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Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

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Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#301

Sam Altman is evil fullstop. He is a pure machiavellian villain. His goal is to the most powerful person on the planet. The future cannot be controlled by him or other autistic human successionists.

He is not autistic, although perceived that way can be a competitive advantage in Silicon valley culture.

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#302
Realistically the alternative is that they remain a kind of sham non-profit. I don't like the company, their mission and leadership creep me out - but all things considered it would be a good thing for them to lose the 503c designation, no?

Their CEO and board are... extremely unreliable narrators, to put it lightly.

They just raised over $6b at a $157b valuation. The total amount of capital invested to date is astonishing. The fact is that their corporate structure is not really a hindrance - 18 billion should be enough to start "an enduring company", in the sense that it won't disappear next year.

The idea that they need to be a corporation to succeed seems like just another story to sell. It's unlikely they'll get out of this hole.

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#303
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key thing is that assets of a 501c3 are irrevocably dedicated to charitable purposes, which is not the case for a 501c6. If the NFL had somehow started as a 501c3 before realizing that was a bad structure for their work, the standard approach would be for the 501c3 to sell their assets at fair market value to new for-profit. Then either those proceeds could be donated to other 501c3s, or the old NFL could continu…

Interesting, TIL. That is the basis for why the conversion is illegal?

Sorry, which conversion? If you mean OpenAI, it's not clear that what they are currently planning is illegal. If they do it correctly, the non-profit is fully compensated for their stake in the for-profit.

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#306
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because useful AI requires massive spending on compute to train.

resources yes (for now...assuming someone doesn't come up with better algorithms in the future) But all of the libraries are Facebook/google owned, made free by grace of the executives working there. Why no open source/nonprofit library for all the common things like tensors and such?

llama.cpp is open source and community-run, and is probably the most popular implementation for locally hosted models right now.

That aside, in general, the question is - why bother so long as the libraries are open source and good enough? They can always be forked if there are any shenanigans, but why do so proactively? FWIW llama.cpp originally showed up as an answer to a very specific question (fast inference on Apple Silicon) and then just grew organically from there. Similarly, you can expect other libraries to fill the niches that don't already have "good enough" solutions.

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#307

> Our current structure does not allow the Board to directly consider the interests of those who would finance the mission Why should it? You can't serve two masters. They claim to serve the master of human-aligned AI. Why would they want to add another goal that's impossible to align with their primary one?

I want to put my opinion somewhere and as a reply to this seems like a good option. I am anti-capitalism and anti-profit and anti-Microsoft, but I can take a step back and recognize the truth to what’s being said here. They give the context that hundreds of billions are being spent on AI right now, and if OpenAI wants to remain competitive, they need significantly more money than they originally anticipated. They’re…

> my guess is that Sam is doing some mental gymnastics as to how now letting that happen and at least letting some part of OpenAI’s success be nonprofit is better than the competition who would have 0% be charitable

"I don't know about you people, but I don't want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do." - Gavin Belson

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#308
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a huge difference between being “principled” between 3x and 1x when you are going from 200K to 600K and when you are going from $50K to $150K. If it'd be anything remotely like the former, I would have built up sizable assets (which I didn't), especially as I mentioned relative to CoL :)

Did you give up so much potential income that you couldn’t meet your short term and long term wants and needs? What did you give up in your lifestyle that you personally valued to choose a lower paying job? I’m 50, (step)kids are grown, we downsized from the big house in the burbs to a condo in a state tax free state, etc and while I could make “FAANG” total compensation (been there done that), I much prefer a more l…

> What did you give up in your lifestyle that you personally valued to choose a lower paying job?

Decades earlier retirement. Bringing with it the exact freedom you're talking about.

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Anyone who thought Sam Altman wasn’t in it for the money from the start, was being naive. In the extreme. Not only Mr Altman, but most of the people giving the larger donations were hoping for a hit as well. Why is that so incredible to people? How else would you get that kind of money to fund a ludicrously speculative research based endeavor? You don’t even know if it’s possible before the research. What else…

I think that is the case with Sam, but not Ilya and probably not with some of the other founders.

Agreed, hence why he scammed people into believing he was in it for the "good of humanity" - 1. Get donors 2. Get bright minds in the space (e.g. Ilya) with such ideals to work for him.

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#310
post #116
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We are turning our non profit into a for profit because we want to make money" isn't legal. To make this transition in a way that maximizes how much money they can make while minimizing what they lose to lawsuits they need to explain what they're doing in a positive way.

I don't think it should really matter how they explain it, legally.

That depends - they probably have to do whatever is in the best interests of the non-profit, so if they explain the motivations behind why they feel they are acting within their responsibility then that could probably help a defence.

IANAL though. I assume you can make a case though that says OpenAI needs to be able to raise sufficient capital to maintain its current market position, and these changes are required for that, and without maintaining market position the non-profit arm will not be able to achieve its aims.

As they have to act in the interests of the non-profit arm, I assume there must be an element of mens rea (state of mind) - the same action could probably be illegal or legal depending on why it was done.

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