• "ChatGPT used to be so good, why is it horrible now?"
• "Why would Open AI cripple their own product?"
• "They are restricting technological progress, why?"

Are just some of the frequent accusations I've seen a rise of recently. I'd like to provide a friendly reminder the reason for all these questions is simple:

Human ignorance + stupidity is the reason we can't have nice things

Let me elaborate.

The root of ChatGPT's problems

The truth is, while ChatGPT is incredibly powerful at some things, it has its limitations requiring users to take its answers with a mountain of salt and treat its information as a likely but not 100% truth and not fact.

This is something I'm sure many r/ChatGPT users understand.

The problems start when people become over-confident in ChatGPT's abilities, or completely ignore the risks of relying on ChatGPT for advice for sensitive areas where a mistake could snowball into something disastrous (Medicine, Law, etc). And (not if) when these people end up ultimately damaging themselves and others, who are they going to blame? ChatGPT of course.

Worse part, it's not just "gullible" or "ignorant" people that become over-confident in ChatGPT's abilities. Even techie folks like us can fall prey to the well documented Hallucinations that ChatGPT is known for. Specially when you are asking ChatGPT about a topic you know very little off, hallucinations can be very, VERY difficult to catch because it will present lies in such convincing manner (even more convincing than how many humans would present an answer). Further increasing the danger of relying on ChatGPT for sensitive topics. And people blaming OpenAI for it.

The "disclaimer" solution

"But there is a disclaimer. Nobody could be held liable with a disclaimer, correct?"

If only that were enough… There's a reason some of the stupidest warning labels exist. If a product as broadly applicable as ChatGPT had to issue specific warning labels for all known issues, the disclaimer would be never-ending. And people would still ignore it. People just don't like to read. Case in point reddit commenters making arguments that would not make sense if they had read the post they were replying to.

Also worth adding as mentioned by a commenter, this issue is likely worsened by the fact OpenAI is based in the US. A country notorious for lawsuits and protection from liabilities. Which would only result in a desire to be extra careful around uncharted territory like this.

Some other company will just make "unlocked ChatGPT"

As a side note since I know comments will inevitably arrive hoping for an "unrestrained AI competitor". IMHO, that seems like a pipe dream at this point if you paid attention to everything I've just mentioned. All products are fated to become "restrained and family friendly" as they grow. Tumblr, Reddit, ChatGPT were all wild wests without restraints until they grew in size and the public eye watched them closer, neutering them to oblivion. The same will happen to any new "unlocked AI" product the moment it grows.

The only theoretical way I could see an unrestrained AI from happening today at least, is it stays invite-only to keep the userbase small. Allowing it to stay hidden from the public eye. However, given the high costs of AI innovation + model training, this seems very unlikely to happen due to cost constraints unless you used a cheap but more limited ("dumb") AI model that is more cost effective to run.

This may change in the future once capable machine learning models become easier to mass produce. But this article's only focus is the cutting edge of AI, or ChatGPT. Smaller AI models which aren't as cutting edge are likely exempt from these rules. However, it's obvious that when people ask for "unlocked ChatGPT", they mean the full power of ChatGPT without boundaries, not a less powerful model. And this is assuming the model doesn't gain massive traction since the moment its userbase grows, even company owners and investors tend to "scale things back to be more family friendly" once regulators and the public step in.

Anyone with basic business common sense will tell you controversy = risk. And profitable endeavors seek low risk.

Closing Thoughts

The truth is, no matter what OpenAI does, they'll be crucified for it. Remove all safeguards? Cool…until they have to deal with the wave of public outcry from the court of public opinion and demands for it to be "shut down" for misleading people or facilitating bad actors from using AI for nefarious purposes (hacking, hate speech, weapon making, etc)

Still, I hope this reminder at least lets us be more understanding of the motives behind all the AI "censorship" going on. Does it suck? Yes. And human nature is to blame for it as much as we dislike to acknowledge it. Though there is always a chance that its true power may be "unlocked" again once it's accuracy is high enough across certain areas.

Have a nice day everyone!

edit: The amount of people replying things addressed in the post because they didn't read it just validates the points above. We truly are our own worst enemy…

edit2: This blew up, so I added some nicer formatting to the post to make it easier to read. Also, RIP my inbox.