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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]

#421

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.

I think that's been part of the capitalist model since roughly the beginning.

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

#422

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.

You misunderstand how taxes work.

Unprofitable businesses of every sort don't pay income taxes. Startups like OpenAI don't pay income taxes because they don't have income. And investors don't get a writeoff merely for investing in a nonprofit; it's not like a donation to a nonprofit (which would be deductable).

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

#423

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?

No. Elon Musk was not involved with the firing of Sam Altman as far as I'm aware.

The real story behind that is... complicated. First, Sam Altman allegedly does stuff that looks to be setting up a coup against the board, so the board fires Sam, but they don't provide proper context[0] and confuse everyone. So Sam gets Microsoft and a bunch of OpenAI employees to revolt and pressure the board to bring him back. He then fires the board and instates a new one, basically the original coup plan but now very much open and in the public eye.

[0] To be clear, most corporate communications try to say as little as possible about internal office politics. That can easily lead into defamation lawsuits.

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

#424

Many would argue, reasonably so, that OpenAI is now a de facto subsidiary of the largest company in the world by market cap, Microsoft (Apple is second and Saudi Arabian Oil is third).

The value of Saudi Aramco can't really be trusted. It's listed on their own stock market which the company controls. It has no reporting requirements, and the float is a single digit percent of the company.

It would be the same as me creating my own market, issuing 10,000,000,000 shares, and then convincing 1000 people to buy a share at $100 and then claiming my company is worth $1T.

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

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that AGI, instead of benefitting the whole world, in which Musk is a part of, will end up only benefitting Microsoft, which he isn't a part of?

This is no AGI. An AGI is supposed to be the cognitive equivalent of a human, right? The "AI" being pushed out to people these days can't even count.

The only reason humans can count is because we have a short term memory, trivial to add to an LLM to be honest.

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

#426

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

Does this mean that I can deduct my overpriced Jets tickets as a charitable donation? That's certainly what it feels like in any case...

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

#427
post #419

Now that Google, Meta, Mistral, etc, all have great open source models, it seems rather untenable for OpenAI to 1. keep "open" in the name 2. stay closed source 3. pretend to be a non-profit at least one of those things must go, right?

I don't think there are any laws about how you name your company right? they could just say "open" as in "open for everyone to use" and that would end that discussion

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

#428

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.

Actually a good point that exposes the potential opportunism of having used the work everyone involved added as mere MVP-product-market-fit until it can go big bucks (and big disruptive and unelected and societally disruptive power).

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

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public has no idea what non-profits are and a lot of things that people call 'profit seeking ventures' (ie. selling products) are done by many non-profits.

Most frequently "The CEO gets paid $X! Doesn't sound like a non-profit to me!" I hear this all the time. As if the people working there shouldn't be paid.

Getting paid and being paid an exorbitant amount as a grift is completely different.

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

#430

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.

Agree, I believe Elon gave $50M or so in 2018 with the intent that giving this money to the non-profit openAI was going to benefit people with open access to AI systems. Sam Altman has completely thrown out any semblance of law and how non-profits work and closed down the companies whitepapers(GPT papers after 2019 no longer published) and embedded it into Microsoft. This should be a slamdunk legal ruling against this ever happening again.
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