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Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

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Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#131

Post by ska »

ninth_ant wrote: post #120
chis wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think often company spin like this is more targeted towards internal employees than the outside world. Employees on the inside are always going to have a decent percentage of “true believers” who have cognitive dissonance if they don’t believe they’re making the world better. And so companies need to provide a narrative to keep that type of employee happy.

I think this underestimates the degree to which the people on these companies legitimately believe what they’re saying. I’ve worked at one of these companies and absolutely would fall into your category of being a true believer at the time. People of all stripes are extremely willing to embrace ideas that justify their own personal benefit. A rich person might be more likely to believe in trickle-down economics becau…

> It’s not just being a gullible true believer ...

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” - Upton Sinclair (1930's ?)

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#132

Post by gregw2 »

ergonaught wrote: post #54
keiferski wrote: post #9

Maybe I’m missing it in this article or elsewhere on the website, but how exactly is OpenAI’s vision of making AGI going to “benefit humanity as as a whole”? I’m not asking to be snarky or imply any hidden meaning…I just don’t see how they plan on getting from A to B. From this recent press release the answer seems to be: make ChatGPT really good and offer it for free to people to use. Which is a reasonable answer, I…

Their charter defines AGI as "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work", and their intent is to ""directly build safe and beneficial AGI" or "[aid] others to achieve this". They don't address benefits beyond the wide-scale automation of economically-valuable work, and as those benefits require significant revisions to social structures it's probably appropriate that they kee…

The questions quickly arise: Safe... for whom, and beneficial... for whom?

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#133

Post by [deleted] »

m_ke wrote: post #49

“ OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. Since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact. We believe AI should be an extension of individual human wills and, in the spirit of libe…

[deleted]

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#134

Post by jerjerjer »

Start of the article:

> OpenAI’s Board of Directors is evaluating our corporate structure in order to best support the mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence (AGI)1

Footnote 1:

> A highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work.

A very interesting definition of AGI.

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#137

Post by rvz »

chis wrote: post #106
paxys wrote: post #53

I don't understand why they are spending so much time and effort trying to put a positive spin on this whole for-profit thing. No one is buying it. We all know what's going on. Just say "we want to make lots of money" and move on with your lives.

I think often company spin like this is more targeted towards internal employees than the outside world. Employees on the inside are always going to have a decent percentage of “true believers” who have cognitive dissonance if they don’t believe they’re making the world better. And so companies need to provide a narrative to keep that type of employee happy.

It's quite frankly more than that. They think we are all idiots into believing that so-called "AGI" is going to make the world a better place, whilst investors, employees are laughing all the way to the bank with every new fundraising round.

First being a non-profit, then taking Microsoft's money, then ditching non-profit status to a for-profit organization and now changing definitions of "Open" and "AGI" to raise more money.

It is a massive scam, with a new level of newspeak.

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#138

Post by JohnnyMarcone »

JohnMakin wrote: post #112
throwaway314155 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's been their working definition of AGI for awhile, actually.

All I've heard from every single tweet, press release, etc. has defined their AGI as "A system that can think like humans, or better than humans, in all areas of intelligence." This is the public's view of it as well - surely you can see how burying their "working" definition in footnotes like this apart from the hype they drum up publicly is a bit misleading, no? A cursory search yields stuff like this: https://www.…

The footnote is aligned with what Sam Altman has been saying in most interviews up until recently. I was actually surprised to see the footnote since they have shifted how they talk about AGI.

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#139

Post by lucianbr »

qoez wrote: post #5

"Why we've decided to activate our stock maximizing AIs despite it buying nothing but paperclip manufacturing companies because reaching AGI is in humanitys best interest no matter the costs"

"It would be against our fiduciary duty to not build the torment nexus."

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#140

Post by notatoad »

chis wrote: post #106
paxys wrote: post #53

I don't understand why they are spending so much time and effort trying to put a positive spin on this whole for-profit thing. No one is buying it. We all know what's going on. Just say "we want to make lots of money" and move on with your lives.

I think often company spin like this is more targeted towards internal employees than the outside world. Employees on the inside are always going to have a decent percentage of “true believers” who have cognitive dissonance if they don’t believe they’re making the world better. And so companies need to provide a narrative to keep that type of employee happy.

Even the employees, I think, would probably be fine with being told “we just want to make shitloads of money”.

I usually feel like these statements are more about the board members and C-suite trying to fool themselves.

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