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Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

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Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#351

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #278
siliconc0w wrote: post #248

There is a lot in here but turning a non-profit into a for-profit definitely should be challenged. Otherwise why wouldn't everyone start as a non-profit, develop your IP, and then switch to 'for-profit' mode once you got something that works? You don't pay income taxes and your investors get write offs.

This. Even when we ignore the whole ethical aspect of "AI for benefit of humanity" and all that philosophic stuff, there are very real legal reasons why OpenAI should never have been allowed to switch to for profit. They were only able to circumvent this with their new dual company structure, but this should still not be legal.

The point of their charter is not to make money, it's to develop AI for the benefit of all, which I interpret to mean putting control and exploitation of AI in the hands of the public.

The reality: we don't even get public LLM models, let alone source code, while their coffers overfloweth.

Awesome for OpenAI and their employees! Every else goes without. Public benefit my arse.

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#352

Post by nerdponx »

emodendroket wrote: post #341
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The replies that say "well the profits go to the non-profit, all's good" miss the reality of these high profit nonprofits: the profits invariably end up in the pockets of management. Most of those are essentially scams, but it doesn't mean that OpenAI isn't just a more subtle scam. The hype and the credulity of the general public play right into this scam. People will more or less believe anything Sam the Money Gushi…

If your beef with this structure is that executives get paid handsomely I have bad news about the entire category of nonprofits, regardless of whether they have for-profit arms or not.

I think they're making the same point as you: "nonprofit" is usually a scam to enrich executives anyway.

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#353

Post by [deleted] »

wyantb wrote: post #148
breadwinner wrote: post #28

In what capacity is Musk suing OpenAI? Musk may have co-founded the company, but then he left (to avoid any potential future conflict of interest with his role as CEO of Tesla, as Tesla was increasingly becoming an AI-intensive company). Is he a shareholder, if not what gives him any say in the future of the company?

Breach of contract seems to be the major one - from https://www.scribd.com/document/709742948/Musk-vs-OpenAI page 34 has the prayers for relief. B and C seem insane to me, I don't see how a court could decide that. On the other hand, compelling specific performance based on continual reaffirmations of the founding agreement (page 15)...seems viable at a glance. Musk is presumably a party to several relevant contracts…

[deleted]

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#354

Post by username332211 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #164
jimbokun wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Pittsburgh, and UPMC’s nonprofit status as they make billions in profits and pay their executives fortunes, is a running joke. With the hospitals and universities as the biggest employers and land owners here, a big chunk of the cities financial assets are exempt from contributing to the city budget.

If they are non-profit, they do not make billions in profits. I suspect you mean revenue :) Exec compensation is another thing, but also not a concern I am super sympathetic to given that for profit companies of similar magnitude generally pay their execs way more they just are not required to report it.

> If they are non-profit, they do not make billions in profits. I suspect you mean revenue :)

Uhm, profit is a fact of accounting. Any increase in equity (or "net assets", or whatever other euphemism the accountant decides to use) on a balance sheet is profit. Revenue is something completely different.

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#355

Post by iExploder »

emodendroket wrote: post #322
iExploder wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it lead to probing and discovery?...

Not sure what you mean to imply might happen.

Musk claims the deal between OpenAI and MS is - MS gets access only to OpenAI pre-AGI tech. And he claims MS influences OpenAI board to not classify their AGI tech as AGI.

Based on that it stands to reason Musk would make a case of determining whether openai achieved AGI internally via gpt4 or q* through discovery. Maybe he can get depositions from ousted openai members to support this?

I'm not a lawyer, just trying to follow the breadcrumbs..

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#356

Post by sahila »

swozey wrote: post #257
sensanaty wrote: post #244

I don't even particularly like Musk, but I definitely despise M$ and their comic-book tier villanous shenanigans even more. Here's to hoping M$ gets fucked in this.

The mental gymnastics that some tech bro has to go through to like Musk over Microsoft to the point that they still use the 2001 meme of "M$FT" is hilarious. I know just about everything I could ever need to know about both companies and I have tons, tons of friends who absolutely love and have been at "M$FT" for 5-20 years. I don't know a single person who likes working at Tesla or SpaceX and I used to live in Austi…

Liking the environment at Microsoft is very different than liking what the company does. I know far more people excited about space x than whatever Microsoft is doing and none uses any Microsoft products whereas tons of them opted into buying a Tesla!

Working at Microsoft is considered easy work whereas it's the opposite for Elon's companies. Doesn't make him a bad person.

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#357

Post by cush »

emodendroket wrote: post #270
siliconc0w wrote: post #248

There is a lot in here but turning a non-profit into a for-profit definitely should be challenged. Otherwise why wouldn't everyone start as a non-profit, develop your IP, and then switch to 'for-profit' mode once you got something that works? You don't pay income taxes and your investors get write offs.

They didn't "turn it into" a for-profit though, they created a separate for-profit arm. This one is unusually successful but that's not an unusual thing for even "regular" charities to do in order to engage in some activities that they wouldn't normally be able to.

> in order to engage in some activities that they wouldn’t normally be able to

What activities couldn’t they do with their charity arm that required this for-profit arm?

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#358

Post by moralestapia »

sema4hacker wrote: post #281

A NY Times article says "Though Mr. Musk has repeatedly criticized OpenAI for becoming a for-profit company, he hatched a plan in 2017 to wrest control of the A.I. lab from Mr. Altman and its other founders and transform into a commercial operation that would work alongside his other companies, including the electric carmaker Tesla, and make use of their increasingly powerful supercomputers, people familiar with his…

Could he be the one behind the recent coup at OpenAI, as well?

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#359

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

yawnxyz wrote: post #335
sigmoid10 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Even when we ignore the whole ethical aspect of "AI for benefit of humanity" and all that philosophic stuff, there are very real legal reasons why OpenAI should never have been allowed to switch to for profit. They were only able to circumvent this with their new dual company structure, but this should still not be legal.

didn't Firefox / Mozilla set that precedent already?

I can download the Firefox sources and everything else they produce.

That they make money incidentally to that is really no problem and a positive because it provides reasonable funding.

What if Firefox made a world beating browser by accident. Would they be justified in closing the source, restricting access and making people pay for it?

That's what OpenAI did.

Re: Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

#360

Post by Qworg »

TechPlasma wrote: post #264
xiphias2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually NVIDIA just took over Saudi Aramco, but they are sharing 3rd position.

I read this comment as "NVIDIA just took over Saudi Aramco" and was briefly confused in what could possibly be their reasoning for that acquisition?! Perhaps they decided to get some weird lower price on fuel for their gpus.... Anyways it was a brief but fun bit of confusion.

This was a good opportunity to say "overtook" as it breaks the idea of acquisition (and sounds more like racing)
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