled garden that claims to be an open non-profit that wants to make AI safe for the benefit of humanity, which as it turns out is a lie, and I would go so far as to say a fraud.