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OpenAI to become for-profit company

reuters.com

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Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#301

Post by pclmulqdq »

mminer237 wrote: post #140
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICYMI, Elon Musk restarted his lawsuit a month or two ago: https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-revives-lawsuit... I'm wondering if OpenAI's charter might provide a useful legal angle. The charter states: >OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that [AGI ...] benefits all of humanity. >... >We commit to use any influence we obtain over AGI’s deployment to ensure it is used for the benefit of all, and to avoid enabling…

It would think it is legally enforceable, but I suspect Kathy Jennings is the only person who has standing to sue over it.

Elon Musk absolutely has standing, as one of the biggest donors to the nonprofit. I assume he will settle for some ownership in the for-profit, though.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#302

Post by int_19h »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #75
Prkasd wrote: post #25

That could be the first step towards a complete takeover by Microsoft, possibly followed by more CEO shuffles. I wonder though whether Microsoft is still interested. The free Bing Copilot barely gets any resources and gives very bad answers now. If the above theory is correct (big if!), perhaps Microsoft wants to pivot to the military space. That would be in line with idealist employees leaving or being fired.

I don't see the point of anyone acquiring OpenAI - especially not Microsoft, Google, Meta, Anthropic, X.ai, all of which have developed the same tech themselves. The real assets are the people, who are leaving ship and potentially hireable. With this much turmoil, its hard to imagine we've seen the last of the high level exits.

Of the companies you've listed, Microsoft's AI products that are actually useful are all based on GPT-4, and the rest of them don't have any models that are truly on par with it.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#303

Post by caeril »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #285
bdowling wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For-profit startups don’t pay taxes while growing either, because they aren’t making any profit during that phase.

Sure. But there are a lot of other tax advantages. For example, at least where I am, non profits don't pay sales tax on purchases, and don't have to pay into unemployment funds. I'm sure there is more, but I'm not super familiar with this world.

Corporations don't generally pay sales tax either, if the bean counters can justify the purchase as COGS. There are plenty of accountants who can play fast and loose with what constitutes COGS.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#304

Post by brvsft »

esafak wrote: post #150
brvsft wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an "artist" or "thinker" stops because of this, I question their motivations and those labels in the first place.

They might be motivated to pay their bills. Weird people.

Right, people were trying to 'pay their bills' with content that was freely shared such that AI could take advantage of it. Weird people.

Or we're all talking about and envisioning some specific little subset of artists. I suspect you're trying to pretend that someone with a literal set of paintbrushes living in a shitty loft is somehow having their original artwork stolen by AI despite no high resolution photography of it existing on the internet. I'm not falling for that. Be more specific about which artists are losing their livelihoods.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#305

Post by elpakal »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #11

The most surprising thing to me in this is that the non-profit will still exist. Not sure what the point of it is anymore. Taken as a whole, OpenAI is now just a for-profit entity beholden to investors and Sam Altman as a shareholder. The non-profit is really just vestigial. I guess technically it's supposed to play some role in making sure OpenAI "benefits humanity". But as we've seen multiple times, whenever that g…

> I guess technically it's supposed to play some role in making sure OpenAI "benefits humanity". But as we've seen multiple times, whenever that goal clashes with the interests of investors, the latter wins out.

A tale as old as time. Some of us could see it, from afar . Lack of upvotes and excitement does not mean support, but how to account for that in these times?

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#306

Post by walthamstow »

m3kw9 wrote: post #291
phito wrote: post #20

I know nothing about companies (esp. in the US), but I find it weird that a company can go from non-profit to for-profit? Surely this would be taken advantage of. Can someone explain me how this work?

The NFL used to be a nonprofit and now for profit. OpenAI can use similar routes

Not an accountant but there are different kinds of nonprofits, OpenAI is a 501c3 (religious/charitable/educational) whereas the NFL was a 501c6 (trade association).

Obviously we all think of the NFL as a big money organisation, but it basically just organises the fixtures and the referees. The teams make all the money.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#307

Post by xxpor »

bdowling wrote: post #266
lolinder wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the assets were sold to the for profit at a fair price I could see this being legal (even if it shouldn't be). At least in that case the value generated by the non-profit tax free would stay locked up in non-profit land. The biggest problem with this is that there's basically no chance that the sale price of the non-profit assets is going to be $150 billion, which means that whatever the gap is between the valuati…

For-profit startups don’t pay taxes while growing either, because they aren’t making any profit during that phase.

If most of your expenses are software devs, that's not true any more.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#308

Post by perfmode »

xxpor wrote: post #307
bdowling wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For-profit startups don’t pay taxes while growing either, because they aren’t making any profit during that phase.

If most of your expenses are software devs, that's not true any more.

How so?

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#309

Post by sethaurus »

caeril wrote: post #303
IncreasePosts wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But there are a lot of other tax advantages. For example, at least where I am, non profits don't pay sales tax on purchases, and don't have to pay into unemployment funds. I'm sure there is more, but I'm not super familiar with this world.

Corporations don't generally pay sales tax either, if the bean counters can justify the purchase as COGS. There are plenty of accountants who can play fast and loose with what constitutes COGS.

For anyone else unfamiliar with this initialism:

> Cost of goods sold (COGS) refers to the direct costs of producing the goods sold by a company. This amount includes the cost of the materials and labor directly used to create the good. It excludes indirect expenses, such as distribution costs and sales force costs.

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