As for learning from the timnit thing I'm pretty sure the only thing people outside Google learned from that is that Google ai "ethicists" all seem to be crazy. Certainly that's the clear vibe on this thread.
You can let your kid use Google to look up math lectures without fearing that they would see something slightly traumatizing though, right? That wasn't the case in 1996! The point is that products have varying levels of readiness, and it's totally fair to say "the thing isn't ready, it has too many sharp edges." Especially when the thing could be used at scale.
> As for learning from the timnit thing I'm pretty sure the only thing people outside Google learned from that is that Google ai "ethicists" all seem to be crazy. Certainly that's the clear vibe on this thread.
That's a sad take, but who knows if it's true. HN commenters aren't exactly a representative sample.
It's 2022 and we can be more thoughtful. Yes there are tradeoffs between unleashing new capabilities quickly vs being thoughtful and potentially conservative in what is made publicly available. I don't think it's bad that Google makes those tradeoffs.
FWIW Google open sources _tons_ of models that aren't LLMs / diffusion models. It's just that LLMs & powerful generative models have particular ethical considerations that are worth thinking about (hopefully something was learned from the whole Timnit thing).