[ 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,
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