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

Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 1001 posts

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#381

Post by yodsanklai »

alpha_squared wrote: post #102

It feels like Musk is single-handedly making a great case for why unlimited accumulation of wealth is a bad idea. It's pretty colorful language, but my mind immediately jumps to "financial terrorist". He's using his enormous amount of wealth and influence as a weapon to bludgeon anyone and anything in his way.

> "financial terrorist"

As a thought experiment, I like to wonder what would be the maximal amount of damage to humanity an extremely wealthy person could do entirely legally.

Or if not damage, just trolling. For instance, writing X on the moon or something like that.

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#382

Post by sirbutters »

Trasmatta wrote: post #81

This would be a disaster. Elon Musk is continually pushing for singular control of everything (not least of which is the US federal government). It makes me immensely uncomfortable.

I've been uncomfortable with this shit stain since he took over twitter. And it has gotten exponentially worse ever since he endorsed the orange clown.

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#383

Post by throw16180339 »

dyauspitr wrote: post #204
tryptophan wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I typically like Elon about 70% of the time, but I need to agree here. I don't quite understand how he suddenly got so much influence.

I liked Elon 90% of the time 5 years ago. Now honestly I don’t want him to build a whites only mars base.

N.K. Jemisin's SF short story Emergency Skin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Skin) is pretty much this.

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#384

Post by root_axis »

_2d30 wrote: post #366
Slow_Hand wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be that part of the the Musk-led group's offer of $100 billion is a tactic to drive up the valuation of Open AI-P, so that it's more painful/difficult for Open AI-P to buy itself out of Open AI-NP?

That's why I said this: > this is fundamentally about: stopping or fundamentally changing OpenAI's plans to be spun off. If OpenAI actually values OpenAI-NP at $40B then they will surely sell it for $97B. The point is the $40B is obviously a dramatic undervaluing and the fact they won't sell it for $97B shows that. This is the wrench.

Interesting logic, but I think it's obvious to everyone that the reason they won't sell to Elon has nothing to do with the price of the offer.

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#385

Post by slashdev »

_2d30 wrote: post #366
Slow_Hand wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be that part of the the Musk-led group's offer of $100 billion is a tactic to drive up the valuation of Open AI-P, so that it's more painful/difficult for Open AI-P to buy itself out of Open AI-NP?

That's why I said this: > this is fundamentally about: stopping or fundamentally changing OpenAI's plans to be spun off. If OpenAI actually values OpenAI-NP at $40B then they will surely sell it for $97B. The point is the $40B is obviously a dramatic undervaluing and the fact they won't sell it for $97B shows that. This is the wrench.

Yeah, I think that's the critical observation here. Good job cutting through the noise and spotting it.

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#386

Post by yodsanklai »

dustingetz wrote: post #227
TrackerFF wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of it is tied up to a criminally overvalued Tesla stock though? Sure, Tesla could go to zero and he'd still be a fabulously wealthy man, but with how things are moving - It wouldn't surprise me that he's about the fall down the ranks. Let's see how much power he has once the "richest man in the world" aura fades away.

was looking for a musk margin call in 2023, no such luck, now he’s VP and markets are still fake

My hope is that he'll eventually make some big mistakes that will send him to jail. Or does presidential grace give him total immunity?

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#387

Post by scarface_74 »

eagerpace wrote: post #328
scarface_74 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s impressive about Tesla? It’s already being outcompeted by companies in China, losing market share, and the other manufacturers are catching up. Besides that, he’s pissed off the demographics most likely to buy Teslas. It’s not like most Trump voters are buying EVs

No doubt he needs to distance himself from the company so that his political career stops impacting it so directly. The business is over valued but still very impressive. Yes the software is controversial, but the hardware is fantastic and a decade ahead of what other domestic automakers are doing. They’re also profitable and have a long term vision to innovate unlike many industry peers who chase the government mand…

There is nothing about Tesla that is even one year ahead of EVs. My wife and I travel a lot and haven’t owned our own car since late 2022 until late last year and tried a lot of different EVs. They were all just as good as the Tesla and had a better infotainment system.

Tesla is not as profitable as Toyota, GM or Volkswagen and their profit is trending down. There is nothing justifying their market cap based on their profit or even 5 year expected profit.

Tesla has made a lot of promises that they haven’t come close to fulfilling and Musk right now is the definition of regulatory capture

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#388

Post by andyferris »

rchaud wrote: post #363
typs wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT is an extremely successful consumer product. Looking at Search traffic alone indicates they clearly have large brand value. Usage doesn't just depend on just benchmarks for most consumers.

Conversions to paid users us only 5-6% though https://beta.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/company-news/2024/10/2...

Does that number matter?

What’s the conversion rate on any single typical ad hosted by Google? Yet it all adds up to make a lot of money, for Google and (presumably) the advertisers.

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#389

Post by scarface_74 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #376
scarface_74 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s impressive about Tesla? It’s already being outcompeted by companies in China, losing market share, and the other manufacturers are catching up. Besides that, he’s pissed off the demographics most likely to buy Teslas. It’s not like most Trump voters are buying EVs

Tesla and the Chinese manufacturers are not playing in anything near the same league. Making cheap EV's is in no way "outcompeting" Tesla. Rather, Tesla has shown that it can handily outcompete traditional luxury auto companies, beating them at their own game.

Someone hasn’t heard of the “Innovator’s Dilemma”.

Tesla is far from the most profitable automaker and doesn’t even have the largest margins.

Compare thier place in the automaker to say Apple’s place in the phone market

Re: Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI

#390

Post by oskarkk »

kLADh232Ha wrote: post #369
_2d30 wrote: post #279

A lot of people are unsurprisingly throwing shade on Musk being involved here but I think it's really important to understand what this is fundamentally about: stopping or fundamentally changing OpenAI's plans to be spun off. The issue at hand is that OpenAI (the private, currently "capped profit" entity, henceforth in this post referred to as OpenAI-P) is trying to get spun out of control of the OpenAI non-profit (h…

I think Musk (probably using his Saudi admirers yet again) wants to buy OpenAI because he needs a working chatbot right now . For example, he is gutting the General Services Administration and wants to install a GSAi chatbot to replace the workers: https://www.wired.com/story/doge-chatbot-ai-first-agenda/ Perhaps "big balls" and the other geniuses he hired haven't managed to come up with a working solution. Musk need…

> I think Musk (probably using his Saudi admirers yet again) wants to buy OpenAI because he needs a working chatbot right now.

But I think Musk does have a working chatbot right now? Haven't used it so I won't speak from experience, but Grok by xAI is working and is not that much behind OpenAI, maybe like half a year behind, judging by LLM Arena[0] and other benchmarks that I've seen.

[0] https://lmarena.ai

Post reply on HN