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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]

#361
post #323

This is going to be an interesting trial. Elon has a good case that OpenAI has long diverged from his founding principles. Sam and his friends can side with Microsoft to build a ClosedAI system like Google/Deepmind and Apple. There is a place for open research. StabilityAI and Mistral seem to be carrying that torch. I don’t think SamA is the right leader for OpenAI.

Google "Microsoft strikes deal with Mistral in push beyond OpenAI" bro...

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

#362

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.

Yes, that's the new capitalism. Privatizing profits while socializing risks.

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

#363

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.

Imagine if as punishment, OpenAI were forced to OpenSource any and all IP that was developed in the non-profit phase of their company? That would be a Nuke in the AI world.

Not really. Open source and proprietary models aren't that far from them.

They don't have moat. Their main advantage have been people and aleady we see entire Anthropic spinoff, Sutskever absent, Karpathy leave, who is next?

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

#364
post #210

> GPT-4 is an AGI algorithm That claim is audacious.

I mean, I definitely disagree with the statement that GPT-4 is an AGI, but OpenAI themselves define an AGI in their charter as an AI that is better than the median human at most economically valuable work.

Even when taking that into consideration I don't consider GPT-4 to be an AGI, but you can see how someone might make attempt to make a convincing argument.

Personally though, I think this definition of AGI sets the bar too high. Let's say, hypothetically, GPT-5 comes out, and it exceeds everyone's expectations. It's practically flawless as a lawyer. It can diagnose medical issues and provide medical advice far better than any doctor can. It's coding skills are on par with that of the mythical 10x engineer. And, obviously, it can perform clerical and customer support tasks better than anyone else.

As intelligent as it sounds, you could make the argument that according to OpenAI's charter it isn't actually an AGI until it takes an embodied form, since most US jobs are actually physical in nature. According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly 45% of jobs required medium strength back when the survey was taken in 2017 (https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/physically-strenuous-jobs-...)

Hypothetically speaking, you could argue that we might wind up making superintelligence before we get to AGI simply because we haven't developed an intelligence capable of being inserted into a robot body and working in a warehouse with little in the way of human supervision. That's only if you take OpenAI's charter literally.

Worth noting that Sam Altman himself hasn't actually used the same definition of AGI though. He just argues that an AGI is one that's simply smarter than most humans. In which case, the plaintiffs could simply point to GPT-4's score on the LSAT and various other tests and benchmarks, and the defendants would have to awkwardly explain to a judge that, contrary to the hype, GPT-4 doesn't really "think" at all. It's just performing next-token prediction based on its training data. Also, look at all the ridiculous ways in which it hallucinates.

Personally, I think it would be hilarious if it came down to that. Who knows, maybe Elon is actually playing some kind of 5D chess and is burning all this money just to troll OpenAI into admitting in a courtroom that GPT-4 actually isn't smart at all.

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

#365

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

Wrong. Non-profits are not called that because they don't make profits, they are called that because they don’t return (even as a future claim) profits to private stakeholders.

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

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this how drugs get developed? Even worse, the research is done using public funds, and then privatized and commercialized later.

This is a huge problem in the US. Tax-payers are subsidizing a lot of medical advances, then the US government gives it to the private sector, privatizing whatever medical advances were paid by tax-dollars. Socialism seems to create a lot of markets for the Capitalist private sector.

Do the private companies get some special IP rights on the public sector research? It seems like in a competitive market, those private companies would have thin margins. What stops a lower cost competitor from using the same public IP? I’m clearly missing something important here.

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

#367
post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

didn't Firefox / Mozilla set that precedent already?

No. MozCo is for profit owned by Mozilla Foundation which does additional things to satisfy the IRS and has been that way since the begining.

Not since the beginning. They made it that way after beef with the IRS.

I wish they hadn't because they are thinking too commercial (extremely high paid CEO) for instance but they have a foundation to answer to which doesn't manage them like shareholders would (eg not rewarding the CEO for dropping marketshare!). This model is the worst of both worlds imo.

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

#368

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…

"Why is the NFL a non-profit: https://www.publicsource.org/why-is-the-nfl-a-nonprofit/ The total revenue of the NFL has been steadily increasing over the years, with a significant drop in 2020 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic12. Here are some figures: 2001: $4 billion 2010: $8.35 billion 2019: $15 billion 2020: $12.2 billion 2021: $17.19 billion 2022: $18 billion

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-ends-tax-exempt-statu...

Every dollar of income generated through television rights fees, licensing agreements, sponsorships, ticket sales, and other means is earned by the 32 clubs and is taxable there. This will remain the case even when the league office and Management Council file returns as taxable entities, and the change in filing status will make no material difference to our business.

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

#370
post #303

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.

I'm not at all clear on what a "not for profit" status even does, tax wise. In any jurisdiction. They are still able to actually make a profit (and quite often will, because careful balancing of perfect profit and loss is almost impossible and loss is bad), and I thought those profits were still taxed because otherwise that's too obvious as a tax dodge, it's just that profit isn't their main goal?

Nonprofits can make profits. They aren’t taxed, but they can’t issue dividends. In theory there is some reasonable limit (in the millions) of how much they can pay out via salary compensation etc. they can’t issue dividends because they have no shareholders and no equity. Therefore the profit must simply be used towards their goal, basically.
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