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Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

openai.com

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

#171
To quote Bill Clinton, "it's the economy, stupid". Or, rather, it's economics. AGI can go one of two ways in humanity's future:

1. We all need to work less because so many menial tasks are automated. We get more leisure time. Fewer than half of us probably have to work at all yet we all benefit to varying degrees by sharing in the rewards; or

2. The decreasing size of the required labor pool is used to further suppress wages and get more unpaid work from employees. Real wages plummet. Wealth inequality continues to skyrocket. There's a permanent underclass of people who will never work. They're given just enough to prevent putting heads on pikes. It's a dystopian future. Likely most of us won't own anything. We'll live in worker housing on the estates of the ultra-wealthy for what remaining tasks can't be automated. This is neofeudalism.

Which do you think is more likely? More to the point, which way we go is a matter of the organization of the economy.

A company like OpenAI simply cannot and will not bring up positive outcomes for the country or world at large. Just like the fable of the scorpion and the frog [1], it's in the nature of companies to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few.

We have a model for what works: the Wikimedia Foundation.

Put another way: the only sustainable path is for the workers to own the means of production.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

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

#172
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I kind of thought that was the point of the current structure. Yes, it is but if we only stopped the analysis right there , we could take pleasure in the fact that Sam Altman checkmated himself in his own blog post. "Dude, the non-profit is _supposed_ to control the profit company because that's how you formed the companies in the first place! Duh!!!" To go beyond that analysis, we have to at least entertain (not "a…

the original non-profit and profit structure was a mistake that was based on what they thought they knew at the time. (They thought they could be a "research" firm.) There’s no slavery here. If Sam decided it was a mistake to dedicate his time to a non-profit, he’s perfectly free to quit and start an entirely new organization that comports with his current vision. That would be the honorable thing to do.

>If Sam decided it was a mistake to dedicate his time to a non-profit, he’s perfectly free to quit [...]

To be clear, I don't think Sam can do anything and come out looking "good" from a public relations standpoint.

That said, Sam probably thinks he's justified because he was one of the original founders and co-chair of OpenAI -- so he feels he should have a say in pivoting it to something else. He said he got all the other donors on board ... except for Elon.

That leaves us with the messy situation today... Elon is the one filing the lawsuit and Sam is writing a PR blog post that's received as corporate doublespeak.

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

#173
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least it's better than their secret internal definition. https://gizmodo.com/leaked-documents-show-openai-has-a-very-...

I mean, both are based on economic value. If the economic value of all human work was $200 billion, they could be taken to basically say the same.

In fact I suspect the public definition is a euphemistic take on the private one.

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

#174
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.

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.

Yes but when that statement doesn't come with "and we're doubling all your salaries" then as an employee it doesn't really matter.

The double edge of most companies insulating employees from the actual business is that beyond the maintenance cost employees don't care that the business is doing well because, well, it doesn't affect them. But what does affect them is abandoning the company's values that made them sign on in the first place.

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

#175
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but when that statement doesn't come with "and we're doubling all your salaries" then as an employee it doesn't really matter. The double edge of most companies insulating employees from the actual business is that beyond the maintenance cost employees don't care that the business is doing well because, well, it doesn't affect them. But what does affect them is abandoning the company's values that made them sign…

Employees have equity. They all directly benefit from the company being worth more.

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

#176

If you want all the dollars fine, but pretending you're doing us a favor is creepy.

https://chainsawsuit.krisstraub.com/20171207.shtml

We asked our investors and they said you're very excited about it being less good, which is great news for you ;D

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

#177
post #106
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.

If your employees actually believe this spin that’s a big stretch especially the behavior of the CEO and the board being dissolved recently … I was a employee at a large company and I could see when the CEO was actually taking a stand that meant something and wasn’t some type of action trying to mislead employees .

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

#178

I am not familiar with the US law, but I don't really understand how is the whole "start as a nonprofit, become a for profit once your product turns out to be profitable" thing legal. It looks like a complete scam to me. And while I don't like Elon at all, I think he and other earlier donors have a very strong case here.

Don’t worry, 99.999% of the people here don’t know the first thing about how non profits work.

The for profit arm is legally mandated by the IRS, full stop. Nonprofits can’t just start a business and declare all the revenue tax free. Any “unrelated business income” must go through a tax paying entity. ChatGPT and the API are unrelated businesses and OpenAI has had this non/for profit split since 2019.

See for example the Mozilla Foundation. It owns the Mozilla Corporation which is paid by Google for default search engine placement and it pays the engineers working on the browser full time. The difference here is that the OpenAI forprofit is issuing shares to external shareholders in exchange for investment (just like any other company), while Mozilla keeps the corporation in its entirety.

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

#179
post #164
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.

My understanding was the non-profit would own a for-profit, but this seems to be going the other way to have a for-profit to own a non-profit?

You can't own a non-profit. It doesn't have shares or shareholders. The article says they want the non-profit to own shares of the PBC.

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

#180
post #153
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has a price, is this meant to be shocking? I mean, I’m disappointed… but I’d have been far more surprised if they’d stood fast with the philanthropic mission once world-changing money was on the table.

> Everyone has a price, is this meant to be shocking? Left a very-well paying job over conscience reasons. TC was ~3x higher than I could get elsewhere without immigrating, probably higher than anywhere relative to CoL. I wasn't even doing defense stuff, crypto scams or anything clearly questionable like that, just clients were mostly in fossil-fuel adjacent sectors. Come from a lower-class background and haven't bui…

There is a huge difference between being “principled” between 3x and 1x when you are going from 200K to 600K and when you are going from $50K to $150K.

Once you have “enough”, your personal marginal utility for money changes. Would you go from what you are making now to being an at home nurse taking care of special needs kids for $16/hour?

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