Ask HN: Anyone else see GPT-4 access as unfair?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35720100

by neotrope • 3 years ago

15 44 3 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 are worlds apart and having access to GPT-4 (API) is a competitive advantage.

Like countless others, I've been on the waitlist forever, and seeing other companies get access to GPT-4 means my project is on hold while they're moving ahead.

Am I the only one who sees this as an unfair practice by OpenAI?

muttantt• 3 years ago

Pay $20

neotrope12• 3 years ago

This post refers to API access to GPT-4, which is only available via gated waitlist. I pay for ChatGPT and hit the cap regularly.

reneberlin4• 3 years ago

I just upgraded today from free user to paid (i did lose all those welcome credits long ago by playing around with, what i already forgot).

There is no different signup or waitlist for the api. It's just much more expensive to use gpt4 in favor of gpt-3.5-turbo.

The first example you find there for creating a chat-app let's you freely choose between the models.

https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/chat

chatmasta• 3 years ago

I don't have GPT-4, but I thought it was available by default to paid subscribers. Is this not the case? Or is there a waitlist to even become a paid subscriber?

Also, does anyone know if Copilot is using GPT-4? I assume it is.

savy912• 3 years ago

OP is referring to GPT4 API

hsn915• 3 years ago

What waitlist? I got immediate access as soon as I paid.

layoric• 3 years ago

I assume they mean API access to GPT4, not the ChatGPT interface.

rnk• 3 years ago

They must mean for free

savy912• 3 years ago

Is it so much better? I honestly don't see that much of a difference with "good prompts" between GPT4 and GPT3.5 in chatgpt.

SamPatt• 3 years ago

It's substantially better.

I've compared the same prompts between both, and GPT-4 is always better, except when you need speed or it's a very simple task.

For complex tasks, especially requiring some sort or social understanding (I'm building a group AI sharing tool) it has a capacity for nuance which is sometimes surprisingly good. ChatGPT is usually more straightforward.

If anyone hasn't played with gpt4 yet I'm looking for testers on my platform and I have access.

neotrope12• 3 years ago

Share it!

neotrope12• 3 years ago

It’s far better at producing workable code, logical reasoning, keeping a train of thought, etc. Their benchmark breaks it down.

https://openai.com/research/gpt-4

stavros3• 3 years ago

It is much better, yes. The new 3.5 is still pretty good and very cheap, so it's my go-to for simple things, but GPT-4 is unmatched for complicated reasoning.

llamaLord• 3 years ago

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is just farming the wait list for the best ideas so they can build them while you're waiting and then beat you to market.

Sounds like something they would do.

neerd• 3 years ago

Weird, I got API access pretty much next day and I’m just a solo dev playing around with it for personal projects.

neotrope12• 3 years ago

Congrats!

Workaccount2• 3 years ago

They have no obligation to be fair.

dllthomas• 3 years ago

But perhaps a nominal obligation to be open.

neotrope12• 3 years ago

This is a fair argument. However, their mission contradicts the advantage they’re providing to friends.

Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.

gemstones3• 3 years ago

How would they know if your project benefits humanity? Perhaps the best way to go about that is by ensuring you give tool access to people where you already know their output, and ignore others.

Why is total fairness a prerequisite for benefiting humanity?

junon• 3 years ago

They abandoned that mission ages ago.

mikae1• 3 years ago

their mission contradicts the advantage they’re providing to friends.

“Missions” are pure marketing. The only mission of a corporation is to make money.

dragonwriter2• 3 years ago

You mean, the API access that is explicitly prioritized by how much free labor you provide to OpenAI?

I don’t think “fair” is even part of the idea.

neotrope12• 3 years ago

Exactly.

Just goes against their mission, if that’s still a thing.

stavros3• 3 years ago

To be fair, I got GPT-4 API access a few days after it launched, without providing any free labor (though I don't know what that's referring to, so maybe I did?).

dragonwriter2• 3 years ago

They state (or did last I looked) that their priority is based on submission of quality AI test cases to their repository of such.

halfjoking• 3 years ago

Yes - it should be everyone gets access, and they rate limit based on how much demand they could support. If that means everyone only gets 3 requests per day for GPT4, then so be it. That would be fair.

It's disappointing since Sama was a part of YC which does seem to care about merit and "fairness." So you'd hope he'd support the same principals to "support the little guy" and give everyone a shot at having the best tools.

At least GPT4 isn't good enough to use something like AutoGPT to actually be useful at self-developing large portions of software. Once AI is that good, API access will be critical. Entire infrastructure and first-mover advantage could be dependent on API access at that time... there would be AI pipelines that wouldn't have been possible months ago that a highly intelligent AI model could see to use instantly and build out in a day. Imagine if your competitor has access and you don't in that AI future.

reneberlin4• 3 years ago

Sooner or later you will have your own AIs, locally and selfhosted. You can have it now, but not exactly chatGPT, which is the argument of using openais-api here.

I believe in the near future they will put AIs locally in your toaster and all toys, because they will become so cheap to embed offline.

neotrope12• 3 years ago

True, but only in the long term. Cutting edge AI will continually provide a competitive advantage and access will result in better products.

Once the diminishing returns of improvements drop off or when it gets "good enough", then it won't matter.

neotrope12• 3 years ago

The current batch of YC was all given access. I'd guess OpenAI has a profit sharing agreement to incentivize it.

At least GPT4 isn't good enough to use something like AutoGPT

I worry that GPT-4 will continue to get better while access will still be limited.

jerpint• 3 years ago

The original announcement of GPT4 included a list of companies that had already integrated GPT4 to their product, it’s a totally unfair competitive advantage

neotrope12• 3 years ago

For historical purposes, this submission was shadow banned ~30m after submission.

Ask HN: Anyone else see GPT-4 access as unfair?

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