> IMO effective guard rails seem like the most meaningful competitive advantage an AI company can offer.
Configurable guard rails are; the right guard rails are very use-specific, and generic guard rails will, for many real uses, be simultaneously too aggressive and too lenient.
I totally agree that generic guard rails are more difficult - but it feels like a "turtles all the way down" kind of situation. You need to learn to tell the model how to be "specific" - which requires shaping general behavior.
OpenAI can prove to customers they can keep the model in line for their specific use case if no horror stories emerge for the generic one. It's always possible that partners could come up with effective specific guidelines for their use case - but that's probably in the domain of trade secrets so OpenAI can't really rely on that for marketing / proof.
