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OpenAI and Elon Musk

openai.com

221–230 of 1001 posts

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#221
post #13

Their evidence does a nice job of making Musk seem duplicitous, but it doesn't really refute any of his core assertions: they still have the appearance of abandoning their core mission to focus more on profits, even if they've elaborated a decent justification of why that's necessary to do. Or to put it more simply: here they explain why they had to betray their core mission. But they don't refute that they did betra…

> here they explain why they had to betray their core mission. But they don't refute that they did betray it.

you are assuming that their core mission is to "Build an AGI that can help humanity for free and as a non-profit", the way their thinking seems to be is "Build an AGI that can help humanity for free"

they figured it was impossible to achieve their core mission by doing it in a non-profit way, so they went with the for-profit route but still stayed with the mission to offer it for free once the AGI is achieved

Several non-profits sell products to further increase their non-profit scale, would it be okay for OpenAI non-profits to sell products that came in the process of developing AGI so that they can keep working on building their AGI? museums sell stuff to continue to exist so that they can continue to build on their mission, same for many other non-profits. the OpenAI structure just seems to take a rather new version of that approach by getting venture capital (due to their capital requirements)

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#222
Reading the messages:

This is a marketing step of course, no sane lawyer would agree to this. And that is because, I don't think they show what they think and want to show.

That at some point Elon had an opinion that a lot of money is needed or that OpenAI maybe had no future? That does not change the duty or obligations of a non-profit to the mission.

Also, it is clear some important information has been blacked out. And that critical conversation happened offline.

I don't think it will do Elon the image pressure they think it will. But if I was Microsoft... I would hedge my bets a lot...

This looks more and more as giving fuel to a dissolution action of OpenAI as a non-profit than anything else.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#223
How do the openAi engineers feel about being tricked into the roost? Strange we never hear from them , is it because their mouths are stuffed with gold?

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#224

This looks bad for OpenAI (although it's been pretty obvious that they are far from open for a long time). But it looks 10x worse for Elon. At least for the public image, he desperately try to maintain. > As we discussed a for-profit structure in order to further the mission, Elon wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control. > In late 2017, we and Elon decided the next step for the mission was to create a…

There's nothing new here, though. That he demanded control of OpenAI has been well reported in the past.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#225
post #109

Elon Musk's antics have been utterly shameless. a) If he cared at all about altruism, humanity etc he would open-source Grok and allow anyone access to the Twitter dataset. b) He talks all about AGI in relation to Tesla but then used it as a weapon to try and extract more control over the company from investors.

ah yes, he should be shamed for being a major force behind accelerating adoption of eletric cars by a few years minimum.

He's being shamed for being a loud hypocrite about OpenAI, not for his accomplishments pushing the mass adoption of EVs. Two different things.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way to reconcile their founding statements and principles with what they’re doing now. They don’t even publish legitimate research papers any longer and barely even try to defend themselves as aligning with their prior mission.

I think in their minds, their mission has always been to make AI widely available. It seems like they initially thought open source and open research were a viable path to achieving that mission, but later they changed their minds. I get why people are upset about that pivot, but considering they single-handedly brought AI out of the research lab and into the mainstream, it seems hard to argue that they were wrong. I…

To be clear, widely available is my paraphrase while their founding principles stated that the technology should be “freely available” and explicitly reference open source. That’s entirely inconsistent with what they’re doing now. What you’re calling a “pivot” is just casting aside what they said they stood for in pursuit of money, which fine, whatever, happens all the time. We don’t have to strain ourselves making excuses for them, because, again, they hardly bother to do that themselves.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#227
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think there is far more societal harm in trying to codify unresolvable sets of ethics Codification of an unresolvable set of ethics - however imperfect - is the only reason we have societies, however imperfect. It's been so since at least the dawn of agriculture, and probably even earlier than that.

Do you trust a for profit corporation with the codification?

Call me a capitalist, but I trust several of them competing with each other under the enforcement of laws that impose consequences on them if they produce and distribute content that violates said laws.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#228
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I screwed up. It has been a while, but it looks like I misread Part II, Section B, Line 10 as $70 million, not $70,000. Let me check the previous years to see if I'm thinking of something else. Thanks for double-checking this. I know they got $20 million from Open Philanthropy which qualifies as public support, so I am still wondering about the other $70 million, but it is not the smoking gun that I thought i…

Most rich people setup DAFs alongside their family foundations so that they can make large contributions to this type of org. without triggering disclosure or private foundation tests -- so e.g. Musk will create a DAF at Fidelity Charitable and give them $100M and collect the associated tax break in year 1 -- he can then direct Fidelity to grant $20M/year to OpenAI which will show up as Public Support since it's comi…

I am an investigative reporter, and I approve of your research tenacity!

Nice :)

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#229
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What has failed are completely "collectivist" or "individualist" societies. Societies that balance the two (like the post WWII US) are the ones that have advanced their standard of living the most.

such as?

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#230

They redefined the open in OpenAI in an almost Orwellian way.

As is often argued right here on HN, many programmers believe the Open Source Initiative/Foundation redefined "open" and are not happy with their co-opting of the term. OpenAI is merely playing the same game.
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