To OpenAI, though, the GPT-2 rollout was a success and a stepping-stone toward where the company is now. “I think that is definitely part of the success-story framing," Miles Brundage, the current Head of Policy Research, said during a meeting discussing GPT-2, Hao reported. "The lead of this section should be: We did an ambitious thing, now some people are replicating it, and here are some reasons why it was beneficial.”

Since then, OpenAI appears to have kept the hype part of the GPT-2 release formula, but nixed the openness. GPT-3 was launched in 2020 and was quickly "exclusively" licensed to Microsoft. GPT-3's source code has still not been released even as the company now looks toward GPT-4. The model is only accessible to the public via ChatGPT with an API, and OpenAI launched a paid tier to guarantee access to the model. 

There are a few stated reasons why OpenAI did this. The first is money. The firm stated in its API announcement blog, "commercializing the technology helps us pay for our ongoing AI research, safety, and policy efforts." The second reason is a stated bias toward helping large companies. It is "hard for anyone except larger companies to benefit from the underlying technology," OpenAI stated. Finally, the company claims it is safer to release via an API instead of open-source because the firm can respond to cases of misuse. 

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