Sounds like a liquidity even to me. Time to pay taxes on 150B in equity.
OpenAI to become for-profit company
801–809 of 809 posts
Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company
#802Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 arg…
> Considering Musk isn't the founder of Tesla, that's obviously not true
Tesla began as a very early-stage startup in mid-2003 but produced nothing prior to Musk.
It was Musk that made the investment (in 2004) that Tesla needed to begin work on their first car (the Roadster). Elon Musk was co-founder, product architect and chairman of Tesla at the time of the Roadster's development. To be clear - he was the product architect of Tesla's first product, from the beginning.
Musk received the Global Green 2006 product design award for the design of the Tesla Roadster, presented by Mikhail Gorbachev, and he received the 2007 Index Design award for the design of the Tesla Roadster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster_(first_generati...
Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company
#803Given what Sam has done by clearing out every single person who went against him in the initial coup and completely gutting every safety related team the entire world should be on notice. If you believe what Sam Altman himself and many other researchers are saying, that AGI and ASI may well be within reach inside this decade, then every possible alarm bell should be blaring. Sam cannot be allowed to be in control of…
It's interesting because one of the points Sam emphatically stresses over and over on most podcasts he's gone on in the past 4 years is how crucial it is that a single person or a single company or a collection of companies controlling ASI would be absolutely disastrous and that there needs to be public, democratic control of ASI and the policies surrounding it. Personally I still believe he thinks that way (in contr…
>I would bet money/Manifoldbux that if he thought powerful AGI/ASI were anywhere near, he'd hit the brakes and initiate a massive safety overhaul.
Not sure how you can believe this given all of his recent actions and the ever growing list of whistleblowers dropping out of OpenAI explicitly saying Safety is not taken seriously.
I mean just generally the ability to actually stop and reorient around working on safety seems incredibly non trivial. To say nothing of the race dynamic he has perpetuated, the other frontier companies are unlikely to do the same.
Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company
#804Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect that if you have ever posted copyrightable material online, you will have valid cause to sue them, as they very obviously have incorporated your work for commercial gain. That said, I unfortunately put your chances of winning in court very low.
And why is it, that winning chances are low? Why do the courts let big tech trample on our rights, but the small man goes to jail or has to pay fines for much much less? And how can this situation be improved? Hopefully at least in the EU someone will wake up and make better laws or even start applying them to the current situation.
> And how can this situation be improved?
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/...
Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company
#805Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the goal of a non-profit by its very definition... not profit? The goal of the openAI non-profit is something something control the development of AI for the good of all humanity, then it seems that they explicitly shouldn't care about making $20 billion, and explicitly should care about maintaining control of openAI. If you listen to their rhetoric, $20 billion is peanuts compared to the lightcone and the kard…
> Isn't the goal of a non-profit by its very definition... not profit? Yes, and if you have a bunch more money then you can do more non profit activities that help the world. Getting as much money as possible, so that the money can be used for your great cause, is the best way to effectively run a non profit. > then it seems that they explicitly shouldn't care about making $20 billion Of course they should, because t…
While I'm sure this argument makes sense in some utilitarian world-model or another, it is definitively _not_ one that has been accepted by the courts, largely because both federal and state governments have explicitly legislated against nonprofits doing "general moneymaking" as part of their mission. We already have legal vehicles for that, they're called for-profit companies, they pay tax, and donations to them are not tax deductible.
> Getting as much money as possible, so that the money can be used for your great cause, is the best way to effectively run a non profit.
In anywhere but Silicon Valley is a great way to violate Unrelated Business Income limits and get your charitable status revoked. It is not sufficient that a non-profits "goals" be charitable, their day-to-day activities must be as well, and it's not acceptable to put off those activities until some future date when you'll "make up" for all the regular for-profit work.
Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company
#806Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Isn't the goal of a non-profit by its very definition... not profit? Yes, and if you have a bunch more money then you can do more non profit activities that help the world. Getting as much money as possible, so that the money can be used for your great cause, is the best way to effectively run a non profit. > then it seems that they explicitly shouldn't care about making $20 billion Of course they should, because t…
While I'm sure this argument makes sense in some utilitarian world-model or another, it is definitively _not_ one that has been accepted by the courts, largely because both federal and state governments have explicitly legislated against nonprofits doing "general moneymaking" as part of their mission. We already have legal vehicles for that, they're called for-profit companies, they pay tax, and donations to them are…
> doing "general moneymaking"
Good thing this wouldn't be that. Instead, it would be about promoting the cause.
And yes, non profits are allowed to own assets and maximize the value of those assets.
Of course their mission also matters and they should push towards that. But throwing away billions and billions of dollars for nothing isn't the way to do that.
> their day-to-day activities must be as well
Yes.... and they should also do that.
That has absolutely nothing to do with refusing to sabotage your non profit by throwing away a bunch of money for no reason though.
Of course the non profit should work towards their goal in their day to day activities.
> until some future date
Who said anything about waiting for a future date? Of course their current actions should push towards their goal.
That still has nothing to do with refusing to set money on fire for no reason though.
If anything, I think that the people who were attempting to set their valuable assets on fire and sabotage the non-profit are the ones who should be prosecuted by the legal system to the fullest extend legally allowed for going against the mission and intentionally engaging in charity fraud.
At one point, some of those board members said something about how that they were seriously considering shutting the whole thing down. I would absolutely consider that to be extremely illegal charity fraud, deserving of jail time if they did that.
Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company
#807I’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…
This might be unpopular, but I don't think Mozilla's behavior is inherently good[1]. And even if it has, I don't think it should be used as a litmus test for other corporate behavior. Every company should stand on its own against scrutiny.
[1] "The Mozilla Foundation has no members" https://hacktivis.me/articles/mozilla-foundation-has-no-memb...
Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company
#808Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its interesting how first impressions can be so deceiving. The world's largest private space agency (SpaceX) has completely changed the game in rural internet connectivity. Once upon a time, large chunks of the US had no reliable high speed internet. SpaceX has brought high-speed low-latency internet to every corner of the globe, even the middle of the ocean and Antarctica. This isn't going nowhere even if it seems t…
> SpaceX has brought high-speed low-latency internet to every corner of the globe Which sounds all well and good until you realise it’s at the complete whims of one highly misinformed and reactionary individual. He’s one made-up article away from turning sides and fucking everything up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russo-Ukrainia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Views_of_Elon_Musk#Russian_inv...
It's not going nowhere though.
Re: OpenAI to become for-profit company
#809Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, non-profits don't pay taxes on any revenue regardless of expense. How do you know they had no profit with all of the deals with major companies and having one of the most popular software services in existence? Non-profits can earn profit, they just don't have to pay taxes on those profits and they can't distribute those profits to stakeholders -- it goes back to the business. They are also a private company, a…
> How do you know they had no profit with all of the deals with major companies and having one of the most popular software services in existence? By reading their Form 990 filings, which are publicly accessible here: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/810... .
To be fair, this is a year and a half out of date (finances ending Dec 2022). The first chatGPT had only just come out at that point. 2023 fiscal report is due by Nov 15, and we won't know until next Nov about 2024. So yeah, an audit is in order, to bring the records up to date before the switch, if nothing else.