What OpenAI really want is regulatory intervention that forces them and their competitors to have KYC (know your customer) rules like banks. This should prevent the plethora of new entrant start ups from entering the field. The technology is pretty much a commodity at this stage and they know it. Without that regulatory intervention they’ll be just another model amongst 10s of others.
The comms pre-brief across video and audio is there to get the media to start projecting fear of what this technology will do unchecked. If they get their way then all the existing voice generating models then have to tackle the harder problem of navigating regulatory authority which you can only do at a scale benefiting them and a select few others.
Like your other article about tech companies creating problems that “only they can solve” if only they were given some more money or less (or allowed self) regulation rings true.
Maybe the researchers should train the model on Sam Altman and show why this should be available to the public. I'm sure the CEO won't mind his voice available to everyone to use
The reason we're all going to die is because too many people were either too stupid or too gullible to not realize this: there is NO "good" use case for any of these technologies that comes even close to making up for *completely and utterly breaking the idea of Objective Reality*.
" People need to unplug from their phones and laptops if that's what they think is going to happen with this kind of harmless technology, and not absorb so much content. "
So far, all OpenAI has are some really expensive party tricks, I suppose they can cruise on hoovered-up VC money for a while, but they've gotta start selling a product at some point, and I don't know if disrupting commercial art, help desks, and corporate writing is the big payoff for them. They need a cell phone, something ubiquitous, something EVERYBODY uses. What is it? You could tie the voice, video, and writing blocks together and crank out entertainment, Marilyn Monroe and Rudolph Valentino in a remake of A Star Is Born. Doesn't seem big enough. I think they want to build Deep Thought, a computer that can give the Ultimate Answer.
It seems like the perpetual-motion-machine here is that OpenAI converts billions in Microsoft money into tens of billions in Microsoft stock valuation. That works so long as the hype bubble stays inflated.
I LOVE the smell of Ranting in the morning! It keeps me sane for the time being to know there is someone who can articulate a first cause problem with clarity. I am personally now dealing with a robotic voice caller that keeps reiterating the same message over and over to my landline phone dozens of times throughout the 24 hour period. So, I had to disconnect my landline to receive NO CALLS at all. How nice is that for a new problem I should NOT need to deal with? I have AT&T, my son has T-Mobile - both with the same problem. How much worse could it get using God knows what as a means to harass the public? UGH!
The 15-second claim is new, but deliberately left unsaid is how they accomplish that - which I suspect has to do with building up a giant backlog of existing recordings of voices, so that there are always enough statistically similar phonemes to patch what comes from the new sample. One of the few concrete details OpenAI released about this is that it relies on 'a combination of licensed and publicly available data', presumably that backlog.
And the only real reason you would do that, of course, is that you're not actually concerned with 'cloning' individual voices so much as providing enough plausible facsimiles for fraudsters, who I honestly believe is the intended target audience
Right, this is the key point. They're taking a thing that was sketchy, flawed, and still required a fair amount of data and boasting that they've made it much more polished, requiring far less data.
Back in the 1970s, I worked for a technology group that used some primitive image modification technology to make a mouth look like it was speaking arbitrary phonemes. If I remember correctly, they used circa mid-1970s audio technology, probably analog, to fake our sponsor's voice and synched it up with the fake video of him speaking. It was an impressive demo for its day, and we were told to delete it. It was garbage by modern standards, but we've had 50 years of improved technology. As best I can tell, the delete command still works.
Quite. It kind of looks like inventing a terrible biological virus and mot because you actually want to develop protection against such a virus. What is true for the 'gene space' should probably have an equivalent in the 'meme space'.
Having said that, I strongly suspect that Hanlon's Razor holds here for a large part. Sam seems shifty enough, but many of his fellow travelers are probably honestly convinced of the things they (and he) says.
In the end, the issue is not so much that these systems are or will be intelligent, but that we humans aren't (enough).
Of course, you are aware that several others have already come to market with this tech right?
Names you've never heard of, companies you've never heard of, releases you've never heard of and they never got in any spotlight, never commanded the world's attention to discuss the risks or solutions, never blogged about it or sat down with reporters.
I'm not quibbling with the problems of the technology, I'm not saying Altman is driven by altruism.
But, the fact that Altman is out there on the stage is the only reason most of us even know about it and have something to rant about.
Otherwise, it is just a genie escaped from a bottle you never saw.
While we rant, let us also give thanks to someone for spoon-feeding the present to us so we can opine about the future and the past here.
In the end, this article makes Altman's argument for him. Let's impede the competition, if Altman is bad, those ones we don't hear from are worse in the end.
Indeed they are not the protagonist in this case, that character has been working the room in silence already and Altman's voice is
I think the key difference (which, granted, I should've added a paragraph on) is that the versions of this product that have already come to market require more data.
(I see Tyler makes this point elsewhere in the thread. Thanks Tyler!)
The big companies aren't treating Generative AI as a problem to be solved. They're treating it as a race to be won.
OpenAI isn't the first company to produce AI voice cloning. But they are bragging that they can now do it with only 15 seconds of data. That's not a good thing!
And I agree that we should impede the competition. But let's impede Altman too! We should have serious regulatory frameworks, with serious penalties, and Sam Altman shouldn't be in charge of setting them as he sees fit.
I see a future sci-fi series: “Customer of Interest.” You’re being recorded. OpenAI has a system, a machine that mimics your voice and lets criminals use it every hour of every day. I know because I’m Sam Altman, I paid a bunch of techies to build it. I wanted it to make money for me but now it’s creating windfalls for every grifter, fraudster and terrorist with a laptop and no moral code - like me.
There is no use case for this technology. Not everything that can be invented should be invented
Michael Crichton taught us that, over and over again.
I feel the same way about Sora - there isn’t a single good reason for something like that to exist. Outlaw it.
If it works, it can make holywood quality stuff for near free, are you kidding me? And I kind of hate OpenAI
What OpenAI really want is regulatory intervention that forces them and their competitors to have KYC (know your customer) rules like banks. This should prevent the plethora of new entrant start ups from entering the field. The technology is pretty much a commodity at this stage and they know it. Without that regulatory intervention they’ll be just another model amongst 10s of others.
The comms pre-brief across video and audio is there to get the media to start projecting fear of what this technology will do unchecked. If they get their way then all the existing voice generating models then have to tackle the harder problem of navigating regulatory authority which you can only do at a scale benefiting them and a select few others.
Like your other article about tech companies creating problems that “only they can solve” if only they were given some more money or less (or allowed self) regulation rings true.
Very helpful point, thanks.
Maybe the researchers should train the model on Sam Altman and show why this should be available to the public. I'm sure the CEO won't mind his voice available to everyone to use
That would be a good demo as he speaks with a distinct vocal fry
The reason we're all going to die is because too many people were either too stupid or too gullible to not realize this: there is NO "good" use case for any of these technologies that comes even close to making up for *completely and utterly breaking the idea of Objective Reality*.
" People need to unplug from their phones and laptops if that's what they think is going to happen with this kind of harmless technology, and not absorb so much content. "
This technology 𝙝𝙖𝙨 𝙖𝙡𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙮 𝙗𝙚𝙚𝙣 𝙪𝙨𝙚𝙙 𝙞𝙣 𝙛𝙪𝙧𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙘𝙧𝙞𝙢𝙚𝙨. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/22/1165448073/voice-clones-ai-scams-ftc
You clearly don't have an aging parent living alone.
"It's already happening on a small scale" is not the same as "voice cloning is not harmful period". *Totally fallacious jump*, you might say.
It's supsicious that you think voice can only be cloned if it was recorded online. People still talk in meatspace.
So far, all OpenAI has are some really expensive party tricks, I suppose they can cruise on hoovered-up VC money for a while, but they've gotta start selling a product at some point, and I don't know if disrupting commercial art, help desks, and corporate writing is the big payoff for them. They need a cell phone, something ubiquitous, something EVERYBODY uses. What is it? You could tie the voice, video, and writing blocks together and crank out entertainment, Marilyn Monroe and Rudolph Valentino in a remake of A Star Is Born. Doesn't seem big enough. I think they want to build Deep Thought, a computer that can give the Ultimate Answer.
(Always appreciate a good Hitchhiker's reference)
It seems like the perpetual-motion-machine here is that OpenAI converts billions in Microsoft money into tens of billions in Microsoft stock valuation. That works so long as the hype bubble stays inflated.
https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-might-get-its-own-dedicated-personal-device-with-jony-ives-help
I LOVE the smell of Ranting in the morning! It keeps me sane for the time being to know there is someone who can articulate a first cause problem with clarity. I am personally now dealing with a robotic voice caller that keeps reiterating the same message over and over to my landline phone dozens of times throughout the 24 hour period. So, I had to disconnect my landline to receive NO CALLS at all. How nice is that for a new problem I should NOT need to deal with? I have AT&T, my son has T-Mobile - both with the same problem. How much worse could it get using God knows what as a means to harass the public? UGH!
Doesn't AI voice cloning already exist? Several news reports on people being impersonated to solicit ransom money from their relatives were published this last year, like on 60 Minutes https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-digital-theft-targets-people-from-millennials-to-seniors-60-minutes-2023-05-21/.
Why is this reported as a new technology OpenAI came up with?
The 15-second claim is new, but deliberately left unsaid is how they accomplish that - which I suspect has to do with building up a giant backlog of existing recordings of voices, so that there are always enough statistically similar phonemes to patch what comes from the new sample. One of the few concrete details OpenAI released about this is that it relies on 'a combination of licensed and publicly available data', presumably that backlog.
And the only real reason you would do that, of course, is that you're not actually concerned with 'cloning' individual voices so much as providing enough plausible facsimiles for fraudsters, who I honestly believe is the intended target audience
Right, this is the key point. They're taking a thing that was sketchy, flawed, and still required a fair amount of data and boasting that they've made it much more polished, requiring far less data.
That's a bad thing though. They should feel bad.
Like the man said, comms baby, comms. Like all the tech Apple "invented", if you have the biggest megaphone you can claim anything.
Back in the 1970s, I worked for a technology group that used some primitive image modification technology to make a mouth look like it was speaking arbitrary phonemes. If I remember correctly, they used circa mid-1970s audio technology, probably analog, to fake our sponsor's voice and synched it up with the fake video of him speaking. It was an impressive demo for its day, and we were told to delete it. It was garbage by modern standards, but we've had 50 years of improved technology. As best I can tell, the delete command still works.
Quite. It kind of looks like inventing a terrible biological virus and mot because you actually want to develop protection against such a virus. What is true for the 'gene space' should probably have an equivalent in the 'meme space'.
Having said that, I strongly suspect that Hanlon's Razor holds here for a large part. Sam seems shifty enough, but many of his fellow travelers are probably honestly convinced of the things they (and he) says.
In the end, the issue is not so much that these systems are or will be intelligent, but that we humans aren't (enough).
Hot damn Dave, you nail it. That Falcon Heavy ride to Mars needs plenty of seating me thinks.
This is such a bad idea that it really needs to be killed with fire.
...why do these "humans" hate humans so much?...
Of course, you are aware that several others have already come to market with this tech right?
Names you've never heard of, companies you've never heard of, releases you've never heard of and they never got in any spotlight, never commanded the world's attention to discuss the risks or solutions, never blogged about it or sat down with reporters.
I'm not quibbling with the problems of the technology, I'm not saying Altman is driven by altruism.
But, the fact that Altman is out there on the stage is the only reason most of us even know about it and have something to rant about.
Otherwise, it is just a genie escaped from a bottle you never saw.
While we rant, let us also give thanks to someone for spoon-feeding the present to us so we can opine about the future and the past here.
In the end, this article makes Altman's argument for him. Let's impede the competition, if Altman is bad, those ones we don't hear from are worse in the end.
Indeed they are not the protagonist in this case, that character has been working the room in silence already and Altman's voice is
I think the key difference (which, granted, I should've added a paragraph on) is that the versions of this product that have already come to market require more data.
(I see Tyler makes this point elsewhere in the thread. Thanks Tyler!)
So this strikes me as running parallel to the AI-Content-Farms problem that I wrote about last year. https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/what-are-we-going-to-do-about-generative
The big companies aren't treating Generative AI as a problem to be solved. They're treating it as a race to be won.
OpenAI isn't the first company to produce AI voice cloning. But they are bragging that they can now do it with only 15 seconds of data. That's not a good thing!
And I agree that we should impede the competition. But let's impede Altman too! We should have serious regulatory frameworks, with serious penalties, and Sam Altman shouldn't be in charge of setting them as he sees fit.
I see a future sci-fi series: “Customer of Interest.” You’re being recorded. OpenAI has a system, a machine that mimics your voice and lets criminals use it every hour of every day. I know because I’m Sam Altman, I paid a bunch of techies to build it. I wanted it to make money for me but now it’s creating windfalls for every grifter, fraudster and terrorist with a laptop and no moral code - like me.
“Chat GPT, Kill Sam Altman. Chat GPT, Kill Sam Altman. Chat GPT, Kill Sam Altman.”