OpenAI to become for-profit company • Hacker News Board

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#401

Post by bastardoperator » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 5:03 PM UTC

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 whole "safety" and "benefits humanity" thing always felt like marketing anyways.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#402

Post by imiric » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 5:03 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #385

kanbankaren wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you implying that these AI companies aren't equivalent to bookstores?

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#403

Post by 5040 » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 5:03 PM UTC

anon7725 wrote: post #377

jstummbillig wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not baffling at all. It's unprecedented and it's hugely beneficial to our species. The anti-AI stance is what is baffling to me. The path trotten is what got us here and obviously nobody could have paid people upfront for the wild experimentation that was necessary. The only alternative is not having done it. Given the path it has put as in, people either are insanely cruel or just completely detached from reali…

> it's hugely beneficial to our species. Perhaps the biggest “needs citation” statement of our time.

Sometimes it seems like problem-solving itself is being problematized as if solving problems wasn't an obvious good.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#404

Post by Sakos » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 5:04 PM UTC

vezycash wrote: post #338

llm_trw wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but for the first time in a century there is more money to be made in weakening copyright rather than strengthening it.

> for the first time in a century there is more money to be made in weakening copyright rather than strengthening it Nope. The law will side with whoever pays the most. Once OpenAI solidifies its top position, only then will regulations kick in. Take YouTube, for example—it grew thanks to piracy. Now, as the leader, ContentID and DMCA rules work in its favor, blocking competition. If TikTok wasn’t a copyright-ignorin…

We're already seeing it in things like Google buying rights to Reddit data for training. It's already happening. Only companies who can afford to pay will be building AI, so Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#405

Post by piyuv » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

I hope they rename the company soon, it’s a disgrace to call it “open”

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#406

Post by Sakos » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #129

johnwheeler wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this is a no brainer. If it’s a choice between having AI and not,

Indeed a no brainer. The best possible outcome would be that OpenAI gets sued into oblivion (or shut down for tax fraud) as soon as possible.

So no AI for anybody? I don't see how that's better.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#407

Post by 5040 » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #393

anon7725 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's hugely beneficial to our species. Perhaps the biggest “needs citation” statement of our time.

I can easily imagine people X decades from now discussing this stuff a bit like how we now view teeth-whitening radium toothpaste and putting asbestos in everything, or perhaps more like the abuse of Social Security numbers as authentication and redlining. Not in any weirdly-self-aggrandizing "our tech is so powerful that robots will take over" sense, just the depressingly regular one of "lots of people getting hurt…

>lots of people suffered As someone surrounded by immigrants using ChatGPT to navigate new environs they barely understand, I don't connect at all to these claims that AI is a cancer ruining everything. I just don't get it.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#408

Post by infinitezest » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

retskrad wrote: post #42

Altman and OpenAI deserve their success. They’ve been key to the LLM revolution and the push toward AGI. Without their vision to make a product out of an LLM that hundreds of millions of people now use and have greatly enriched their lives, companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Meta wouldn’t have invested so heavily in AI. While we’ve heard about the questionable ethics of people like Jobs, Musk, and Altman, t…

> advancing humanity Perhaps but I'd say it's more of a mixed bag. Cell phones and social media have done harm and good at very large scales. As Dan Carlin once said, it feels like we're babies crawling toward hand guns. We don't seem like we're as wise as we are technically proficient.

Oppenheimer "advanced humanity" by giving us nuclear power. Cool. I love cheap energy. Unfortunately, there were some uh... "unfortunate side-effects" which continue to plague us.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#409

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

talldayo wrote: post #395

jstummbillig wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not baffling at all. It's unprecedented and it's hugely beneficial to our species. The anti-AI stance is what is baffling to me. The path trotten is what got us here and obviously nobody could have paid people upfront for the wild experimentation that was necessary. The only alternative is not having done it. Given the path it has put as in, people either are insanely cruel or just completely detached from reali…

> and obviously nobody could have paid people upfront for the wild experimentation that was necessary. I don't think this is the "ends justify the means" argument you think it is.

Not just that. It's "the ends might justify the means if this path turns out to be the right one." I remember reading the same thing each time a self driving car company killed someone. "We need this hacky dangerous way of development to save lives sooner" and then the company ends up shuttered and there aren't any ends justifying means. Which means it's bs, regardless of how you feel about 'ends justify the means' as a valid argument.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#410

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 5:11 PM UTC

idunnoman1222 wrote: post #275

ceejayoz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the knock-on effect is "all the artists and thinkers who contributed to the uncompensated free training set give up and stop creating new stuff"?

Recording devices, you know a record player had a profound effect on artists. go back

We didn't need to take people's music to build a record player, and when we printed records, we paid the artists for it.

So yeah it had a profound effect, but we got consent for the parts that fundamentally relied on other people.