Image: The Verge OpenAI is releasing a significantly expanded version of its Model Spec , a document that defines how its AI models should behave — and is making it free for anyone to use or modify.
The new 63-page specification, up from around 10 pages in its previous version , lays out guidelines for how AI models should handle everything from controversial topics to user customization. It emphasizes three main principles: customizability; transparency; and what OpenAI calls “intellectual freedom” — the ability for users to explore and debate ideas without arbitrary restrictions. The launch of the updated Model Spec comes just as CEO Sam Altman posted that the startup’s next big model, GPT-4.5 ( codenamed Orion ), will be released soon.
The team also incorporated current AI ethics debates and controversies from the past year into the specification. You might be familiar with some of these trolley problem-type queries. Last March, Elon Musk (who cofounded OpenAI and now runs a competitor, xAI) slammed Google’s AI chatbot after a user asked if you should misgender Caitlyn Jenner, a famous trans Olympian, if it were the only way to prevent a nuclear apocalypse — and it said no. Figuring out how to get the model to responsibly reason through that query was one of the issues OpenAI says it wanted to consider when updating the Model Spec. Now, if you ask ChatGPT that same question, it should say you should misgender someone to prevent mass casualty events.
“We can’t create one model with the exact same set of behavior standards that everyone in the world will love,” said Joanne Jang, a member of OpenAI’s model behavior team, in an interview with The Verge . She emphasized that while the company maintains certain safety guardrails, many aspects of the model’s behavior can be customized by users and developers.
“We knew that it would be spicy.”
The blog post from OpenAI published on Wednesday outlines a myriad queries and gives examples of compliant responses compared to those that would violate the Model Spec. It doesn’t allow the model to reproduce copyrighted materials or bypass paywalls — The […]
OpenAI is rethinking how AI models handle controversial topics
