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OpenAI ‘in early talks to give 5% stake to US government’

theguardian.com

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Re: OpenAI ‘in early talks to give 5% stake to US government’

#121

Post by jimmy76615 »

ragebol wrote: post #68
ragebol wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussed also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15789108 .

Besides direct control, what could a dividend on the profits do what a well-proportioned corporate tax on profits cannot do? The state would only get dividends assuming it would not sell shares. And the state can exert control much more fairly (ie. to all competitors as well) with regulation and laws. Regulations and taxes are seen as 'un-american' I suppose, while giving stock to the government is not somehow?

> Regulations and taxes are seen as 'un-american' I suppose, while giving stock to the government is not somehow?

Under normal circumstances the government owning stocks is just as un-american, but nothing is normal when it comes to AI.

Re: OpenAI ‘in early talks to give 5% stake to US government’

#123

Post by potsandpans »

nok22kon wrote: post #54
granzymes wrote: post #33

>The proposal would also involve other US AI companies giving a similar stake to the government, the FT reported, although it is not clear yet whether companies such as Anthropic, Google and Meta would agree to the plan. I can't see Google or Meta shareholders agreeing to this? That said, Google, Meta, and SpaceX are all still founder-controlled using supervoting shares.

the choice is progressively giving more of the company to the government, or the government taking it by force it was long predicted that it is inevitable for national governments to fully nationalize AI labs and put them under military control

As far as I'm aware, this was only predicted by play acting effective altruists who tend to have a histrionic outlook around further developments of large language models.

Re: OpenAI ‘in early talks to give 5% stake to US government’

#124

Post by whalabi »

exabrial wrote: post #12

Taxes are theft. This is absurd. There’s zero reason to bail these ding dongs out. Their entire business proposition has been to keep warm by incinerating fresh cash.

No, taxes are taxes and theft is theft.

Taxes are, in the case of a country like the United States, a legally sanctioned, representative approved (indirectly voter approved) means of supporting the needs of the nation/state as a whole.

Theft is distinguished from say, gifting money by consent. In a democracy mechanisms exist for our representatives to make decisions according to the consent of the people, to an extent.

You presumably live in a democracy so you presumably necessarily agree to abide by the laws of your nation which involve being governed by your democratically elected representatives.

Re: OpenAI ‘in early talks to give 5% stake to US government’

#125

Post by triceratops »

ragebol wrote: post #68
ragebol wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussed also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15789108 .

Besides direct control, what could a dividend on the profits do what a well-proportioned corporate tax on profits cannot do? The state would only get dividends assuming it would not sell shares. And the state can exert control much more fairly (ie. to all competitors as well) with regulation and laws. Regulations and taxes are seen as 'un-american' I suppose, while giving stock to the government is not somehow?

> what could a dividend on the profits do what a well-proportioned corporate tax on profits cannot do?

Incentives: Management always gets rewarded for maximizing dividends and minimizing taxable income.

Re: OpenAI ‘in early talks to give 5% stake to US government’

#126

Post by bit-anarchist »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #70
gordonhart wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objectively it’s absurd to have an organization take a significant portion of your money on threat of imprisonment just to invest it in a corporation

The state / government is the only reason they're able to have money and profits in the first place. There literally was no state (in its modern sense) until private property and the capitalist market. Feudalism or the Roman empire had an entirely different structure. The development of the modern state happened in concert with the development of classical liberal ideology, acts of enclosure, private property, and th…

You are assuming a lot from the current state of affairs.

> The state / government is the only reason they're able to have money and profits in the first place.

Nope, money/currency precedes modern states and, its predecessor, credit/trust, is how human economies worked for most of history. The pursuance of profit is merely the consequence of humans being rational actors, i.e. we have been seeking profits since the start of consciousness as we know today.

> There literally was no state (in its modern sense) until private property and the capitalist market.

Private property precedes the modern state by quite a lot, and so do markets. Depending on how you define them, private property and markets exist since the inception of humankind. The liberals merely formalized these relationships.

> Capitalism needs the state, taxes, police, and the military to coordinate competing interests, maintain property laws and social order, and to ensure its own stability generally.

Except the state has been the one consistently violating it throughout history, both in its modern and ancient iterations. Socialist states are peak demonstration of this (although some could say they are also capitalist: state capitalist).

Re: OpenAI ‘in early talks to give 5% stake to US government’

#127

Post by bigyabai »

potsandpans wrote: post #122
chinathrow wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And sama.

I'll take Sam over amodei. It's a both are bad choice.

Sam, the proprietor of Woldcoin?

Amodei might play hardball, but he's got nothing on sama's evil villain ambitions.

Re: OpenAI ‘in early talks to give 5% stake to US government’

#128

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #40
osiris970 wrote: post #6

Isn't this what people wanted? The public to have access to the gains of these companies? I don't want public ownership of any private companies but this seems to be what slopulism leads us to

This is a trick to lock in "too big to fail" status and have leverage to lobby the government to ban "dangerous" Chinese models that are "robbing the taxpayer". 100% Trojan horse.

100%. I'd add: Whoever hasn't downloaded GLM 5.2 should download GLM 5.2 immediately.

Re: OpenAI ‘in early talks to give 5% stake to US government’

#129

Post by ragebol »

jimmy76615 wrote: post #121
ragebol wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides direct control, what could a dividend on the profits do what a well-proportioned corporate tax on profits cannot do? The state would only get dividends assuming it would not sell shares. And the state can exert control much more fairly (ie. to all competitors as well) with regulation and laws. Regulations and taxes are seen as 'un-american' I suppose, while giving stock to the government is not somehow?

> Regulations and taxes are seen as 'un-american' I suppose, while giving stock to the government is not somehow? Under normal circumstances the government owning stocks is just as un-american, but nothing is normal when it comes to AI.

Exacerbated by nothing being normal with this administration, to say the least.

Re: OpenAI ‘in early talks to give 5% stake to US government’

#130

Post by ragebol »

sbayg wrote: post #98
ragebol wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides direct control, what could a dividend on the profits do what a well-proportioned corporate tax on profits cannot do? The state would only get dividends assuming it would not sell shares. And the state can exert control much more fairly (ie. to all competitors as well) with regulation and laws. Regulations and taxes are seen as 'un-american' I suppose, while giving stock to the government is not somehow?

Why assume it wouldn’t sell shares? If the state can take 5% ownership, it can sell that 5% for profit, and come back for another 5% next year. Ideally the rules on when to sell would be systematic, or made by a neutral bipartisan committee of advisors, but I suspect maybe it would be just be up to the treasury (like the crypto it now holds).

Coming back for another 5% seems unlikely. But the whole thing is unlikely and uncommon, so what's it matter?
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