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Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

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391–400 of 678 posts

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't he fired for questionable reasons? I thought everyone wanted him back, and that's why he was able to return. It was, as I remember, just the board that wanted him out. I imagine if he was doing something truly nefarious, opinions might have been different, but I have no idea what kind of cult of personality he has at that company, so I might be wrong here.

> I thought everyone wanted him back, Ilyia Sutskever who was the chief Scientist of the company and honestly irreplacable in terms of AI knowledge left after Altman returned.

Only 1 of the 6 board members are still at OAI.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#392
Off-content-comment: I think this is the first time I’ve seen cloudflare “are you a bot” protection on a corporate blog post before.

I think somehow related to AI companies viewing the web as valuable data to be stolen if you don’t have it and protected property if you do have it.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He'll be under scrutiny, just not by anyone with any power whatsoever to stop or even meaningfully influence his behaviors.

Scrutiny without the ability to exert oversight, control or any modicum of restraint is... utterly useless to everyone except the historians.

No immediate ability to exert oversight, but scrutiny can be a major factor in how things go 4 years, when the voters get to exert control.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The product market fit is fantastic. This isn't the first time I've heard random strangers discussing it in public. Hardly the evidence of PMF. There is always something new in the zeitgeist, that every one is talking about, some more so than others . 2 years before it was VR, few years before that NFTs and blockchain everything, before that it was self driving cars before that personal voice assistants like Siri a…

Self-driving won't take over by just being available in the new cars people are buying anyway. It'll take over when people find it cheaper to ride robotaxis than to own a vehicle at all. That's potentially a much quicker transition, requiring significantly fewer new vehicles.

there are already cheaper ways to ride from point A to point B without owning a car (especially in urban areas) and yet car ownership has never been higher… ideal robotaxis will take at least one full generation to actually materialize.

just as a silly personal example, I took a car to the shop and got Uber credits. my wife was heading into the city for an event (had to deal with both traffic and parking) and I was like “take a free Uber” and she was like “no way, driving my own car…” my daughter on the other hand…

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#395
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we really giving Twitter that much credit these days? I feel like we gave it less credit when it was actually popular. I would give Elon jumping around on stage more credit than what Twitter/X did for this election.

[flagged]

> I know it is hard to imagine, but 1/2 the United States voters see it as the last free speech area of the internet

It is very easy to imagine that. I can also imagine shuffling a bunch of cold cuts and slices of bread and making a sandwich like on Scooby Doo but that also has no reflection of reality

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#396
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interest rates are still well below their historical average right now. And yes, venture capital investing involves high risk, of which all participants are fully aware, and intentionally looking for. We're talking They absolutely might fail. But the level of pessimism here is just plain funny. How much money are you willing to bet against them ever getting profitable?

I think there's a big difference between companies like Google and Amazon that were operated unprofitably for years but did have the option to pivot in to profitability for a lot of that time. I would also consider Uber more of an outlier than the rule in terms of blitzscaling. Maybe OpenAI will be kept alive on life support for a while because there is so much in the industry riding on AI being the next big thing, b…

>I think there's a big difference between companies like Google and Amazon that were operated unprofitably for years

How many years before they reached this point ?

chatgpt.com had 3.8B visits last month and was #8 in Internet worldwide traffic. It is the software product with by far the fastest adoption of any software product in history. "Some of the largest fundraising in Silicon Valley" you say ? Well, that sounds about right to me.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#397
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.

I've known many CEO who will stare you right in the eye and say they hear your concerns then immediately disregard you and continue with business as usual. Being a psychopath is part of the job description.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hard to say if that happens without him owning Twitter. Its fairly easy. In almost every western country the incumbent administration has been punished by voters due to inflation, this has been the case in the uk, germany, romania, france, mexico... list goes on. So Trump could have won without Elon buying twitter. Similarly he could have donated to Trump without buying Twitter, and been on stage and been all day o…

Twitter famously deplatformed Trump, as a sitting president. They were a captured institution and it was shown that corrupt intelligence agencies were directly influencing Twitter's censorship. There was no other distribution channel available. Messaging is important. Counter narratives are important.

> shown that corrupt intelligence agencies were directly influencing Twitter's censorship

That is a hyperbolic way of saying the fbi used the report feature everyone has access to when worried about domestic terrorism along the lines of the Oklahoma City bombing. Not exactly government censorship - not a potato potahto thing.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#399
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> line of research and development is leading to AGI What do you mean by AGI exactly? if you want to come back in 10 years to see who's right, at least you should provide some objective criteria so we can decide if the goal has been attained.

I'm talking about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc... >Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that matches or surpasses human cognitive capabilities across a wide range of cognitive tasks. Most (if not all) of the tests listed on the wikipedia page will be passed: >Several tests meant to confirm human-level AGI have been considered, including:…

This debate is tiring from both sides. The best LLMs can already beat me in “most cognitive tasks” if you think that means sampling over possible questions.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#400
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't he fired for questionable reasons? I thought everyone wanted him back, and that's why he was able to return. It was, as I remember, just the board that wanted him out. I imagine if he was doing something truly nefarious, opinions might have been different, but I have no idea what kind of cult of personality he has at that company, so I might be wrong here.

> I thought everyone wanted him back, and that's why he was able to return. Everyone working at OpenAI wanted him back. Which only includes people who have a significant motivation to see OpenAI succeed financially. Also, there are rumours he can be vindictive. For all I know, that might be a smear campaign. But if that were the case, and half the people at OpenAI wanted him back, the other half would have a motivati…

It sounds to me people working in AI these days have a lot more options than being fraid of a particularly vindictive man.
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