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

reuters.com

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

#441

Post by slg »

scarface_74 wrote: post #395
slg wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What’s impressive about Tesla? There is this weird revisionist history now that Musk is hated to dismiss all Tesla's accomplishments as meaningless. The traditional auto industry would have never embraced EVs to the extent they have if someone did not disrupt the market in a way like Tesla did. That is both impressive and huge net positive for humanity in a way that is an extremely rare achievement for any startup.

Yes and Microsoft would never have embraced the GUI if it weren’t for Apple and other AI companies would never have embraced LLMs if it weren’t for OpenAI. But that doesn’t justify Teslas value. In the words of the AI industry - “there is no moat” around EVs

Genuinely can't tell if you are trying to be sarcastic with the first sentence, but I'll just point out that Tesla can both have accomplished a lot as a company, been a net benefit for humanity, be wildly overvalued as a company, and have no real moat. They were the first automaker to put substantial money into selling EVs as a business and that gave them a first mover advantage that has now largely disappeared (but still exists in certain areas such as still having the best charging network).

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

#442

Post by TZubiri »

darknavi wrote: post #282
Layvier wrote: post #214

> "It's time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was," Musk said in the press release. "We will make sure that happens."" From the creator of Grok, this is such an insane thing to say

And Tesla, who (in)famously doesn't regularly publish their GPL-derived codebases.

source?

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

#443

Post by mightyham »

morkalork wrote: post #187
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.

Considering the threat of his wealth and the ability to fund primary challengers against sitting senators is being used to whip their votes, I wouldn't restrict the it to just "financial" terrorist.

Not disagreeing with you, but just want to point out that billionaires and political lobbying groups have used funding (or the threat of funding) primary opponents to coerce congress for a long time.

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

#444

Post by ben_w »

Retric wrote: post #416
mattmaroon wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He founded (for some definition) the two most impressive American corporations of the century and tweeted a lot to build a direct connection to people.

I’m wondering under what definition he “founded” Tesla rather than being the investor who took it over years later kicking the founders out? I’d give him SpaceX, but it definitely did better when he was paying less attention to it.

> I’m wondering under what definition he “founded” Tesla rather than being the investor who took it over years later kicking the founders out?

I wouldn't call him a founder precisely because of this, but at the same time they produced, I forget the exact number, but less than 200 individual vehicles before he took over.

The company was seen as a financial disaster, a pipe dream, and a money sink for a very long time, and he did actually make it profitable.

(Although, given he's ranted about the difficulties of being a public company and having to listen to shareholders, I'm not sure how much this happened because of him rather than despite him).

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

#445

Post by SequoiaHope »

yodsanklai wrote: post #381
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.

Oil companies have been doing this for 100 years.

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

#446

Post by tptacek »

fairity wrote: post #171

[flagged]

This has been something like 80% of all the moderator commentary on HN for the past week, it has a totally predictable explanation that is in line with a decade of HN moderation practice, and the question itself is (and always has been) off-topic. It's not "technically" against the guidelines; it's flatly against them. Take questions about moderation to email: hn@ycombinator.com.

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

#447

Post by scarface_74 »

slg wrote: post #441
scarface_74 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and Microsoft would never have embraced the GUI if it weren’t for Apple and other AI companies would never have embraced LLMs if it weren’t for OpenAI. But that doesn’t justify Teslas value. In the words of the AI industry - “there is no moat” around EVs

Genuinely can't tell if you are trying to be sarcastic with the first sentence, but I'll just point out that Tesla can both have accomplished a lot as a company, been a net benefit for humanity, be wildly overvalued as a company, and have no real moat. They were the first automaker to put substantial money into selling EVs as a business and that gave them a first mover advantage that has now largely disappeared (but…

I’m saying simply it no more matters in nerd circles than Mac geeks arguing about Apple bringing the GUI to personal computers when it was almost dead in the late 90s.

It is just as meaningless now on HN as it was then on comp.sys.mac.advocacy back then

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

#448

Post by tptacek »

I_am_tiberius wrote: post #394
fairity wrote: post #171

[flagged]

I wonder that as well. I'm pretty sure there's manual manipulation involved sometimes.

There's always manual manipulation. In the early days of the site, the saying was "without manual manipulation, the front page would be nothing but cat pictures". Today, it's clear that it would be nothing but Musk stories.

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

#449

Post by _2d30 »

joshuamorton wrote: post #423
_2d30 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. "We believe an OpenAI-P owned by Elon is fundamentally against our mission." While I'm not saying Sam's being an angel here, I do think it's reasonable to say that llms aren't an existential risk and sp…

> "We believe an OpenAI-P owned by Elon is fundamentally against our mission."

But OpenAI-P of course wouldn't be owned by Elon, he would just own $40B worth of OpenAI-P according to their own valuation of it. A tiny minority stake of the $157B enterprise.

OpenAI-NP, could just go back to other OpenAI investors and buy back their "$40B" stake plus have $57B leftover to apply to AI safety. Silly Elon, overpaying by almost 2.5X for something of such little value!

It's a hard point that they would likely have to make in court! Harder still with Elon having originally been involved in founding OpenAI-NP.

Everyone hates Elon reasonably but few people seem to care the Sam Altman is conducting a theft on the order of $57+B.

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

#450

Post by wnc3141 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #177
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.

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.

criminally overvalued is an interesting term to explore. I wonder when after all this shakes out in the courts, how much of his oligarchal access to government will be seen as illegal, therefore undermining any stock premium Tesla has from that access to government.
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