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OpenAI to become for-profit company

reuters.com

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Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#751

Post by pj_mukh »

latexr wrote: post #741
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.

> What do you do with a a lot of money past a point? Feed the hungry. House the homeless. Give away money unconditionally to those in need. Build hospitals in poor countries. Fight disinformation on crucial topics (such as climate change). Provide disaster relief. Not build more power hungry technology that exacerbates our current problems. Do literally anything positive for another person, that does not harm others.…

"Feed the hungry. House the homeless"

Funnel $10B in housing to Los Angeles and you'll build less than 100 units of housing, because the inflationary push of that money would balloon the cost of per unit housing. I don't want to imagine the effect of that on middle class housing.

Funnel $10B of food to xyz famine region and you've undercut local farmers for generations. Happens all the time [1]. And that's assuming you can get the aid past local corruption.

These problems aren't as simple as people assume, and I'm low-key happy young naive Billionaire's are avoiding these issues instead of trying to throw their weight around.

FWIW: Sam's already funneled a bunch of money into green energy production[2].

[1]: https://haitisolidarity.net/in-the-news/how-the-united-state...

[2]: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/25/sam-altman-backed-nuclear-st...

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#752

Post by PierceJoy »

cbeach wrote: post #230
PierceJoy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very far from a musk fan, and if you want to make the case that musk isn't responsible for Tesla, SpaceX, and Starlink I think that's a legitimate argument to be made. But I don't think there's much argument to be made that those 3 companies are not advancing humanity.

Tesla and SpaceX would not exist OR prosper, without Musk. If you want to understand why, read the Walter Isaacson biography of Musk (which is based on accounts by his friends, enemies and employees). He's a hard-arsed manager, he is technically involved at all levels of the company, he is relentless, and he takes risks and iterates like no other CEO.

Considering Musk isn't the founder of Tesla, that's obviously not true. He is the founder of SpaceX so that's probably true that it wouldn't exist without him.

Walter Isaacson doesn't have the best reputation for covering his subjects objectively to be fair. If your source for what Elon has or hasn't done is Isaacson, you aren't standing on very solid ground.

The bigger picture point though is that you can easily argue that the employees at those companies, and not a single man, are responsible for the success of those companies. We give far too much credit to CEOs.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#753

Post by nialv7 »

neilv wrote: post #66

The incremental transformation from non-profit to for-profit... does anyone have legal standing to sue? Early hires, who were lured there by the mission? Donors? People who were supposed to be served by the non-profit (everyone)? Some government regulator?

Well I heard someone named Elon did try.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#754

Post by PierceJoy »

cbeach wrote: post #71
cebu_blue wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk isn't "advancing humanity".

I'm sure there were people that claimed Nikola Tesla or Henry Ford weren't "advancing humanity" at the time. There will always be people who disagree with the politics/opinions/alleigances of a successful person and who wish to downplay their success for selfish reasons.

> There will always be people who disagree with the politics/opinions/alleigances of a successful person and who wish to downplay their success for selfish reasons.

And conversely, there will always be people who agree with the politics/opinions/alleigances of a successful person and who wish to overstate the reasons behind their success for selfish reasons.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#755

Post by pj_mukh »

BrianHenryIE wrote: post #724
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.

Let me recommend my favourite TikTok/YouTube channel of late, The Forest Jar what annoys you?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9Le1ibX2zY > if you went to a group of investors and pitched a board game where the winners get space ships and the losers die, they'd call you crazy. But if you suggested to those same investors that perhaps we shouldn't organize our entire society that way, they'd call you crazy.

"where the winners get space ships and the losers die,"

The Social Security budget is $1.4 Trillion, just the federal welfare budget is >$1Trillion (not including state budgets), and then there's medicare. Meanwhile, the NASA budget is I wish we lived in that simple of a world. But we don't.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#756

Post by exceptione »

pj_mukh wrote: post #751
latexr wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you do with a a lot of money past a point? Feed the hungry. House the homeless. Give away money unconditionally to those in need. Build hospitals in poor countries. Fight disinformation on crucial topics (such as climate change). Provide disaster relief. Not build more power hungry technology that exacerbates our current problems. Do literally anything positive for another person, that does not harm others.…

"Feed the hungry. House the homeless" Funnel $10B in housing to Los Angeles and you'll build less than 100 units of housing, because the inflationary push of that money would balloon the cost of per unit housing. I don't want to imagine the effect of that on middle class housing. Funnel $10B of food to xyz famine region and you've undercut local farmers for generations. Happens all the time [1]. And that's assuming y…

> Funnel $10B in housing to Los Angeles and you'll build less than 100 units of housing, because the inflationary push of that money would balloon the cost of per unit housing. I don't want to imagine the effect of that on middle class housing.

Doesn't make sense to me. An uptick in construction work will not be an inflation balloon. More disposable income doesn't mean 1:1 more spending.

If you build a lot of (social) housing, you put at worst a lot of people a roof above their head.

Families having less financial stress might lower crime rate and improve children school scores. They might save to start businesses or find their other talents.

For some, this might be a downside tough. It makes workers more educated, healthier, more stable, less desperate and less dependent on bosses, plus they might be less angry so politically less exploitable too.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#757

Post by mattmaroon »

mandmandam wrote: post #739
mattmaroon wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not possible he could have thought that in 1992. It’s probably not even possible that he passed up one billion. Had he tried he’d likely have lost out to open standards like so many others did. You could prove me wrong easily. Find someone who raised (inflation adjusted) tens of billions, had the opportunity to make trillions, and declined. You can’t. You can likely take that down two orders of magnitude and st…

> It isn’t about integrity. Oh, but it is. That's exactly what this is about. As pointed out much earlier in the thread, it's generally the people who lack integrity that fail to acknowledge or recognize it in others. "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" - You don't have to be Jesus to understand the sense of this quote. Just be honest and observant.

Right but you’re defining integrity in a different way than anyone who has ever raised $10b and had a company (or whatever you want to call OpenAI, I have never really known how to refer to its unique arrangement) that was worth $150b and rapidly climbing.

They would tell you (and sincerely believe it) that it being a for profit is better for a whole list of reasons. They believe they have integrity. They don’t believe they’ve lost their soul. They believe they’re doing a whole lot of good for the world.

That’s my point. The denizens of HN think they lack integrity for this, I think they just define it differently and anyone playing for trillions would define it their way.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#758

Post by pj_mukh »

exceptione wrote: post #756
pj_mukh wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Feed the hungry. House the homeless" Funnel $10B in housing to Los Angeles and you'll build less than 100 units of housing, because the inflationary push of that money would balloon the cost of per unit housing. I don't want to imagine the effect of that on middle class housing. Funnel $10B of food to xyz famine region and you've undercut local farmers for generations. Happens all the time [1]. And that's assuming y…

> Funnel $10B in housing to Los Angeles and you'll build less than 100 units of housing, because the inflationary push of that money would balloon the cost of per unit housing. I don't want to imagine the effect of that on middle class housing. Doesn't make sense to me. An uptick in construction work will not be an inflation balloon. More disposable income doesn't mean 1:1 more spending. If you build a lot of (social…

"An uptick in construction work will not be an inflation balloon. "

There's a massive shortage in construction workers [1], so yes there will be? The few construction workers we do have can demand higher wages (yay!) but then will they be outbidding other mid-income folks for housing with those increased wages? Sounds like an inflation spiral to me.

My statement wasn't against social housing, I love social housing. We just haven't cracked the code in scaling housing (and subsequent maintenance) yet. And the problem is about 80% political will, billionaire cash is useless here.

[1]: https://www.abc.org/News-Media/News-Releases/abc-2024-constr...

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#759

Post by MerManMaid »

lolinder wrote: post #331
cowpig wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a false dichotomy. Clearly getting money and control are the main objectives here, and we're all operating over a distribution of possible outcomes.

I don't think so. If Altman is prepping for an exit (which I think he is), I'm having a very hard time imagining a world in which he also sincerely believes his company is about to achieve AGI. An exit only makes sense if OpenAI is currently at approximately its peak valuation, not if it is truly likely to be the first to AGI (which, if achieved, would give it a nearly infinite value).

What's the effective difference between exiting now and if it does achieve in your words "nearly infinite value" to him personally?

Either way he is set for life, truly being one of the most wealthy humans to have ever exist... literally.

Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company

#760

Post by educasean »

shprd wrote: post #721
educasean wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to make sure I understood which side of the equation I fell on. And I must say, it looks to me like a lot of people in the "weak" camp aren't helpless martyrs though, myself included. People are excited and enthusiastic about AI and are actively reaping the benefits of progress. I don't think your analogy is quite apt.

> a lot of people in the "weak" camp Define "a lot"? Most people barely know how to use their email. Even among the minority who do actively use "AI" and excited about it, outside of ML engineers they aren't well-informed or aware what data is used for training, or even what training means and how these models work to begin with. > People are excited and enthusiastic about AI and are actively reaping the benefits of…

Your argument seems to be that the majority of the world are the weak being sacrificed but are too ignorant to realize it. I wholeheartedly disagree with this theory.
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