201–210 of 339 posts
They claim their mission is to ensure that AGI benefits all humanity. What a preposterous lie. I remember asking myself when ChatGPT was launched: "why would any sane person massively deploy such a thing?" It's the money and the power, stupid. OpenAI doesn't have any mission. To have a mission means to serve a purpose. To serve means to have higher values than money and power. And yeah, there is a hierarchy of values…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 th…
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 No. Non-profit is a deal between those founders and society. That he was an original founder is irrelevant. I don’t care about Elon, it’s the pivoting that’s inherently dishonorable.
Yes I get that but did OpenAI ever take any public donations from society? I don't think they did. It thought it was only funded by wealthy private donors.
>, it’s the pivoting that’s inherently dishonorable.
Would creating a new company (i.e. ClosedAI) that recruits OpenAI's employees and buys the intellectual property such that it leaves a "shell" of OpenAI be acceptable?
That's basically the roundabout thing Sam is trying to do now with a re-incorporated for-profit PBC that's not beholden to the 2015 non-profit organization ... except he's also trying to keep the strong branding of the existing "OpenAI" name instead of "ClosedAI".
The existing laws allow for non-profit 501c3 organizations to "convert" (scare quotes) to for-profit status by re-incorporating to a (new) for-profit company. That seems to be Sam's legal roadmap.
EDIT REPLY: They received benefits by dint of their status. If there were no such benefits
The main benefit is tax exemption but OpenAI never had profits to be taxed. Also to clarify, there's already a for-profit OpenAI Global LLC. That's the subsidiary company Microsoft invested in. It has the convoluted "capped profit" structure. Sam says he can't attract enough investors to that for-profit entity. Therefore, he wants to create another for-profit OpenAI company that doesn't have the convoluted ("bespoke" as he put it) self-imposed rules to be more attractive to new investors.
The 2 entities of non-profit and for-profit is like Mozilla Foundation + Mozilla Corporation.
[] https://www.google.com/search?q=conversion+of+501c3+to+for-p...
OpenAI is certainly not "open" nowadays.
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.
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> "We are turning our non profit into a for profit because we want to make money" isn't legal. Source? The NFL did this because they were already making a lot of money. As I understand it, the tax laws practically required the change.
The NFL was a 501c6 trade association, not a 501c3 though?
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 No. Non-profit is a deal between those founders and society. That he was an original founder is irrelevant. I don’t care about Elon, it’s the pivoting that’s inherently dishonorable.
> Non-profit is a deal between those founders and society. Yes I get that but did OpenAI ever take any public donations from society? I don't think they did. It thought it was only funded by wealthy private donors. >, it’s the pivoting that’s inherently dishonorable. Would creating a new company (i.e. ClosedAI) that recruits OpenAI's employees and buys the intellectual property such that it leaves a "shell" of OpenAI…
They received benefits by dint of their status. If there were no such benefits they wouldn’t have incorporated that way.
In any case, would creating a new company (i.e. ClosedAI) that recruits OpenAI's employees and buys the intellectual property such that it leaves a "shell" of OpenAI be acceptable?
There’s no problem with recruiting employees. The intellectual property purchase is problematic. If it’s for sale, it should be for sale to anyone and no one connected to a bidder should be involved in evaluating offers.
The existing laws allow for non-profit 501c3 organizations to "convert" (scare quotes) to for-profit status by re-incorporating to a (new) for-profit company. That seems to be Sam's legal roadmap.
Legal and honorable are not synonyms.
"If x leads to legal issue y, how much could it cost us?"
"If x leads to reputational issue z, how much could it cost us?"
-- that's my guess for the two things that matter when a company considers an action. Aside from, of course, how much money or resources the action would bring to the table in the first place, which is the primary concern (legally, culturally, etc).
People who work in this and related and indeed any industry - am I off the mark? If so, how? Look forward to any clarifications or updates to this heuristic I'm proposing.
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 am not entirely sure about this. Before 2012, may be. Somewhere along the line 2012 - 2022 it was all about doing something Good for the world. And "we want to make lots of money" isn't part of that equation. Now the pendulum may be swinging back but it only just started.
Nice point of reference may be Sequoia profile of Sam Bankman-Fried.
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…
The path between A and B has enough tangled branches that I'm reminded of childhood maze puzzles where you have to find which entrance even gets to the right goal and not the bad outcomes. The most positive take is: they want to build a general-purpose AI, to allow fully automated luxury for all; to built with care to ensure it can only be used for positive human flourishing and cannot (easily or at all) be used for…
I still don't understand this. What does it mean in practice?