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Reading about OpenAI's success with ChatGPT it becomes quite clear that a major reason why they are perceived as being ahead isn't because they are technically superior to Google/Meta/Microsoft but simply that they have fewer inhibitions. Most of the underlying tech that powers ChatGPT was invented by the major tech firms, they simply sat on that tech and slowed down its release. Exactly why is not explicitly spelled out, but reading between the lines it does appear it was a fear of bad PR + regulatory scrutiny. OpenAI, being smaller and thus escaping the same scrutiny, decided to simply implement the readily available technology and rush it out the door.
Nobody is denying that they have great engineers, but they are not inventing anything fundamentally new. That, at least, is the view of Yann LeCun in his latest interview. Perhaps he is an embittered man trying to protect his turf, but even OpenAI boosters will admit that Google has a similar chatbot which they simply have not publicly released yet.
Google's response has been quick, basically loosening internal controls and "ethics reviews" in order to boost the release cadence. This prompted Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, to publicly criticise Google. This is of course cynical, draping yourself in the flag of responsibility while having had your success based upon being more reckless than the big boys.
I think these developments are part of a larger shift. The ever-increasing "wokism" of Big Tech has not only slowed down but arguably is even starting to decline, albeit gently. The slaughter of a substantial part of Google's AI "ethics" team in recent years come to mind. Timnit Gebru was its most high-profile victim but hardly the only one. OpenAI's success is simply yet another factor that will allow the further sidelining of naysayers inside Big Tech who are preoccupied with slowing down AI development due to social concerns.
I read a lot of inflamed commentary of how SJWs will destroy Silicon Valley during the height of the BLM mania. Ultimately, these developments tell us that once the bottom lines of Big Tech companies are even remotely threatened, they will cast aside any moral qualms without a moment's hesitation. Whether or not that is good is debatable, but it seems to be final. Obviously, this also has implications for any hopes of "holding back" AGI if it ever came close to fruition, i.e. the likelihood of that ever being feasible is probably close to nil.
I am not sure it is wokeism but rather that big tech are no longer startups but blue chip companies. When I worked as a dev for a blue chip company I barely ever wrote code, in fact I was losing my coding skills working there. There were so many meetings, so many stakeholders, so many considerations to make, so many other products that the code had to fit in with. Lots of time was spent testing, emailing and waiting for someone else to do something. Apple beat IBM not by having better tech, marketing or production but by being faster.
With that said the complexity of a huge ecosystem such as a large bank, the powergrid or Boeing is so vast that it becomes really hard to be nimble and many problems arise naturally. If one is buiding a space ship there will naturally be a lot of certifications, meetings, requirements etc which will make work slow. If you are working on google search you can't just push your code to prod and risk it crashing production. That feature that you thought you could hack together one night isn't worth risking a global piece of infrastructure over.
Tangential to the discussion, but immediately made me think of this classic article on how they build the spaceship code:
https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff
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