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OpenAI to become for-profit company

reuters.com

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Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#581

Post by talldayo »

pj_mukh wrote: post #576
feoren wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam: "I'm not in it for the money. I have principles." World: "But what if it was like, a lot of money?" Sam: "Oh alright you convinced me. Fuck my principles."

What do you do with a a lot of money past a point? A corporate controlled AGI being just a stop on the way to build another private space agency seems like a...letdown.

To be honest, I would take a private space agency 7 days out of the week with that kind of capital. We have no fundamental proof that LLMs will scale to the intelligence levels that we imagine in our heads. The industry application for LLMs is even weaker than computer vision, and the public sentiment is almost completely against it. Sam's product is hype; eventually people are going to realize that Q* and Strawberry were marketing moves intended to extend OpenAI's news cycle relevancy and not serious steps towards superintelligence. We were promised tools, and they're shipping toys.

I could tell you in very plain terms how a competitor to Boeing and SpaceX would benefit the American economy. I have not even the faintest fucking clue what "AGI" even is, or how it's profitable if it resembles the LLMs that OpenAI is selling today.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#582

Post by [deleted] »

game_the0ry wrote: post #550
peanuty1 wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the 4 million dollar car, Sam already made a ton of money from Reddit and being President of YC.

Liking and buying expensive cars is not wrong. But buying a $4M car while saying you do not car about money is a mis-alignment between words and actions, which comes off untrustworthy.

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#584

Post by wonnage »

thesurlydev wrote: post #278

I can't help but wonder if things would be different if Sam Altman wasn't allowed to come back to OpenAI. Instead, the safeguards are gone, challengers have left the company, and the bottom line is now the new priority. All in opposition to ushering in AI advancement with the caution and respect it deserves.

Maybe my expectations were too high but they seem to have run out of juice. Every major announcement since the original ChatGPT release has been kind of a dud - I know there have been improvements, but it's mostly the same hallucinatory experience as it was on release day. A lot of the interesting work is now happening elsewhere. It seems like for a lot of products, the LLM part is just an API layer you can swap out if you think e.g Claude does a better job.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#585

Post by BrawnyBadger53 »

sophacles wrote: post #311
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it’s a hint that the tax rate for small and medium companies should be reduced (or other non tax laws modified based on company size), to copy the advantages of this nonprofit to profit conversion, while taxes for large companies should be increased. It would maybe help make competition more fair and make survival easier for startups.

This is actually a good idea. I say we go even further and stop wasting so much money cleaning up after companies - get rid of the entire legal entity known as a corporation and let investors shoulder the full liability that comes with their ownership stake.

History has shown that limited liability is a massive advantage for our economy in encouraging both domestic and foreign investment. Seems unlikely we would put ourselves at a global disadvantage by doing this.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#586

Post by cdchn »

throwaway314155 wrote: post #531
throwup238 wrote: post #352

I’m confused by this news story and the response here. No one seems to understand OpenAI’s corporate structure or non profits at all. My understanding: OpenAI follows the same model Mozilla does. The nonprofit has owned a for-profit corporation called OpenAI Global, LLC that pays taxes on any revenue that isn’t directly in service of their mission (in a very narrow sense based on judicial precedent) since 2019 [1]. I…

It's about the narrative they tried to create. The spin. It doesn't matter much if they were technically behaving as a for-profit entity previously. What matters is that they wanted the public (and likely, their talent) to _think_ that they weren't even interested in making a profit as this would be a philosophical threat to the notion of any sort of impartial or even hopefully benevolent originator of AGI (a goal wh…

>What matters is that they wanted the public (and likely, their talent) to _think_ that they weren't even interested in making a profit as this would be a philosophical threat to the notion of any sort of impartial or even hopefully benevolent originator of AGI (a goal which is laid plainly in their mission statement)

And now they want to cast off any pretense of that former altruistic yolk now that they have a new, better raison d'etre to attract talent: making absolutely unparalleled stacks of cash.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#587

Post by cdchn »

talldayo wrote: post #581
pj_mukh wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do with a a lot of money past a point? A corporate controlled AGI being just a stop on the way to build another private space agency seems like a...letdown.

To be honest, I would take a private space agency 7 days out of the week with that kind of capital. We have no fundamental proof that LLMs will scale to the intelligence levels that we imagine in our heads. The industry application for LLMs is even weaker than computer vision, and the public sentiment is almost completely against it. Sam's product is hype; eventually people are going to realize that Q* and Strawberry…

Private space agency and LLMs both seem like big industries going nowhere driven by sci-fi hopes and dreams.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#588

Post by pj_mukh »

talldayo wrote: post #581
pj_mukh wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do with a a lot of money past a point? A corporate controlled AGI being just a stop on the way to build another private space agency seems like a...letdown.

To be honest, I would take a private space agency 7 days out of the week with that kind of capital. We have no fundamental proof that LLMs will scale to the intelligence levels that we imagine in our heads. The industry application for LLMs is even weaker than computer vision, and the public sentiment is almost completely against it. Sam's product is hype; eventually people are going to realize that Q* and Strawberry…

I would agree with you that a space agency is also useful (maybe more useful some days of the week). Sam disagrees and thinks he can do better without a non-profit board now. I'm glad we live in a world where he gets to try and we get to tax him and his employees to do other things we consider useful.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#589

Post by johnsimer »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #252
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICYMI, Elon Musk restarted his lawsuit a month or two ago: https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-revives-lawsuit... I'm wondering if OpenAI's charter might provide a useful legal angle. The charter states: >OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that [AGI ...] benefits all of humanity. >... >We commit to use any influence we obtain over AGI’s deployment to ensure it is used for the benefit of all, and to avoid enabling…

Sam had a blog post literally two days ago that acknowledged risks. There’s also still a sizeable focus on safety and people with roles dedicated to it at open ai

Is there a sizable focus on safety? Last time I heard there was only like one safety person left on the team

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#590

Post by amelius »

unstruktured wrote: post #466

I wish they would at least rename the company to "ClosedAI" because that's exactly what it is at this point.

Unfortunately, that's not how trademarks work.

You can name your company "ThisProductWillCureYouFromCancer" and the FDA cannot do a thing about it if you put it on a bottle of herbal pills.

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