Ok, fair point about the lizardbrain jealousy, the choice of wording there was needlessly antagonistic. In my defense, even though that point might seem reductive, I don't mean it to be. I'd say the only reason words like"fair", even exists is because of that basic emotional response. We dress it up in higher order concepts, but I genuinely think everything about fair distribution boils down to human emotional responses that in different contexts are given names such as "greed" or "jealousy". And the tribal environment IS the environment our brains are adapted to. I don't think it's necessarily reductive to point out the very foundation of where the impulses from our cognitive medium is coming from. It's the basis of pretty much everything about human society. From a sibling being pissed because he got one less slice of cake, to intellectual property law. It all boils down to the same emotional programming.
And I just want to be absolutely clear on one thing, I am in no way shape or form mocking science. I am part of academia, and I see science as the one most valuable thing humanity is doing. And I am not convinced at all that the capitalist way things are organized are the best overall, but this is mostly because it incentivises locking down knowledge behind intellectual property. Personally, I am for radical openness of knowledge, with no pay walls, and that the reward structures for producing knowledge should be separate from how that knowledge is being used. Even the publication system is too greed-based in my opinion, if it was up to me, every lab would live stream their work and publish every thought and idea as it happens (with the possible exception of biosecurity adjacent stuff), and 10-20% of taxes going to science would be international law.
This issue is not what I was discussing, what I perceived us to be discussing was whether or not Jonas Salk should have been pissed at the pharmaceutical companies profiting of his vaccine. As it happened, Jonas Salk was charitable, and believed in the openness of science, and understood the fact that someone actually had to produce and distribute the polio vaccine, and that this costs money. And as it happened, society had given this mandate to private companies, that operate with profit margins. And if him insisting on having a cut, if doing so would result in even a single additional person dying that wouldn't have otherwise, which it probably would have, then he didn't insist. Also he was too busy doing science, he even commented later that his fame was partially an unwelcome distraction from that.
To me, this is the ideal of a scientist. Someone who knows they stand on the shoulders of giants, and doesn't fret about the fact that the people who are standing on his are closer to the sun. The difference between Jonas Salk and everyone complaining about not being rewarded for training tokens, is that Jonas Salk made the choice to not patent his invention, and here the labs made the choice for everyone else. Jonas Salk and many others are charitable, but not everyone is, hence the complaining. But if everyone is forced to be Salk against their will, is that really so bad?
I see the LLM labs as the pharmaceutical companies, occupying a societal mandate to actually produce, and all the perils that come with it. But "giving back" is not part of that mandate, and unfortunate as that might be, that is not their fault. They are tasked with production, competition and progress, and that is already so expensive that they are struggling to meet demand.
And, you know, if redistribution truly is as easy as you say, at this thought my brain also produces a tinkle of anger at the injustice of it. And if I look for somewhere to direct that anger, I even have a name and a face! Look at Sam Altman, that smug supercar driving bastard, profiting of the hard work of Stackoverflow commenters everywhere. Eat him! Like, not in a gay way, but like in eat the rich! Out with the guillotines!
To me, that's my lizardbrain talking. The reality of our more complex non-tribal society is that the corporate structures we have created were not tasked with distributing rewards fairly, they were tasked with competing no matter the cost. And so successful companies do that, because the ones that don't disappear.
And like it or not, this methodology seems to work, on the whole. Even though it also offends my scientist sensibilities, it turns out that humans are greedy, and so incorporating that impulse into a structure that is limited to soft power is a good idea (unlike classic communism, where the same powers that produced products could also kill you). And it's not Sams fault that this is how it is. "Just running a business" is the reward structure society has created, and it's not part of Sam's job description to break that mold and start rewarding people he doesn't have to. In fact it might even be illegal for him to do so if it doesn't reward investors somehow also (like PR-wise).
And the overall fact is that the labs are doing what they need to do in order to produce something entirely new, that no one was even sure would be useful before they created it. And they are the representatives of the capitalist way of doing things, and if a publicly funded LLM undercuts them, that is fine. But maybe you do actually need a trillion dollars to make useful LLMs. Overall it's a good thing that someone is at least trying with funds, because there was no one lining up to buy 200k H100 for even the most prestigious of publicly funded academic institution, and certainly not for sending a check to all authors on arXiv.
And so overall, capitalism seems to me to be doing a fine job, and I pay my subscription fee gladly. And when my lizardbrain provides it's hateful opinion, I think of Jonas Salk, and it doesn't seem so bad after all.
