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

15 points by neotrope ↗ HN
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?

47 comments

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muttantt
Pay $20
neotrope
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.
reneberlin
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

augment003
Are you saying that when you became a paid API user, you got access to gpt-4?
reneberlin
Yes. Exactly. But it is usage-based (tokens). And gpt3.5 is a lot cheaper.

Just put the creditcard details in and do not forget to set usage-limits to your liking in the settings.

This way you do not have to fear higher costs than you are willing to accept. There is a standard cap of 120$ per month. That is the absolute maximum, if you do not contact them and raise it. I turned mine to 20$.

https://openai.com/pricing#language-models

augment003
Good to know. I’ve been waiting for access but am happy to pay.
reneberlin
I totally have to rollback anything i said before. Just now i understand what happens in the background. Nobody is directly granted and the waitlist is indeed there to block me from using it.

I just hammered against it and found out you are totally right. Which is a real pain, because i have lots of things to test and checkout with more tokens.

I am working with a friend on something, and i know he has access, we share the code and tomorrow i wanted to start using GPT-4 with it.

So i am now as disappointed as you are.

Sorry for my confusion, but like i said, i had no prior need for a paid account (api) and the docs do nowhere mention that.

neotrope
This is untrue. Anyone can verify this by hitting the API using their key:

    curl https://api.openai.com/v1/models \
      -H "Authorization: Bearer TOKEN" | \
      jq '.data[].id'
Curious how you got it though. Perhaps you had an account for awhile?
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
chatmasta
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.

savy91
OP is referring to GPT4 API
hsn915
What waitlist? I got immediate access as soon as I paid.
layoric
I assume they mean API access to GPT4, not the ChatGPT interface.
rnk
They must mean for free
savy91
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
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.

stavros
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
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
Weird, I got API access pretty much next day and I’m just a solo dev playing around with it for personal projects.
Workaccount2
They have no obligation to be fair.
dllthomas
But perhaps a nominal obligation to be open.
neotrope
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.

gemstones
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?

neotrope
They can’t know. Eventually it will be open to everyone like cloud providers are today.
gemstones
I don't see any contradiction to their mission in being closed. If you think that the people you've given access to are the ones who you know will benefit humanity, and you're not sure about the others, it makes sense to ignore the others.

FWIW, I don't think that they're giving access based on that mission, but I don't think your claim has much merit. There is a possibility that unfairness and their mission are perfectly in sync.

neotrope
How long will it be before it becomes unfair in your view? What if they never open it up and the only way to get access is through YC or knowing the right person.

What if you had to give away 10% of your company to get access to AWS (or any cloud provider)?

gemstones
It already is unfair in my view! But I don't care about the unfairness. There's a strong case to be made that benefiting humanity means that they should have stopped most people from being on the waitlist at all. There are plenty of people we exclude from having tech in an unfair way to benefit humanity, we do that through any number of sanctions already.
junon
They abandoned that mission ages ago.
mikae1
> their mission contradicts the advantage they’re providing to friends.

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

Kye
It started as a non-profit.
dragonwriter
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.

neotrope
Exactly.

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

stavros
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?).
dragonwriter
They state (or did last I looked) that their priority is based on submission of quality AI test cases to their repository of such.
stavros
Ah, I wasn't aware, thanks.
halfjoking
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.

reneberlin
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.

neotrope
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.

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