alt Hacker News> We're developing a responsible access framework that makes models available to researchers for scholarly purposes while preventing misuse.
The idea of training such a model is really a great one, but not releasing it because someone might be offended by the output is just stupid beyond believe.
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You have to understand that while the rest of the world has moved on from 2020, academics are still living there. There are many strong leftists, many of whom are deeply censorious; there are many more timeservers and cowards, who are terrified of falling foul of the first group.
And there are force multipliers for all of this. Even if you yourself are a sensible and courageous person, you want to protect your project. What if your manager, ethics committee or funder comes under pressure?
Maybe the authors are overly careful. Maybe avoiding to publish aspects of their work gives an edge over academic competitors. Maybe both.
In my experience "data available upon request" doesn't always mean what you'd think it does.
Public access, triggering a few racist responses from the model, a viral post on Xitter, the usual outrage, a scandal, the project gets publicly vilified, financing ceases. The researchers carry the tail of negative publicity throughout their remaining careers.
Why risk all this?