Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Greg Brockman interview [video]

fs.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 276 posts

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#151

Post by myst »

ethbr1 wrote: post #106
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno man, there are two "tech" industry worlds and the one you and I -- hacker types -- think of as "tech" is not what the rest of the world means. They mean the other one, which has almost nothing to do with the actual technology and instead everything to do with the absolutely apeshit amount of money, power, influence and intrigue that the technology enabled. This was a very large apeshit $$ amount back in IBM v…

This happened when business types realized technology could be enormously profitable (~PC era). Then inevitably, tech news turned into business news.

What do you get if you drop a teaspoon of business into a barrel of X? A barrel of business.

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#152

Post by granzymes »

dooglius wrote: post #122
granzymes wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be helpful for you to clarify which part of the chain you found objectionable: - in 2015, OpenAI was founded as a Delaware nonprofit - in 2017, OpenAI discovered the scaling laws and realized they needed far more compute (and thus money) than they had initially anticipated - that discovery precipitated a series of negotiations between the founders on how to restructure OpenAI to raise more money for…

The objectional part would be: - in 2019, OpenAI created a capped-profit subsidiary in order to attract funding from commercial entities Particularly if it creates a conflict of interest for anyone making decisions on behalf of the nonprofit

I'm curious why you think that creating a for-profit subsidiary is objectionable, since it is extremely common for large nonprofits. A good example for this forum would be Mozilla, but many more were mentioned during the trial.

Also curious what conflicts of interest you have in mind.

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#153

Post by [deleted] »

jeffrallen wrote: post #138
batu1509 wrote: post #23

building products on top of their api makes these drama weekends terrifying. really makes you realize how fragile your whole stack is when a board decides to act up.

Or when sociopaths are in charge, and the board tries to fix that, but other sociopaths work together to overrule the board. (And wtf is that anyway, overriding the board? Why do we even have boards of directors if rich, powerful assholes can just do whatever they want?)

[deleted]

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#154

Post by spudlyo »

tcp_handshaker wrote: post #56
nba456_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If his entire personal diary got exposed and that's the worst that's in it, good for him.

What about stealing 12 million books of copyrighted human culture, at massive scale, and then enclosing the value created inside proprietary, investor-backed systems? Something wrong with that? What happens if you go tomorrow, downtown San Francisco, and leave a bookstore with one book without paying? "Behind every great fortune there is a crime" - Honoré de Balzac

Won't somebody please think of the copyright holders!?

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#155

Post by throwup238 »

wrsh07 wrote: post #126
tim333 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non profits have always been able to have for profit subsidiaries, owned by the non profit.

IKEA is a famous example, although they sequenced things in a way many commenters here would probably be fine with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_Foundation

Other examples include Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation, the latter of which pays taxes on the money it gets from Google for default search engine placement, and the Smithsonian gift shop, which is a common pattern for museums all over the country. Novo Nordisk is another example, maker of Ozempic, and it’s the richest foundation in the world because it spun off a for-profit that then went public.

IRS requires nonprofits to pay taxes on “unrelated business income” and spinning it off to a for-profit subsidiary is the least risky way of managing that revenue.

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#156

Post by mattmaroon »

bix6 wrote: post #75

I just don’t understand why a non-profit was allowed to do this. Does this not set a precedent that non-profit doesn’t actually mean anything? You can just use a favorable structure until it’s time to enrich yourself.

Most nonprofits don’t have a mission that would benefit from a transition or a trillion dollar product to sell. There would be no real way to profit they wanted to.

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#157

Post by exfalso »

_zoltan_ wrote: post #142
exfalso wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. What the hell would you do with 1B? Give it to charities maybe. Maybe set up an investment where dividends are paid to charity. Running out of ideas

Set up a nice investment vehicle with maybe 400m so I can get 1.6m in dividends a year which would be better enough to comfortably travel the world, have a private chef, someone who organized travel so I don't have to.. A nice 12 person yacht on the Mediterranean is 400k eur for 2 weeks (with staff) so I'd realize it's not enough and invest the rest so I could get comfy. Along the way help friends and family, pay off…

What's the point of that? That sounds like the most boring life. You want to rot away on a yacht? Private chef? Are you kidding?

Help family? Sure, although you don't need that much money for that. Friends? Ehh not very smart, just think about the changes in the friendships' authenticity.

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#158

Post by dooglius »

granzymes wrote: post #152
dooglius wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The objectional part would be: - in 2019, OpenAI created a capped-profit subsidiary in order to attract funding from commercial entities Particularly if it creates a conflict of interest for anyone making decisions on behalf of the nonprofit

I'm curious why you think that creating a for-profit subsidiary is objectionable, since it is extremely common for large nonprofits. A good example for this forum would be Mozilla, but many more were mentioned during the trial. Also curious what conflicts of interest you have in mind.

Just because other organizations do it doesn't make it not objectionable, and there have been many threads on HN criticizing Mozilla's structure along similar lines.

In this case, my understanding is that e.g. Altman is on the nonprofit board and also makes big $$$ from the for-profit, which seems like a pretty big conflict of interest.

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#159

Post by sumedh »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #109
jonstewart wrote: post #28

Point of order: Anthropic is the most important AI company now.

Anthropic is the most hyped AI company now. Their models aren't the best, but their marketing sure is.

> Their models aren't the best

the market has spoken, for coding they are the best.

Re: Greg Brockman interview [video]

#160

Post by sumedh »

jeffrallen wrote: post #138
batu1509 wrote: post #23

building products on top of their api makes these drama weekends terrifying. really makes you realize how fragile your whole stack is when a board decides to act up.

Or when sociopaths are in charge, and the board tries to fix that, but other sociopaths work together to overrule the board. (And wtf is that anyway, overriding the board? Why do we even have boards of directors if rich, powerful assholes can just do whatever they want?)

> and the board tries to fix that

The board didnt have the maturity to fix that.

Post reply on HN