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OpenAI to become for-profit company

reuters.com

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Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#381

Post by blackhawkC17 »

csomar wrote: post #343
freedomben wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, a non-profit is one in which there are no shareholders. The non-profit entity can own a lot and be extremely successful and wealthy, but it cannot give that money to any shareholders. It can pay out large salaries, but those salaries are scrutinized. It doesn't prevent abuse, and it certainly doesn't prevent some unscrupulous person from becoming extremely wealthy with a non-profit, but it is a little more compli…

> No, a non-profit is one in which there are no shareholders. Again, I am not a lawyer but that makes no sense. Otherwise, anyone can claim the non-profit? So clearly there are some beneficial owners out there somehow.

The nonprofit is controlled by trustees and bound by its charter, not shareholders. Any profit a nonprofit organization makes is retained within the organization for its benefit and mission, not paid out to shareholders.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#382

Post by cdchn »

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.

"Humanity vs. OpenAI" would look good on a docket.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#383

Post by luqtas »

bayindirh wrote: post #13
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…

> The most surprising thing to me in this is that the non-profit will still exist. That entity will scrape the internet and train the models and claim that "it's just research" to be able to claim that all is fair-use. At this point it's not even funny anymore.

that was fun at some point?

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#384

Post by cdchn »

xiphias2 wrote: post #262
xwowsersx wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first, I thought, “Wow, if companies can start as nonprofits and later switch to for-profit, they’ll exploit the system.” But the more I learned about the chaos at OpenAI, the more I realized the opposite is true. Companies will steer clear of this kind of mess. The OpenAI story seems more like a warning than a blueprint. Why would any future company want to go down this path?

It's quite simple: the talent pool that had already enough money that they quit their well paying job at a for profit company in part because they wanted to continue working at a non-profit high impact. As OpenAI found its product-market fit, the early visionaries are not needed anymore (although I'm sure the people working there are still amazing)

I think OpenAI took this play right out of one of its founding donors playbooks. Pretend your company has lofty goals and you can get people to compromise to moral relativism and work superduper hard for you. These people definitely have framed posters with the “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea" quote somewhere in their living places/workspaces.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#385

Post by WillPostForFood »

kanbankaren wrote: post #365
golergka wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If information is publicly available to be read by humans, I fail to see any reason why it wouldn't be also available to be read by robots. Update: ML doesn't copy information. It can merely memorise some small portions of it.

Do a thought process. Should you and your friends be able to go to a public library with a van full of copiers with each one of you take a book and run to the van to make a copy? And you are doing it 24/7.

So what's your specific problem with that? Unless you open a bookstore selling the copies, it sounds fine.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#386

Post by Spivak »

svnt wrote: post #290
daveguy wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. That sounds a lot like fraud.

Not paying taxes while losing money sounds like fraud to you? What do you propose should be taxed, exactly?

Cash flow. Profit get's taxed at x%, cash flow that was offset with losses/expenses gets taxed at y% < x. Company that does $100Mil of business and makes no money is very different than company that does $10k of business and makes no money.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#387

Post by cdchn »

moralestapia wrote: post #238
tomp wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dismantling OpenAI is actually a business strategy for many other players now. Which ones exactly? NVIDIA is drinking sweet money from OpenAI. Microsoft & Apple are in cahoots with it. Meta/Facebook seems happy to compete with OpenAI on a fair playing field. Anthropic lacks the resources. Amazon doesn't seem to care. Google is asleep.

>NVIDIA is drinking sweet money from OpenAI. NVIDIA makes money from any company doing AI. I would be surprised if OpenAI was a whole digit percentage of their revenue. >Microsoft & Apple are in cahoots with it. Nope. Apple is using OpenAI to fill holes their current model is not good at. This doesn't sound like a long-term partnership. >Meta/Facebook seems happy to compete with OpenAI on a fair playing field. They w…

>I would be surprised if OpenAI was a whole digit percentage of their revenue.

As opposed to? The euphemism "I wouldn't be surprised" usually means you think what you're saying. If you negate that you're saying what you _don't_ think is the case? I may be reading too much into whats probably a typo.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#388

Post by baking »

kweingar wrote: post #219

Can anybody explain how this actually works? What happens to all of the non-profit's assets? They can't just give it away for investors to own. The non-profit could maybe sell its assets to investors, but then what would it do with the money? I'm sure OpenAI has an explanation, but I really want to hear more details. In the most simple analysis of "non-profit becomes for-profit", there's really no way to square it ot…

The nonprofit gives all its ownership rights to the for-profit in return for equity. The nonprofit is free to hold the equity and maintain control or sell the equity and use the proceeds for actual charitable purposes.

As long as the money doesn't go into someone's pocket, it's all good (except that Sam Altman is also getting equity but I assume they found a way to justify that.)

OpenAI will eventually be forced to convert from a public charity to a private foundation and will be forced to give away a certain percentage of their assets every year so this solves that problem also.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#389

Post by freedomben »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #259
freedomben wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, a non-profit is one in which there are no shareholders. The non-profit entity can own a lot and be extremely successful and wealthy, but it cannot give that money to any shareholders. It can pay out large salaries, but those salaries are scrutinized. It doesn't prevent abuse, and it certainly doesn't prevent some unscrupulous person from becoming extremely wealthy with a non-profit, but it is a little more compli…

I’m not sure extreme wealth is possible with a non-profit. You can pay yourself half a million a year, get incredible kickbacks by the firms you hire to manage the nonprofits investments, have the non-profit hire outside companies that you have financial interests in, and probably some other stuff. But none of these things are going to get you a hundred million dollars out of a non profit. The exception seems to be O…

Yes definitely that is the far majority. I actually had Mozilla and their CEO in mind when I was thinking of "extreme" wealth. Also I've heard some of the huge charities in the US have some execs pulling down many millions per year, but I don't want to name any names because I'm not certain.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#390

Post by cdchn »

throwaway314155 wrote: post #369
wmf wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon has allegedly refused equity in OpenAI. He seems to want it to go back to its original mission (which isn't going to happen) or die (which isn't going to happen).

Sam Altman also allegedly had no interest in equity.

When you get to tell the ASI what to do, money has little value any more.
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