[Onawa]

I think that from a research/academic view of the landscape, building off a mutable API is much less preferred than building of a set of open weights. It would be even better if we had the training data, along with all code and open weights. However, I would take open weights over almost anything else in the current landscape.

[wrsh07]

If it came to light that somebody found a way to use this API in a way that is harmful to society would you be happy that Google could revoke access? Or unhappy?

This is a real tradeoff of freedom vs _. I agree that I'm not always a fan of Google being the one in control, but I'm much happier that they are even releasing an API. That's not something they did for go! (Of course there was a book written so someone got access)

[roughly]

If it came to light that somebody found a way to use this API in a way that is beneficial to society, would you be happy that Google could revoke access? Or unhappy?

[wrsh07]

This is a bit of a false dichotomy.

If it's useful, it's good that it was created. We should be happy about the progress. If it's harmful, we should be happy about guardrails.

Friction is a useful tool, I don't begrudge people or companies from employing it