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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

#261

> Our current structure does not allow the Board to directly consider the interests of those who would finance the mission Why should it? You can't serve two masters. They claim to serve the master of human-aligned AI. Why would they want to add another goal that's impossible to align with their primary one?

I want to put my opinion somewhere and as a reply to this seems like a good option. I am anti-capitalism and anti-profit and anti-Microsoft, but I can take a step back and recognize the truth to what’s being said here. They give the context that hundreds of billions are being spent on AI right now, and if OpenAI wants to remain competitive, they need significantly more money than they originally anticipated. They’re…

The man is a known fraudster. Why should we take anything he says on good faith to begin with?

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

#264
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is simpler than that: people generally tend to work for companies who's products they think are interesting and useful. It's much easier to go into work each day when you think you're spending your time doing something useful.

That’s also a good reason to underpay, historically.

Maybe I'm naive, but I'll gladly take small compensation hit in exchange for not hating my job.

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

#265
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…

There’s also the added layer that if you admit the place you’re working at is doing something wrong/immoral, not only do you suddenly feel a conscience-driven pressure to do something about it (leave even) but also it opens the door that maybe you had been contributing to something “evil” this whole time and either didn’t catch it or ignored it. Nobody wants to believe they were doing something wrong basically every day.

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s also a good reason to underpay, historically.

Maybe I'm naive, but I'll gladly take small compensation hit in exchange for not hating my job.

Or a large hit or even work for free for a prestigious job. Magazines and talent agencies were like this.

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

#267
post #35

The whole thing is a paper thin farce. Strong principled stance until the valuations got big (helped in no small measure by the principled stance)…and then backtracked it when everyone saw the riches there for the taking with a little let’s call it reframing

This is specifically why I caution people against trusting OpenAI's "we won't train on your data" checkbox. They are specifically financially incentivized to do so, and have a demonstrated history of saying the nice, comforting thing and then doing the thing that benefits them instead.

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

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s also a good reason to underpay, historically.

Maybe I'm naive, but I'll gladly take small compensation hit in exchange for not hating my job.

There is huge gradient between not hating the job and believing in fake mission.

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

#269
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We are turning our non profit into a for profit because we want to make money" isn't legal. To make this transition in a way that maximizes how much money they can make while minimizing what they lose to lawsuits they need to explain what they're doing in a positive way.

> "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.

OpenAI isn't making money. They are like a giant furnace for investment dollars. Even putting aside that the NFL and OpenAI aren't the same kind of entity, there is also no taxes issue.

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

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess they’re going to put as many expenses as possible on the nonprofit. For example, all the compute used for free tiers of ChatGPT will be charged to the nonprofit despite being a massive benefit to the for-profit. They may even charge the training costs, which will be in the billions, to the nonprofit as well

Simple tax optimization. Like new billionaires promising to significant donations. a) they don't have to donate. b) they can immediately slash those promised donations from taxes.

How can one slash a non existant donation from taxes?
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