OpenAI published about their very general language-writing & comprehension model (a) today.
Interestingly, they're not releasing the model itself:
Due to concerns about large language models being used to generate deceptive, biased, or abusive language at scale, we are only releasing a much smaller version of GPT-2 along with sampling code. We are not releasing the dataset, training code, or GPT-2 model weights.
Does OpenAI hold a copyright for this model (and its other intellectual property)?
If the US government decided they wanted to requisition this model, would an OpenAI copyright defend against that? Would OpenAI have any real recourse against a government requisition?
Right, this is the area I'm curious about.
I imagine that if a private firm created a process for making nuclear suitcase bombs with a unit cost < $100k, the US government would show up and be like "nice nuclear-suitcase-bomb process – that's ours now. National security reasons, etc."
(Something like this is what I meant by "requisition.")
I wonder what moves the private firm could make, in that case. Could they be like "No, sorry, we invented this process, it's protected by our copyright, and we will sue if you try to take it?"
Would they have any chance of preserving their control of the technology through the courts?
Would they be able to just pack up shop & move operations to Ireland, or wherever?
I also wonder how distant the current OpenAI case is from the hypothetical nuclear-suitcase-bomb case, in terms of property rights & moves available to the private firm.