I expect that “labs” usefully communicates to most of my interlocutors that I’m talking about the companies developing frontier models and not something like Palantir. There’s a lot of hype-based incentive for companies to claim to be “AI companies”, which creates confusion. (Indeed, I didn’t know before I chose Palantir as an example, but of course they’re marketing themselves as an AI company.)
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That said, I agree with the consideration in your post. I don’t claim which is the bigger consideration, only that they trade off.
I think this is a useful distinction, thanks for raising it. I support terms like, “frontier AI company,” “company making frontier AI,” and “company making foundation models,” all of which help distinguish OpenAI from Palantir. Also it seems pretty likely that within a few years, most companies will be AI companies!? So we’ll need new terms. I just don’t want that term to be “lab”.
Another thing you might be alluding to is that “lab” is less problematic when talking to people within the AI safety community, and more problematic the further out you go. I think that, within a community, the terms of art sort of lose their generic connotations over time, as community members build a dense web of new connotations specific to that meaning. I regret to admit that I’m at the point where the word “lab” without any qualifiers at all makes me think of OpenAI!
But code switching is hard, and if we use these terms internally, we’ll also use them externally. Also external people read things that were more intended for internal people, so the language leaks out.
I expect that “labs” usefully communicates to most of my interlocutors that I’m talking about the companies developing frontier models and not something like Palantir. There’s a lot of hype-based incentive for companies to claim to be “AI companies”, which creates confusion. (Indeed, I didn’t know before I chose Palantir as an example, but of course they’re marketing themselves as an AI company.)
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That said, I agree with the consideration in your post. I don’t claim which is the bigger consideration, only that they trade off.
I think this is a useful distinction, thanks for raising it. I support terms like, “frontier AI company,” “company making frontier AI,” and “company making foundation models,” all of which help distinguish OpenAI from Palantir. Also it seems pretty likely that within a few years, most companies will be AI companies!? So we’ll need new terms. I just don’t want that term to be “lab”.
Another thing you might be alluding to is that “lab” is less problematic when talking to people within the AI safety community, and more problematic the further out you go. I think that, within a community, the terms of art sort of lose their generic connotations over time, as community members build a dense web of new connotations specific to that meaning. I regret to admit that I’m at the point where the word “lab” without any qualifiers at all makes me think of OpenAI!
But code switching is hard, and if we use these terms internally, we’ll also use them externally. Also external people read things that were more intended for internal people, so the language leaks out.