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Evolving OpenAI's Structure

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Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#311

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jampekka wrote: post #305
softwaredoug wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democratic AI but we don’t want it regulated by any democratic process

I wonder if democracy is some kind of corporate speech homonym of some totally different concept I'm familiar with. Perhaps it's even an interesting linguistic case where a word is a homonym of its antonym? Edit: also apparently known as contronym.

> wonder if democracy is some kind of corporate speech

It generally means broadening access to something. Finance loves democratising access to stupid things, for example.

> word is a homonym of its antonym?

Inflammable in common use.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#312

Post by m3kw9 »

jampekka wrote: post #291

> We are committed to this path of democratic AI. So were do I vote? How do I became a candidate to be a representative or a delegate of voters? I assume every single human is eligible for both, as OpenAI serves the humanity?

Path of, so it's getting there

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#313

Post by JumpCrisscross »

BosunoB wrote: post #226
mandevil wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But didn't they spend $9 billion? If I have a machine that magically turns $9 billion of investor money into $4 billion in revenue, I need to have a pretty awesome story for how in the future I am going to be making enormous piles of money to pay back that investment. If it looks like frontier models are going to be a commodity and it is not going to be winner-take-all... that's a lot harder story to tell.

Most of that 9 billion was spent on training new models and on staff. If they stopped spending money on R&D, they would already be profitable.

> if they stopped spending money on R&D, they would already be profitable

OpenAI has claimed this. But Altman is a pathological liar. There are lots of ways of disguising operating costs as capital costs or R&D.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#314

Post by [deleted] »

MPSFounder wrote: post #277
lolinder wrote: post #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 ca…

Never understood his appeal. Lacks charisma. Not technically savvy relative to many engineers at OpenAI(I doubt he would pass their own intern interviews, even less so their FT). Very unlikeable in person (comes off as fake for some reason, like a political plant). Who is vouching for this guy. When I met him, for some reason, he reminded me of Thiel. He is no Jobs

[deleted]

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#315

Post by gsibble »

MPSFounder wrote: post #277
lolinder wrote: post #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 ca…

Never understood his appeal. Lacks charisma. Not technically savvy relative to many engineers at OpenAI(I doubt he would pass their own intern interviews, even less so their FT). Very unlikeable in person (comes off as fake for some reason, like a political plant). Who is vouching for this guy. When I met him, for some reason, he reminded me of Thiel. He is no Jobs

Altman is a clear sociopath. He's a sales guy and good executive. But he's only out for himself.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#316

Post by klabb3 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #286
wmf wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use it, that means you received more value than you gave up. It's called consumer surplus.

> If you use it, that means you received more value than you gave up. It's called consumer surplus This is true for literally any transaction. Actually, it's true for any rational action. If you're being tortured, and you decide it's not worth it to keep your secrets hidden any longer, you get more than you give up when you stop being tortured.

It’s only true in theory and over a single transaction, not necessarily over time. The hack that VCs have exploited for decades now is subsidizing products and acquiring competition to eventually enshittify. In this case, when OpenAI dials up the inevitable enshittification, they’ll have gotten a ton of data from their users to use for their proprietary closed AI.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#317

Post by JumpCrisscross »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #184
grey-area wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I think you’re correct that they know the jig is up, but I would say they know the AI bubble is about to burst so they want to cash out before that happens. There is little to no money to be made in GAI, it will never turn into AGI, and people like Altman know this, so now they’re looking for a greater fool before it is too late.

AI companies are already automating huge swaths of document analysis, customer service. Doctors are straight up using ChatGPT to diagnose patients. I know it’s fun to imagine AI is some big scam like crypto, but you’d have to be ignoring a lot of genuine non hype economic movement at this point to assume GAI isn’t making any money. Why does the forum of an incubator that now has a portfolio that is like 80% AI so rou…

> AI companies are already automating huge swaths of document analysis, customer service. Doctors are straight up using ChatGPT to diagnose patients

I don't think there is serious argument that LLMs won't generate tremendous value. The question is who will capture it. PCs generated massive value. But other than a handful of manufacturers and designers (namely, Apple, HP, Lenovo, Dell and ASUS), most PC builders went bankrupt. And out of the value generated by PCs in the world, the vast majority was captured by other businesses and consumers.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#318

Post by jampekka »

m3kw9 wrote: post #312
jampekka wrote: post #291

> We are committed to this path of democratic AI. So were do I vote? How do I became a candidate to be a representative or a delegate of voters? I assume every single human is eligible for both, as OpenAI serves the humanity?

Path of, so it's getting there

Via a temporary vanguard board composed of the most conscious and disciplined profit maximizers.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#319

Post by nemomarx »

moralestapia wrote: post #301
wmf wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PBCs have no beneficial tax treatment and neither does OpenAI.

So, what's the point of a PBC? Not being snarky here, like what is the purported thesis behind them?

marketing to certain types of philanthropic investors? I think

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#320

Post by JumpCrisscross »

miki123211 wrote: post #237
pphysch wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who will soon go into the professional world and bring that goodwill with them. ...Until their employer forces them to use Microsoft Copilot, or Google Gemini, or whatever, because that's what they pay for and what integrates into their enterprise stack. And the new employee shrugs and accepts it.

Just like people are forced to use web Office and Microsoft Teams, and start prefering them over Google Docs and Slack? I don't think so.

> Just like people are forced to use web Office and Microsoft Teams, and start prefering them over Google Docs and Slack? I don't think so

...yes. Office is the market leader. Slack has between a fifth and a fourth of the market. Coca-Cola's products have like 70% market share in the American carbonated soft-drink market [1].

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/060415/how-much-glo...

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