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Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

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

#541

Post by ryan_j_naughton »

jongjong wrote: post #393
granzymes wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My own thoughts: If I had been on the jury, I would have found against Musk on every point. His lawyers created a “3 phases of doubt” to try and sidestep the statute of limitations, but it was clearly bogus and he was on notice of OpenAI creating a for-profit in 2019. Musk was perfectly happy to have OpenAI be a for-profit, a non-profit with an attached for-profit (the current structure), or even just absorbed into T…

I think this is missing the main point that Musk was never the owner of OpenAI, neither was Sam, nor the employees. The owners are the American people. I presume Musk got a tax rebate from his donation, courtesy of the taxpayer; so did every other donor. The fact is, OpenAI was a non-profit belonging to the public and it was appropriated by the donors... Who already got their tax cuts. This is setting a precedent tha…

No one owns a nonprofit, so your analogy is fundamentally incorrect and based on a misunderstanding of how nonprofits work.

It is actually extremely important that no one “owns” a nonprofit in the way shareholders own a corporation. A nonprofit has no equity owners. It has directors/officers with fiduciary duties, and its assets must be used consistently with its charitable/public-benefit purpose.

But to be clear, that is in no way equivalent, even metaphorically, to it being "owned by the public".

“Public benefit” does not mean “whatever the median taxpayer would vote for” or “whatever the government currently approves of.” It includes many causes supported by small, unpopular, eccentric, religious, ideological, scientific, or advocacy-oriented communities, so long as the organization fits within an exempt purpose and does not operate for impermissible private benefit.

simple examples can easily elucidate this. One can found a nonprofit for a purpose that society generally disagree with. For instance: - a nonprofit to advocate for the rights of hemorrhagic fevers as living organisms - nonprofit museum devoted to preserving a deeply unpopular ideology’s historical artifacts - a nonprofit to educate the public about an eccentric scientific theory - a nonprofit advocating for legal recognition of some fringe moral concern

All of these could be legitimate nonprofits under the law, even though we may deeply disagree with them. This is by design.

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

#542

Post by ben_w »

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…

I would argue that 15 years is not a mind-boggling timeline to go from first car to best selling single model (especially given how few models Tesla has).

Xiaomi Auto reaching a quarter of Tesla's annual output after four years is much more impressive, given it took Tesla until 2019/2020 (8 years, twice as long) to reach that level.

SpaceX is rather more impressive. Unfortunately for everyone, only someone like Musk could have pulled that off: not just the visionary, but also arrogant and litigious enough to sue the US government to reconsider when the government decided against buying from SpaceX. I'm reminded of the phrase "only Nixon could go to China".

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

#543

Post by somenameforme »

kakacik wrote: post #520
somenameforme wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

> he would already go down as the Thomas Edison of modern times A small but important correction - he would be similar to Henry Ford, with capitalistic approach to humans that would make Marx shiver and write second Capital book. Also aligns better with his nazi sympathies. There isn't a single thing he personally invented AFAIK, but he is a good manager from certain angles and can recognize future value in ways entr…

Henry Ford literally invented the moving assembly line. He's also the primary reason that we now have a 5 day, 40 hour week as the standard. Prior to him (and his successes with trialing such), the typical work week was 6 days, with 10-16 hour shifts common. Marx, by contrast, achieved nothing of value for the common man, and spent his entire life mooching off Engels' capitalistic successes, while critiquing such. It's trivial to critique systems, but quite difficult to create and build things up in a way that is sustainable and means something.

As for Musk, he completely revolutionized the space industry. In modern times no single person just invents everything around something akin to e.g. the telegraph, but I don't think that really diminishes his impact. It's just a consequence of the fact that a reusable rocket is much more complex than a telegraph machine. But he's quite infamously involved and directing essentially every single step of the process. This is quite different from the detached and profit/metric motivated focus of typical management, but in many ways it's much closer to how things were 'back in the day' rather than a novel discovery. It should go without saying that people running businesses building 'x' should be deeply knowledgeable about 'x'. "Business", as a specialization in and of itself, in modern times is the disease that's killing America.

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

#544

Post by tim333 »

hdndjsbbs wrote: post #233
knicholes wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting to Mars, it would seem.

Does anyone seriously still believe this? I thought as a society we had realized Musk is simply BSing whatever he feels like until it becomes untenable.

Some things fail but the EVs and rockets have done well. Also Starlink.

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

#545

Post by dboreham »

trivo wrote: post #524
granzymes wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intellectual property (code, data) was transferred from the nonprofit to the for-profit for about $60M, which is what an independent firm hired to assess the value said the IP was worth in late 2018 / early 2019. The nonprofit itself was never converted to a for-profit, and indeed remains a nonprofit to this day. The $60M in IP has grown to about a $200B stake in the OpenAI for-profit.

So you're saying that the non-profit (OpenAI Foundation) owns a certain percentage of the for-profit (OpenAI Corporation)?

The easiest way to think about this is to globally replace "non-profit" with "tax-vehicle". These things are all kinds of company. They just created the company in a tax efficient (for them) way.

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

#546

Post by ben_w »

billti wrote: post #476
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…

That's why I think the Optimus thing might make sense from a 'market cap' perspective. Tesla is great at innovation and ramping global manufacturing for new tech. Ten years ago, that was EVs. But now EVs are becoming a commodity and every other car company is catching up. I do think 'self driving' is still their 'moat' when it comes to EVs. I use it every day, and nothing else comes close. But other than that, buildi…

Even optimistically (no pun intended), I don't see Optimus justifying the Tesla share price.

There's plenty of other companies making robots. Robots can either be controlled by AI or by humans. In the case of humans, there's no moat because everyone can do that. In the case of AI, it can either be on device or on a server, but we're already hitting power supply concerns for data centres, rising prices and supply issues for the components for even local servers, and the historical timeline over which hardware and algorithms have become more energy efficient (and the available power envelope) suggests that on-device AI sufficient for an Optimus to get into a non-self-driving car and drive it at some competence score* happens around a decade after that competence is reached by self-driving cars.

It doesn't even matter if your perception on the relative ranking of different self-drive systems is right or wrong, we're still not yet seeing Tesla vehicles do as Musk said in January 2016:

  I think that within two years, you'll be able to summon your car from across the country. It will meet you wherever your phone is
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

* Any competence score, i.e. 2016 self-drive quality is likely already doable.

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

#548

Post by somenameforme »

bruce511 wrote: post #516
somenameforme wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 relativ…

The value of flight is incalculable. Especially if we see it as a precursor to satellites. A lot of people invested a lot in getting g it to work. Many people died making it better and better. The cost in treasure and lives was substantial, but the return is worth it. Contrast to the moon. The prestige was great, the investment enormous. The return was more-or-less zero. There was a reason Apollo 18 was canceled, and…

You're right there's a reason Apollo 18 was cancelled, but I'm not sure what you'd reference this. The main issue is that Nixon was increasingly paranoid that there was going to be a catastrophic failure in the Apollo program, and that it would affect his political career. He tried to hard to the cancel the program immediately after the first successful landing. NASA had already drawn up plans for not only getting to Mars, but for a complete human settlement of outer space with large space stations and more. This was all cancelled.

So I think the comparison with flight is perfect. Imagine after the Wright Bros. flight, which countless people had died in the process of seeking to achieve, we had one uninvolved entity able to say 'yeah, I'm responsible for all this' and then canceled everything in a simple self-motivated political calculation to try to 'go out on top' so to speak.

The Moon was never the goal, anymore than the Wright Flyer was the goal. It was one small step on a very lengthy journey - a major milestone for sure, but nowhere near the end of the road. And that's where we remain in space, but thanks to the fact that so much expertise was lost in the ~60 year do-nothing era, we're now having to essentially start over. On the bright side, this time the driver's going to be private industry, just like with airplanes - and there will be no myopic politician to cancel it.

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

#549

Post by kakacik »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #394
latexr wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every not in your pocket is in someone else’s. Greedy narcissists can’t stand that, they need to have it all. They don’t need the extra 500 billion to spend it, they need it so the number goes up. They need to be number one. At everything. Remember when Musk lied about being one of the top players for some difficult video game, then it turned out he was paying someone else to play for him? It’s just an ego thing, whi…

Yeah, but lets practice some empathy. Starting point: money can't buy happiness. So what to do to be happy? Extreme wealth removes most practical goals like buying things or going places and doing things. Not that you can't do them, but it's not a meaningful goal to work towards. They have to create their own meaning, whatever that is. A billionaire trying to create purpose for themselves can be boring, or weird. Whi…

> Extreme wealth removes most practical goals like buying things or going places and doing things.

Sorry can't agree on this at all. Helping others feels amazing to any sane human being. Doing sports is similar. Experiencing adrenaline sports is similar. Focusing on raising one's kids properly is always exceptionally well-spent time, and feels great if one is not burned out and has some help against overloading with responsibilities. Thats a plenty of meaning for one's life, regardless of fortune.

The fact is, most of those billionaires are broken human beings - various mental issues, imbalances, maniacally competitive, often sociopaths. They can't achieve what society calls 'happiness', regardless of amount of money spent. So they into various status ego competitive 'games'.

I am pretty sure we all met such people in our lives if you looked close enough, I certainly did. Ie one girl I dated even outright laughed at happiness being my life goal, she was such a mess and knew it she rather openly focused on career and money, those were at least somewhat achievable for her. Its logical - if you can't achieve something important, you focus on next best thing, however inferior it may be. And if one surrounds oneself with the right people, one is not constantly reminded how it actually sucks and there is no force in universe to change that.

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

#550

Post by ben_w »

tehjoker wrote: post #439
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They want mega constellations for always-on drone guidance and for "golden dome" which would allow for the laser-based shoot-down of long range exo-atmospheric missiles This is a conspiracy theory folks who just Googled In-Q-Tel have been stringing together since Covid. It's not true. > examine a map of Starlink connectivity, you will notice that Russia and Gaza are excluded Russia wasn't excluded until recently. T…

> This is a conspiracy theory folks who just Googled In-Q-Tel have been stringing together since Covid. It's not true. ??? It's documented that Ukraine is using Starlink extensively. Golden dome: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/golden-dome-for-america-trump-m... > Wat. Communications are an exception to the lunar treaty that governs the militarization of space. Don't forget that the original space program was designed t…

I believe the "Wat." is directed at the mandated-by-laws-of-physics fact that it adds a 2.6 second lag, and that at constant path loss and frequency it requires antennas have 768 times larger diameter (or close enough, the maths works out that it's the distance to moon divided by distance to wherever in LEO your default case is and all the other things involved cancel out).

This factor (and that it applies to all EM including both radio and optical) is also why we had to wait for lunar orbiter missions to get photos of the Apollo landing sites rather than take a picture with Hubble.

Oh, and then there's the problem with the moon having much longer and much darker nights than anywhere on Earth that isn't the [ant]arctic circle, though I have previously opined that anyone who isn't ready to put a few thousand tons of aluminium onto the moon and make a circumpolar power line *simply isn't ready for any plan like this in the first place*.

And the fact that there's only one moon, so half the planet doesn't get any signal from it at any given time.

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