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

Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 642 posts

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#491

Post by rubyn00bie »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #454
rubyn00bie wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having approximately $44 billion in cash on hand is not a massive cash reserve for any company with the market cap of Tesla ($1.3 trillion). Even less so when you realize how capital intensive its current car and non-existent robot business is… The entire EV market is risky right now for margin compression as Chinese EV manufacturers are really pulling ahead. It’s pretty wild to see just how far they’ve progressed wh…

> It’s pretty wild to see just how far they’ve progressed while the west mostly does nothing. The “west” came up with Tesla and Rivian, and their cars are on the road. And the US tariffed chinese EVs. What else can be done to combat China’s lower priced labor and possibly more lax environmental regulations?

The west needs to combat it by using subsidies and regulations to “spray and pray,” to a large degree. Just as China has… The problem with the occident, at the moment, is that corporations use the incentives to raise margins and not to innovate.

In the US at least we’re gearing up for massive failure in the automotive industry solely because we’re avoiding competition. Yes, there will be margin compression, but without it domestic businesses become inefficient. It’s going to be “80s/90s Detroit” all over again with bigger bailouts because at some point it’ll be too politically popular to reduce prices. When that happens the public will be the ones footing the bill.

And all that says nothing of the fact cheap labor alone doesn’t make a better car. But the fact China can both make a better car (EV) and with lower labor costs really shows how dependent US automakers are on market inefficiencies. The US, and Europe, were massively ahead in quality but that lead been destroyed.

I’m not a fan of capitalism, but if the US is going to sell it and preach it— we might as fucking well embrace it. Otherwise we’re just subsidizing the rich without rhyme or reason (other than blatant corruption and exploitation). The cost of those subsidies will be stagnation, and the outright capitulation of quality long term.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#492

Post by philipallstar »

granzymes wrote: post #425
marcus_holmes wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand how non-profits work. Essentially they are exactly the same as for-profits, except they can't issue dividends. Ownership works exactly the same as for-profit companies. A cynical take is that non-profits are for-salary; they still pay their owners, just using other means. edit: no, my bad, apparently I misunderstood how non-profits work in the USA. Thanks for the correction :)

This is not correct. jongjong is correct that a nonprofit does not have owners in the sense that a for-profit has owners. Nonprofits are dedicated to their mission, and are run by a board of directors. You cannot have a % ownership in a nonprofit because its resources must be used exclusively to carry out its mission. You could have a % control in its decision making process.

Well, its resources can be used to pay giant salaries. That's somehow not against its mission.

And businesses with owners can be dedicated to their mission.

And public businesses are run by a board of directors.

The main difference isn't what you're saying, which is somewhat subject to interpretation. It's just that people can't invest money with expectation of a return, other than via employment, speaking fees, etc etc.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#493

Post by Angostura »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #477
Nevermark wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this thinking at all. I share all the disillusionment and cynicism about Musk, shared here by others. But he has also done amazing things. When someone declares they are going to create a Martian colony, something literally "out of this world", and against all odds makes unbelievable progress for years, including re-usable rockets that return and land vertically, more efficient powerful engines, an…

People don’t look at the complexity of a human character. They take the easiest extreme and run with it. I was on another HN thread where practically everyone was calling Elon a psychopath. If you think objectively Elon is not a psychopath.

You’re right. Sociopath is probably a better fit.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#494

Post by somenameforme »

tptacek wrote: post #458
granzymes wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct. jongjong is correct that a nonprofit does not have owners in the sense that a for-profit has owners. Nonprofits are dedicated to their mission, and are run by a board of directors. You cannot have a % ownership in a nonprofit because its resources must be used exclusively to carry out its mission. You could have a % control in its decision making process.

They're correct about the equity ownership bit, but not in their argument that there's an implicit public claim of control.

Even more true given the mixture of the regularity of extremely high executive compensation in non-profits paired alongside the distribution of revenue through extremely inefficient contracting.

For an example of the former, the previous head head of Mozilla received a compensation that rose from about 2 million a year to nearly 7 million a year following hundreds of layoffs due to declining revenues. For an example of the latter, following the earthquake in Haiti, the American Red Cross raised nearly half a billion dollars. After all was said and done, they built a total of 6 homes. [1]

Basically, non-profit is a tax-status with conditions. But those conditions are sufficiently unenforceable or side steppable that it's ultimately just a tax status. And the whole game of OpenAI being nonprofit until profits started rolling in is just making this even more clear.

[1] - https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-...

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#495

Post by jaccola »

elicash wrote: post #435
overgard wrote: post #423

My suspicion is that winning might have been a secondary goal. When OpenAI goes to IPO, all the testimony of former executives about Altman's behavior is going to be in the public record. A lot of that testimony makes OpenAI sound very chaotic and poorly run. That could prevent large institutional investors from wanting to take the risk.

Musk texted OpenAI's Brockman about a settlement two days before trial. So I take that to mean Musk wanted a settlement as primary goal, and that the threat to OpenAI's reputation was just an (unsuccessful) means to get what he wanted. That isn't to say it wasn't personal for Musk, just that he would have preferred to have gotten paid. As to Musk texting "By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated me…

My friend and I went to play poker this weekend. Demis Hassabis was there. I whispered to him “what the hell, that’s Demis Hassabis”!

My friend had no idea who he was. My friend doesn’t work in tech but he’s in his late 20s and we are both British so I was quite surprised. My guess is most of the world has no idea who these people are, despite their influence they are very niche celebrities.

Maybe Sam is more famous but I’d guess ~no one knows Greg Brockman.

So I find “most hated men in America” quite dramatic!

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#496

Post by somenameforme »

aeternum wrote: post #481
bruce511 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will never be a colony on Mars. Not in the way we think about "colonies". For starters it's too cold, too dry, atmosphere is too thin, and there's no reasonably sustainable power source. But all of that is irrelevant because there's no magnetic field. So radiation. So unlivable. There's also no point in a colony there. If life ends on earth it ends on Mars. There are no materials there we want. It offers exactl…

'..it might be assumed that the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years- provided, of course, we can meanwhile eliminate such little drawbacks and embarrassments as the existing relation between weight and strength in inorganic materials. No doubt the problem has attractions for those it in…

I think many may not understand your quote, especially given the nature of the language and the apparent non sequitur: https://archive.is/F3nnP

That's an archive of the article it's originally from, from the NYTimes - "Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly", October 1903. The Wright Bros first successful flight would come in December 1903. The NYTimes also similarly published about the impossibility of spaceflight relatively shortly before it happened.

I anxiously await the day for the NYTimes to dismiss colonizing Mars as impossible, as it means we are most certainly on the cusp of achieving exactly that.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#497

Post by cm2187 »

atom_arranger wrote: post #137

Aside from the disagreements between these parties, what about the precedent of running a non-profit, and then transferring all IP to a for profit when it’s convenient to do so? I wonder if the government or taxpayers have a case to bring regarding that.

The gvt won't have much of a leg to stand on until open ai actually turns a profit, until then how are taxpayers cheated? And by then it will be a taxable for profit corporation anyway.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#498

Post by fragmede »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #305
awesome_dude wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know there's a risk when Musk's name comes up that everyone takes "all against" or "all for" approach - very polarising figure. But I see a lot of that announcement, and the others someone else pointed to as his "aspirational, but ultimately never going to happen" goals - whether he believes the claims are achievable, or not, he says these things to energise people to working/paying for him to try It costs him litt…

> difficult to see the Mars announcement as anything but hype Oh yeah, the announcement is hype. But there is actual work underneath it making real progress in science and engineering that moves us closer to Mars. Some of that, moreover, is work that has limited appeal outside a Martian context.

The real thing is that the moon is a better stepping stone, but Bezos already claimed it so Musk had to out do him, which is why he's shooting for Mars.

Re: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

#499

Post by somenameforme »

billti wrote: post #475
hsuduebc2 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, most of his wealth is coming from his overhyping skill, you can also tell marketing. Or lying. I consider him a visionary in a sense of innovation but he is insecure and immoral one. Needles to say his investors made money on his over promises.

Does Elon over-hype nearly everything he gets involved with? Clearly yes. Does he also deliver on some mind-boggling timelines? Well Tesla went from delivering its first cars in 2008 to having the best selling car in the world in 2023, and SpaceX went from not having successfully launched a rocket to delivering about 80% of the world's space payload in roughly the same timeframe. So I'd say that's clearly a 'yes', to…

SpaceX also dropped the cost of kg to space by multiple orders of magnitude, which is a part of the reason they essentially are the space industry now a days. And should Starship deliver we are likely going to be seeing even more orders of magnitude drop in price there.

Elon made some political positions (which he has always hinted at in any case) publicly clear, and the divisive nature of politics in the US which has made a rather vocal minority of people just freak out with regards to him. But the reality is that if he died tomorrow, he would already go down as the Thomas Edison of modern times. And he as of yet still has some years to deliver on Mars which could cement a far greater legacy.

Post reply on HN