On Wed, Sep 6, 2023 at 8:50 AM Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> wrote:

> [ Moving this to emacs-tangents ]
>
> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>
> >   > > As for LLMs that run on servers, they are a different issue
> entirely.
> >   > > They are all SaaSS (Service as a Software Substitute), and SaaSS is
> >   > > always unjust.
> >   > >
> >   > > See
> https://gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html
> >   > > for explanation.
> >
> >   > I do not fully agree here. A number of more powerful LLMs have very
> >   > limiting hardware requirements. For example, some LLMs require
> 64+Gbs of
> >   > RAM to run:
> >
> > That is true, and it is unfortunate.  There may be no practical way
> > to run a certain model except for SaaSS.
> >
> > That does not alter the injustice of SaaSS.  So we should not silence
> > our criticism of SaaSS in those cases,
>
> This is a rather theoretical consideration, but, talking about ChatGTP
> (owned by OpenAI) specifically, should it even be considered SaaSS?
>
> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html
> says:
>
>     Using a joint project's servers isn't SaaSS because the computing
>     you do in this way isn't your own. For instance, if you edit pages
>     on Wikipedia, you are not doing your own computing; rather, you are
>     collaborating in Wikipedia's computing. Wikipedia controls its own
>     servers, but organizations as well as individuals encounter the
>     problem of SaaSS if they do their computing in someone else's
>     server.
>
> Then, ChatGTP is using the user input to train their model:
>
> https://techunwrapped.com/you-can-now-make-chatgpt-not-train-with-your-queries/
>
>     ... what is constant is that the company can use
>     our conversations with ChatGPT to train the model. This is not a
>     surprise or a secret, the company has always reported it.
>
> There is no doubt that ChatGTP itself is not libre - its model is not
> available to public. However, users of the ChatGPT model are technically
> providing input that is collaboratively editing that model weights
> (training the model further). So, using ChatGTP is a little bit akin
> editing Wikipedia pages - collaborating to improve ChatGTP.
>

In addition, you can pay money to train your own model (via fine-tuning) on
top of Open AI's model.  Most other providers also let you do this.  The
model is "yours", and the training is controlled by you with no
restrictions I know of. You can't separate it from the underlying model
(for technical reasons).  I don't know the legal aspects of restrictions on
using your own fine-tuned model, but you still access it via SaaSS.


>
> --
> Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
> Org mode contributor,
> Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
> Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
> or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>
>