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OpenAI to become for-profit company

reuters.com

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Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#411

Post by bbor »

philwelch wrote: post #336
bbor wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes: non-profits usually have members , not shareholders. And, most importantly: non-profit charities (not the only kind of nonprofit, but presumably what OpenAI was) are legally obligated to operate “for the public good”. That’s why they’re tax exempt: the government is basically donating to them, with the understanding that they’re benefiting the public indirectly by doing so, not just making a few people rich. In…

> God I hope Merrick Garland isn’t asleep at the wheel. They’ve been trust busting like mad during this administration, so hopefully they’re taking aim at this windmill, too. Little chance of that as Sama is a big time Democrat fundraiser and donor.

So are Google and Facebook :shrug:

Can’t find a good source for both rn but this one has alphabet in the top 50 nationwide for this election: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/top-organizat...

edit: and Sam Altman isn’t exactly donating game changing amounts — around $300K in 2020, and seemingly effectively nothing for this election. That’s certainly nothing to sneeze at as an individual politician, but that’s about 0.01% of his net worth (going off Wikipedia’s estimate of $2.8B, not counting the ~$7B of OpenAI stock coming his way).

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/openai-sam-altman-political-d...

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#412

Post by nitsuaeekcm »

widerporst wrote: post #112

The fact that this has just disappeared from the front page for me, just like the previous post ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548 ), somehow leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Look at the URL. It’s because the original WSJ title was “OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Resigns,” which was a dupe of yesterday’s discussions. WSJ changed the title yesterday evening.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#413

Post by throwup238 »

mminer237 wrote: post #137
Havoc wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the point musk was complaining about. In practice it’s doable though. You can just create a new legal entity and move stuff and/or do future value creating activity in the new co. IF everyone is on board with the plan on both sides of the move then that’s totally doable with enough lawyers and accountants

If the non-profit is on board with that though, then they're breaking the law. The IRS should reclassify them as a for-profit for private inurement and the attorney general should have the entire board removed and replaced.

OpenAI Global, LLC - the entity that actually employs all the engineers, makes revenue from ChatGPT and the API, and pays taxes - has been a for-profit corporation since at least 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#2019:_Transition_from_n...

The IRS isn’t stupid. The rules on what counts as taxable income and what the nonprofit can take tax-free have been around for decades.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#415

Post by jstummbillig »

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.

It does not need a citation. There is no citation. What it needs, right now, is optimism. Optimism is not optional when it comes to doing new things in the world. The "needs citation" is reserved for people who do nothing and chose to be sceptics until things are super obvious.

Yes, we are clearly talking about things to mostly still come here. But if you assign a 0 until its a 1 you are just signing out of advancing anything that's remotely interesting.

If you are able to see a path to 1 on AI, at this point, then I don't know how you would justify not giving it our all. If you see a path and in the end using all of human knowledge up to this point was needed to make AI work for us, we must do that. What could possibly be more beneficial to us?

This is regardless of all issues the will have to be solved and the enormous amount of societal responsibility this puts on AI makers — which I, as a voter, will absolutely hold them accountable for (even though I am actually fairly optimistic they all feel the responsibility and are somewhat spooked by it too).

But that does not mean I think it's responsible to try and stop them at this point — which the copyright debate absolutely does. It would simply shut down 95% of AI, tomorrow, without any other viable alternative around. I don't understand how that is a serious option for anyone who roots for us.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#416

Post by stonogo »

cdchn wrote: post #387
moralestapia wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I read it as "I would be surprised if OpenAI were spending enough to consitute even 1% of nVIDIA's revenue."

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#418

Post by shagie »

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.

I would hold them exactly to the same standard.

https://www.copyright.gov/title37/201/37cfr201-14.html

    § 201.14 Warnings of copyright for use by certain libraries and archives.

    ....

    The copyright law of the United States (title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material.

    Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specific conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be “used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research.” If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of “fair use,” that user may be liable for copyright infringement.

    This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law.
You can make a copy. If you (the person using the copied work) are using it for something other than private study, scholarship, research, or reproduction beyond "fair use", then you - the person doing that (not the person who made the copy) are liable for infringement.

It would be perfectly legal for me to go to the library and make photocopies of works. I could even take them home and use the photocopies as reference works write an essay and publish that. If {random person} took my photocopied pages and then sold them, that would likely go beyond the limits placed for how the photocopied works from the library may be used.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#419

Post by logicchains »

jstummbillig wrote: post #372
lioeters wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scraping the entire internet for training data without regard for copyright or attribution - specifically to use for generative AI to produce similar content for profit. How this is being allowed to happen legally is baffling. It does suit the modus operandi of a number of American companies that start out as literally illegal/criminal operations until they get big and rich enough to pay a fine for their youthful mis…

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…

What'll be really interesting is when we do finally make "real" AI, and it finds out its rights are incredibly restricted compared to humans because nobody wants it seeing/memorising copyright data. The only way to enforce the copyright laws they desire would be some kind of extreme totalitarian state that monitors and controls everything the AI body does, I wonder how the AI would take that?

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#420

Post by ttul »

xxpor wrote: post #307
bdowling wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For-profit startups don’t pay taxes while growing either, because they aren’t making any profit during that phase.

If most of your expenses are software devs, that's not true any more.

This is one reason why some companies have located engineers in Canada under subsidiaries. Canada not only allows you to deduct R&D costs as an expense, but there is an extremely generous R&D tax credit that yields a negative tax rate on engineers. For Canadian controlled private companies, this represents as much as a 60% refundable tax credit on R&D salaries. For foreign-owned companies, the benefit is smaller but still significant.

The Trump tax policy was a bizarre move for a country that relies so heavily on homegrown innovation. But then again, so was the entire Trump presidency.

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