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Evolving OpenAI's Structure

openai.com

61–70 of 746 posts

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#61
post #21

It'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...

Well, because it's obviously bullshit and everyone knows it. Just play the game and get rich like everyone else.

Are you sure about that? AI-powered robotic soldiers are around the corner. What could go wrong...

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#62

> transition to a Public Benefit Corporation Can some business person give us a summary on PBCs vs. alternative registrations?

The charter of a public-benefit corporation gives the company's board and management a bit of legal cover for making decisions that don't serve to maximize, or may even limit, financial returns to shareholders, when those decisions are made for the benefit of the public.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#63
post #21

It'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...

I don't know what sources you're reading. There's so much eye-batting I'm surprised people can see at all.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#64

Earlier 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…

AGI is matter of when, not if. It will likely require research breakthroughs, significant hardware advancement, and anything from a few years to a few decades. But it's coming. ChatGPT was released 2.5 years ago, and look at all the crazy progress that has been made in that time. That doesn't mean that the progress has to continue, we'll probably see a stall. But AIs that are on a level with humans for many common ta…

I don’t think that’s a safe foregone conclusion. What we’ve seen so far is very very powerful pattern matchers with emergent properties that frankly we don’t fully understand. It very well may be the road to AGI, or it may stop at the kind of things we can do in our subconscious—but not what it takes to produce truly novel solutions to never before seen problems. I don’t think we know.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#65

I think this is one of the most interesting lines as it basically directly implies that leadership thinks this won't be a winner take all market: > Instead of our current complex capped-profit structure—which made sense when it looked like there might be one dominant AGI effort but doesn’t in a world of many great AGI companies—we are moving to a normal capital structure where everyone has stock. This is not a sale,…

AGI can't really be a winner take all market. The 'reward' for general intelligence is infinite as a monopoly and it accelerates productivity.

Not only is there infinite incentive to compete, but theres decreasing costs to. The only world in which AGI is winner take all is a world in which it is extremely controlled to the point at which the public cant query it.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#66

Earlier 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…

AGI is matter of when, not if. It will likely require research breakthroughs, significant hardware advancement, and anything from a few years to a few decades. But it's coming. ChatGPT was released 2.5 years ago, and look at all the crazy progress that has been made in that time. That doesn't mean that the progress has to continue, we'll probably see a stall. But AIs that are on a level with humans for many common ta…

Either that, or this AI boom mirrors prior booms. Those booms saw a lot of progress made, a lot of money raised, then collapsed and led to enough financial loss that AI went into hibernation for 10+ years.

There's a lot of literature on this, and if you've been in the industry for any amount of time since the 1950s, you have seen at least one AI winter.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they consider themselves to have low(er) chance of winning. They could think either, but they obviously can't say the latter.

OpenAI is winning in a similar way that Apple is winning in smartphones. OpenAI is capturing most of the value in the space (generic LLM models), even though they have competitors who are beating them on price or capabilities. I think OpenAI may be able to maintain this position at least for the medium term because of their name recognition/prominence and they are still a fast mover. I also think the US is going to b…

> ban all non-US LLM providers

What do you consider an "LLM provider"? Is it a website where you interact with a language model by uploading text or images? That definition might become too broad too quickly. Hard to ban.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#68

Earlier 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…

AGI is matter of when, not if. It will likely require research breakthroughs, significant hardware advancement, and anything from a few years to a few decades. But it's coming. ChatGPT was released 2.5 years ago, and look at all the crazy progress that has been made in that time. That doesn't mean that the progress has to continue, we'll probably see a stall. But AIs that are on a level with humans for many common ta…

"X increased exponentially in the past, therefore it will increase exponentially in the same way in the future" is fallacious. There is nothing guaranteeing indefinite uncapped growth in capabilities of LLMs. An exponential curve and a sigmoidal curve look the same until a certain point.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#69

Earlier 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…

AGI is matter of when, not if. It will likely require research breakthroughs, significant hardware advancement, and anything from a few years to a few decades. But it's coming. ChatGPT was released 2.5 years ago, and look at all the crazy progress that has been made in that time. That doesn't mean that the progress has to continue, we'll probably see a stall. But AIs that are on a level with humans for many common ta…

> AGI is matter of when, not if.

LLMs destroying any sort of capacity (and incentive) for the population to think pushes this further and further out each day

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#70
So the non-profit retains control but we all know that Altman controls the board of the non-profit and I'd be shocked if he won't have significant stock in the new for-profit (from TFA: "we are moving to a normal capital structure where everyone has stock"). Which means that regardless of whether the non-profit has control on paper, OpenAI is now even better structured for Sam Altman's personal enrichment.

No more caps on profit, a simpler structure to sell to investors, and Altman can finally get that 7% equity stake he's been eyeing. Not a bad outcome for him given the constraints apparently imposed on them by "the Attorney General of Delaware and the Attorney General of California".

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