OpenAI Becomes ClosedAI
I've read that the founders did honestly want to make an Open AI company when they started OpenAI, but that business model didn't work out (wow, what a surprise) so they were forced to switch to being not-Open. Regardless of whether you believe that, the "Open" part of their name has been extremely misleading for a long time. But the average person doesn't know that; they see that the company is called OpenAI and don't question the Open part.<p>I'm not a lawyer and I don't know what the law allows regulators to do, but I wouldn't mind if the government forced ClosedAI to change its name under some sort of truth in advertising law.<p>More importantly, we tech folks have specialized knowledge and it's our responsibility to not propagate harmful, deceptive propaganda like the OpenAI name. Especially for something as widely known and culturally relevant as ClosedAI. I've personally been calling it ClosedAI for a while now. When people ask I give them a quick 5 second explanation.<p>Another example, much less bad than ClosedAI, is "iPhone." It's not your phone, you don't control it. Apple can run and inject whatever code they want onto your ("i") Phone, and you can't make the phone run software which isn't approved by Apple. I personally refer to it as an ApplePhone (and ApplePad, Apple Mobile OS instead of iOS, etc.). I'll admit this is a pretty weak example; the name clearly has non-nefarious origins. But in the modern day, at a subtle psychological level, it's still misleading in an Orwellian sort of way. And it brings up a good opportunity to give "normal" people a quick 15-second intro to software freedom.