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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

#571

Post by ivewonyoung »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #477
yodsanklai wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

Previously I would have said buying election results. But apparently the electoral college makes it surprisingly cheap. Musk buys twitter for 44 billion dollars and yet he only needed a quarter of a billion to buy the American government.

The dems outspent republicans by a billion or so, so 250M didn't do much. If it did, Kamala would've won by a lot.

https://www.axios.com/2024/10/31/democrats-republicans-ad-sp...

Way more billionaires supported Kamala vs. Trump (83 vs 52).

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

#572

Post by theptip »

rvnx wrote: post #138
minimaxir wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's large brand value, and then there's $300B brand value. Without a moat, it's hard to argue OpenAI's value is that high.

You can choose as an investor between: a) Coca-Cola (~$300B, profitable, stable, stock-listed, well-known addictive brand, accepted business model with steady growth) b) OpenAI (bleeding cash: $5B lost last year, tech that is not really novel anymore, weird corporate setup, competition that offers similar products). It's not that easy to support the idea that OpenAI will be the winner.

Two bets with the same expected value can have wildly different variance.

The OpenAI bet is clearly that they build AGI and become the worlds first $10T company. At this valuation you only need to think it’s P > 0.1 for it to be a reasonable bet.

Coke is not a “swing for the fences” investment.

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

#573

Post by OccamsMirror »

mullingitover wrote: post #502
rvnx wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can choose as an investor between: a) Coca-Cola (~$300B, profitable, stable, stock-listed, well-known addictive brand, accepted business model with steady growth) b) OpenAI (bleeding cash: $5B lost last year, tech that is not really novel anymore, weird corporate setup, competition that offers similar products). It's not that easy to support the idea that OpenAI will be the winner.

OpenAI is pre-revenue, they're a pure play . It's not about how much you earn, it's about how much you're worth.

For those not in the know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo

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

#574

Post by gilbetron »

artursapek wrote: post #51
irs wrote: post #8

Sam’s reply on twitter[0] no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want [0] https://x.com/sama/status/1889059531625464090 ?

Sam gives off incredibly strong “pride cometh before the fall” energy.

To be fair, so does Musk.

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

#575

Post by scarface_74 »

staticautomatic wrote: post #505
sangnoir wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He always had it? Money give influence naturally. Not as much as he has now: he was famously frustrated by the California state government's Covid lockdown mandates, and was pretty powerless against them. That frustration is probably what led him to buy influence in the Trump campaign,and later administration. Money can take you so far, political power will take you further for imposing your will on others. The "Sh…

Except there’s a line of cases basically saying you can’t do something unlawful and then quickly stop in order to make the legal controversy go away.

You act as if Trump will obey a court order.

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

#576

Post by EA-3167 »

_huayra_ wrote: post #391
yodsanklai wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

Easy: buy media companies to sow political division and pollute the discourse, buy political influence to restrict access to open and unbiased education to ensure the populace cannot engage in critical thinking, then poison the environment in myriad ways until people in their 20s require a dozen rounds of IVF to have kids (or more likely, just giving up because of the ruinious state of inflation compared to incomes).

Come on... endlessly wealthy and wants to do harm? There's only one real, obvious answer: Engineer a plague, or a series of plagues targeting food crops, livestock, and humans. Make something as contagious as measles that kills a third of people reliably, spread it multiple global focal points at once, and you could topple the world pretty effectively. If you attacked the economy and food supply at the same time I don't think there would be any coming back from that.

It would be insane, an apocalyptic fantasy that few could afford outside of (hopefully somewhat) accountable or at least pragmatic governments. But a very rich person could afford it.

And as much as information warfare is terrifying, biological warfare is much worse. I get your "it's already here" point, but lets really take the question at face value and run with it.

edit: Consider that a group MUCH less wealthy than Elon Musk was able to experiment with nuclear weapons, and managed to carry out a sarin attack.

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

#577

Post by openrisk »

Well, now that Wall Street offloaded the X debt they were stuck with for some time they can support great new ventures.

It does all have a bit of Wile E Coyote feel to it. Keep gesticulating wildy to propel forwards before inevitably plunging in the abyss below.

https://www.wsj.com/finance/banks-sell-5-5-billion-of-x-loan...

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

#578

Post by smgit »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #513
UltraSane wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thought the same thing. Musk can protect himself from the average nutjob but he is working very hard to make the kinds of enemies he will NOT be able to protect himself from.

Can you give an example? I dislike Musk as much as the next person, but I can't think of any major state actors or criminal organizations he'd currently be antagonizing.

Read some history of the Gilded Age.

What happened to Rockefeller, Carnegie and JP Morgan? It wasn't the plebs and their jabbering (see muckrakers) that directly took them down, though that jabbering did help give an unusual dude from the NY aristocracy named Teddy(who couldn't stand the muckrakers) political cover to move against them.

Also worth reading about the 2 elections preceding Teddy's fascinating rise to power, where the oligarchy bought the Presidency.

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

#579

Post by scarface_74 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #259
zozbot234 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's using his enormous amount of wealth and influence as a weapon to bludgeon anyone and anything in his way. Using your "enormous amount of wealth" as a weapon means you'll be frittering away that wealth very quickly. Especially since others will be inclined to take the other side of the bet as soon as they catch on to it happening.

> you'll be frittering away that wealth very quickly Musk’s vulnerability is Tesla. He has personally levered those shares in a way that makes him vulnerable to political retribution. (Banning cameras-only self-driving being one option. Politicising recalls being the nuclear one.)

At the rate Teslas are recalled, you don’t need to politicize it

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

#580

Post by esafak »

kLADh232Ha wrote: post #369
_2d30 wrote: post #279

A lot of people are unsurprisingly throwing shade on Musk being involved here but I think it's really important to understand what this is fundamentally about: stopping or fundamentally changing OpenAI's plans to be spun off. The issue at hand is that OpenAI (the private, currently "capped profit" entity, henceforth in this post referred to as OpenAI-P) is trying to get spun out of control of the OpenAI non-profit (h…

I think Musk (probably using his Saudi admirers yet again) wants to buy OpenAI because he needs a working chatbot right now . For example, he is gutting the General Services Administration and wants to install a GSAi chatbot to replace the workers: https://www.wired.com/story/doge-chatbot-ai-first-agenda/ Perhaps "big balls" and the other geniuses he hired haven't managed to come up with a working solution. Musk need…

This makes no sense. Republicans work for the government too. How are they going to get re-elected if they fire their base?
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