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Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

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Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#161
post #128
post #58

I guess it's not news but it is pretty wild to see the level of millenarianism espoused by all of these guys. The board of OpenAI is supposedly going to "determine the fate of the world", robotics to be "completely solved" by 2020, the goal of OpenAI is to "avoid an AGI dictatorship". Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process? So far we are multiple years in with much investment…

> Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process? Yes, frequently and loudly. When Altman was collecting the award at Cambridge the other year, protesters dropped in on the after-award public talk/Q&A session, and he actively empathised with the protestors . > So far we are multiple years in with much investment and little return, and no obvious large-scale product-market fit, much l…

> When Altman was collecting the award at Cambridge the other year, protesters dropped in on the after-award public talk/Q&A session, and he actively empathised with the protestors.

He always does that to give himself cover, but he has clearly shown that his words mean very little in this regard. He always dodges criticism. He used to talk about the importance of him being accountable to the OpenAI board and them being able to fire him if necessary when people were questioning the dangers of having one person have this much control over something as big as bleeding edge AI. He also used to mention how he had no direct financial interests in the company since he had no equity.

Then the board did fire him. What happened next? He came back, the board is gone, he now openly has complete control over OpenAI, and they have given him a potentially huge equity package. I really don't think Sam Altman is particularly trustworthy. He will say whatever he needs to say to get what he wants.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#162

> You can’t sue your way to AGI. We have great respect for Elon’s accomplishments and gratitude for his early contributions to OpenAI, but he should be competing in the marketplace rather than the courtroom. Isn't that exactly what he's doing with x.ai? Grok and all that? IIRC Elon has the biggest GPU compute cluster in the world right now, and is currently training the next major version of his "competing in the mar…

It's rich coming from Sam Altman -- the guy who famously tried to use regulatory capture to block everyone else.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#163
Important context: Elon Musk's close friend from the PayPal days and fellow libertarian tech billionaire David Sacks has been selected as the Trump admin's czar for AI and crypto.

This is why OpenAI and Sam Altman are understandably concerned.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#164
post #136
post #58

I guess it's not news but it is pretty wild to see the level of millenarianism espoused by all of these guys. The board of OpenAI is supposedly going to "determine the fate of the world", robotics to be "completely solved" by 2020, the goal of OpenAI is to "avoid an AGI dictatorship". Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process? So far we are multiple years in with much investment…

>So far we are multiple years in with much investment and little return, and no obvious large-scale product-market fit Literally every market has been disrupted and some are being optimized into nonexistence. You don't know anyone who's been laid off by a giant corporation that's also using an AI process that people did 3 years ago?

I know companies that have had layoffs - but those would have happened anyways - regular layoffs are practically demanded by the market at this point.

I know companies that have (or rather are in the process of) adopting AI into business workflows. The only companies I know of that aren't using more labor to correct their AI tools are the ones that used it pre-ChatGPT/AI Bubble. Plenty of companies have rolled out "talk to our AI" chat bubbles on their websites and users either exploit and jailbreak them to run prompts on the company's dime or generally detest them.

AI is an extremely useful tool that has been improving our lives for a long time - but we're in the middle of an absolutely bonkers level bubble that is devouring millions of dollars for projects that often lack a clear monetization plan. Even code gen seems pretty underwhelming to most of the developers I've heard from that have used it - it may very well be extremely impactful to the next generation of developers - but most current developers have already honed their skills to out-compete code gen in the low complexity problems it can competently perform.

Lots of money is entering markets - but I haven't seen real disruption.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#165

How could he! thank god that did not happen.

From TFA: > Summer 2017: We and Elon agreed that a for-profit was the next step for OpenAI to advance the mission So basically Elon had the same idea as Sam Altman.

Sam too?!! how could he! thank god that did not happen either.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#166
dumb question - in one of the emails they mention ICO. What is that?

> I have considered the ICO approach and will not support it.

...

> I respect your decision on the ICO idea

Pretty sure they aren't talking about Initial Coin Offerings. Any clue what they mean?

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#167

A few weeks ago my OpenAI credits expired and I was billed to replace them. I had no idea this was the business model, fine you got me with your auto-renew scam because you decided my tokens were spoiled. At some point, OpenAI became who they said they werent. You can't even get chatgpt to do anything fun anymore as the lawyers have hobbled its creative expression. And now they want to fight with Elon over what they…

The free credit or the tokens? Because that's a very different story.

One year ago I gave openAi $100 to have credits for small hobby projects that use their API.

They expired and disappeared and then openAi charged me $100 to reload my lost money.

I am sure this is what I agreed to, but I personally thought I was hacked or something because I didnt expect this behavior from them.

They lost me as an API user and monthly chatgpt plus user. I hope it was worth it. They want enterprise, business, and pro users anyway and not my small potatoes.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#168

Maybe a weird question, but how does a capitalist economy work where AGI-performed-labor is categorically less expensive than human-performed labor? Do most people who labor for wages just go unemployed, and then bankrupt, and then die?

I remember watching an episode of the 1960s police drama, Dragnet.

In one of the episodes, Detective Joe Friday spoke with some computer technicians in a building full of computers (giant, at the time). Friday asked the computer technician,

> "One more thing. Do you think that computers will take all our jobs one day?"

> "No. There will always be jobs for humans. Those jobs will change, maybe include working on and maintaining computers, but there will still be important jobs for humans."

That bit of TV stuck with me. Here we are 60 years later and that has proven true. I suspect it will still be true in 60 years, regardless of how well AI advances.

Dario Amodei, former VP of research at OpenAI and current CEO of Anthropic, notes[0] a similar sentiment:

> "First of all, in the short term I agree with arguments that comparative advantage will continue to keep humans relevant and in fact increase their productivity, and may even in some ways level the playing field between humans. As long as AI is only better at 90% of a given job, the other 10% will cause humans to become highly leveraged, increasing compensation and in fact creating a bunch of new human jobs complementing and amplifying what AI is good at, such that the “10%” expands to continue to employ almost everyone. In fact, even if AI can do 100% of things better than humans, but it remains inefficient or expensive at some tasks, or if the resource inputs to humans and AI’s are meaningfully different, then the logic of comparative advantage continues to apply. One area humans are likely to maintain a relative (or even absolute) advantage for a significant time is the physical world. Thus, I think that the human economy may continue to make sense even a little past the point where we reach “a country of geniuses in a datacenter”.

Amodei does think that eventually we may need to eventually organize economic structures with powerful AI in mind, but this need not imply humans will never have jobs.

[0]: https://darioamodei.com/machines-of-loving-grace

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#169
If I read anything from this it's the OpenAI is looking weak and worried if they are trying to use this to garner support or, at least, generate negative publicity for x.AI / Musk.

Altman being the regulatory capture man muscling out competitors via pushing the white house and washington to move for safety, the whole board debacle and converting from not for profit to profit.

I don't think anyone sees Musks efforts as altruistic.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#170
post #128
post #58

I guess it's not news but it is pretty wild to see the level of millenarianism espoused by all of these guys. The board of OpenAI is supposedly going to "determine the fate of the world", robotics to be "completely solved" by 2020, the goal of OpenAI is to "avoid an AGI dictatorship". Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process? So far we are multiple years in with much investment…

> Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process? Yes, frequently and loudly. When Altman was collecting the award at Cambridge the other year, protesters dropped in on the after-award public talk/Q&A session, and he actively empathised with the protestors . > So far we are multiple years in with much investment and little return, and no obvious large-scale product-market fit, much l…

> and he actively empathised with the protestors.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/narcissistic-mirroring.html

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