Huh, so Elon's lawsuit worked? The nonprofit will retain control? Or is this just spin on a plan that will eventually still sideline the nonprofit?
It more sounds like the district attorneys won
Evolving OpenAI's Structure
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Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure
#32It's somewhat odd to me that many companies operating in the public eye are basically stating "We are creating a digital god, an instrument more powerful than any nuclear weapon" and raising billions to do it, and nobody bats an eye...
Lots of people in academia and industry are calling for more oversight. It's the US government that's behind. Europe's AI Act bans applications with unacceptable risk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence_Act
Unless China handicaps the their progress as well (which they won’t, see made in China 2025), all you’re doing is handing the future to deepseek et al.
Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure
#33This restructuring is essentially a sophisticated maneuver toward wealth and power maximization shrouded in altruistic language.
Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
to me it sounds like an admission that AGI is bullshit! AGI would be so disruptive to the current economic regime that "winner takes all" barely covers it, I think. Admitting they will be in normal competition with other AI companies implies specializations and niches to compete, which means Artificial Specialized Intelligence, NOT general intelligence! and that makes complete sense if you don't have a lay person's u…
That, or they don't care if they get to AGI first, and just want their payday now. Which sounds pretty in-line with the SV culture of putting profit above all else.
If they think AGI is imminent the value of that payday is very limited. I think the grandparent is more correct: OpenAI is admitting that near term AGI - which, being that the only one anyone really cares about is the case with exponential self improvement - isn't happening any time soon. But that much is obvious anyway despite the hyperbolic nonsense now common around AI discussions.
Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure
#35From least to most speculative: * The nonprofit is staying the same, and will continue to control the for-profit entity OpenAI created to raise capital * The for-profit is changing from a capped-profit LLC to a PBC like Anthropic and Xai * These changes have been at least tacitly agreed to by the attorneys general of California and Delaware * The non-profit won’t be the largest shareholder in the PBC (likely Microsof…
Another possibility is that OpenAL thinks _none_ of the labs will achieve AGI in a meaningful timeframe so they are trying to cash out with whatever you want to call the current models. There will only be one or two of those before investors start looking at the incredible losses.
Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure
#36"We made the decision for the nonprofit to retain control of OpenAI after hearing from..." [CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS IN CALIFORNIA AND DELAWARE]
This indicates that they didn't actually want the nonprofit to retain control and they're only doing it because they were forced to by threats of legal action.
Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure
#37It's somewhat odd to me that many companies operating in the public eye are basically stating "We are creating a digital god, an instrument more powerful than any nuclear weapon" and raising billions to do it, and nobody bats an eye...
The EU does and has passed the AI act to reign in the worst consequences of this nuclear weapon. It has not been received well around here. The "digital god" angle might explain why. For many, this has become a religious movement, a savior for an otherwise doomed economic system.
Absolutely. It's frankly quite shocking to see how otherwise atheist or agnostic people have so quickly begun worshipping at the altar of "inevitable AGI apocalypse", much in the same way as how extremist Christians await the rapture.
Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure
#38It's somewhat odd to me that many companies operating in the public eye are basically stating "We are creating a digital god, an instrument more powerful than any nuclear weapon" and raising billions to do it, and nobody bats an eye...
Lots of people in academia and industry are calling for more oversight. It's the US government that's behind. Europe's AI Act bans applications with unacceptable risk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence_Act
The US government probably doesn't think it's behind.
Right now it's operated by a bunch of people who think that you can directly relate the amount of money a venture could make in the next 90 days to its net benefit for society. Government telling them how they can and cannot make that money, in their minds, is government telling them that they cannot bring maximum benefit to society.
Now, is this mindset myopic to everything that most people have in their lived experience? Is it ethically bankrupt and held by people who'd sell their own mothers for a penny if they otherwise couldn't get that penny? Would those people be banished to a place beyond human contact for the rest of their existence by functioning organs of an even somewhat-sane society?
I don't know. I'm just asking questions.
Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure
#39> transition to a Public Benefit Corporation Can some business person give us a summary on PBCs vs. alternative registrations?
A PBC is just a for-profit company that has _some_ sort of specific mandate to benefit the "public good" - however it chooses to define that. It's generally meant to provide some balance toward societal good over the more common, strictly shareholder profit-maximizing alternative.
(IANAL but run a PBC that uses this charter[1] and have written about it here[2] as part of our biennial reporting process.)
[1] https://github.com/OpenCoreVentures/ocv-public-benefit-compa...
[2] https://goauthentik.io/blog/2024-09-25-our-biennial-pbc-repo...
Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of people in academia and industry are calling for more oversight. It's the US government that's behind. Europe's AI Act bans applications with unacceptable risk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence_Act
Unless China handicaps the their progress as well (which they won’t, see made in China 2025), all you’re doing is handing the future to deepseek et al.
This thought process it not different than it was with nuclear weapons.
The primary difference is the observability - with satellites we had some confidence that other nations respected treaties, or that they had enough reaction time for mutual destruction, but with this AI development we lack all that.