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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

#841

Post by ZeroGravitas »

WheatMillington wrote: post #587
TrackerFF wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of it is tied up to a criminally overvalued Tesla stock though? Sure, Tesla could go to zero and he'd still be a fabulously wealthy man, but with how things are moving - It wouldn't surprise me that he's about the fall down the ranks. Let's see how much power he has once the "richest man in the world" aura fades away.

I've been hearing about the inevitable decline of Tesla for about 10 years now.

Most of that was from Republican climate change deniers trying to make a culture war out of EVs.

Musk switching sides on that seems a good time to re-evaluate who is making the predictions now and why.

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

#842

Post by porridgeraisin »

harperawl wrote: post #813
lend000 wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: are people genuinely against the work being done by DOGE? I am frequenting both X and HN + other liberal leaning news sources, and it's like the people in the comments are living in different solar systems. I see a post on X with receipts showing millions of dollars of pretty obvious waste and/or corruption, many involving news outlet grants and subscriptions, including names, amounts, etc. Then I s…

> auditing government spending Pretending like anything Elon Musk is doing is legitimate auditing is absurd. Do you recall when he/DOGE gutted NIH and research funding on a whim, and he didn't even know? ( https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888575713629925769 ) > super-competent outsider I'd disagree about him being particularly competent at anything other than venture capital, and auditing ≠ venture capital. Regardless,…

> Gutted NIH and research funding

This is simply factually wrong. The twitter-engagement-bait driven nonsense like the OP in the tweet you linked is just so bad. I only got flagged about this when talking with an acquaintance working on medical research under NIH grants in the US. (I'm not from the US)

What has actually happened is adjustment of what they call the "indirect cost rate". This refers to the portion of funding you're allowed to chalk down to administrative overhead as opposed to direct research expenses.

For example in 2023, of the 35billion in NIH grants, 9billion went to administrative overhead (25%).

The new rule is them capping this to 15%. By the way this rate is around the standard in all private grant foundations.

Here is the primary source of information:

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-0...

Now, I'm not sure if all the DEI stuff the new government doesn't like comes under "administrative overhead". If it did, it would explain the timing of the announcement. But adjusting indirect cost rates is in general a very normal thing to do, and 25% is very high, even for a prosperous grant system like the NIH.

Here [2] is a university mentioning their negotiated indirect cost rate of 56%(!!!)

For comparison, the NSF from 2010 to 2016 varied their rate only between 16% and 24% [3]. The NIH rates are absurdly high.

News articles such as [1], that directly quote the above primary source and still misconstrue it, deserve jail time.

Also, it is really disingenous to say "cutting funds for cancer research" as if it's directly targeted at cancer research.

Engagement driven media like Twitter, news websites, etc, are truly the devil of the world. And the incentives are rotten, so no matter what Musk says X isn't fixing it in any way.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/08/nih-cuts-bi...

[2] https://research.umich.edu/update-on-nih-indirect-cost-rate-...

[3] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-576t

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

#843

Post by guax »

miramba wrote: post #746

Rather than discussing crazy Elon, I would like to hear insights on what this means? Why does he want OpenAI? Is there a chance to ever get this money back? Who is financing this after the twitter failure?

The last question to me is the most interesting. I am starting to believe that they don't consider it a failure because they might be lending the money as a bribe to be close/hold something to the guy influencing the president.

Like Trump getting money from DB over and over.

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

#844

Post by braymundo »

akudha wrote: post #343
jredwards wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked Elon until about 2018. Since then he's gradually degraded from "interesting founder" to "guy who picks fights about weird topics on the internet" to "absurdist oligarch actively working to destroy institutions which support average Americans." I certainly suspect that there were always elements of what he's become that just weren't as publicly apparent.

What did you like about him until 2018? He is not some visionary or genius or even smart. Neither is/was he a decent person to deal with (read up on his PayPal days). He is however, extraordinarily ruthless and thin skinned. So what is it that you saw in him that you liked him?

This. He is definitely not a genius and not even smart. He can’t formulate any interesting, original thoughts. He parrots, daily, dumb ideas and state propaganda (for example, russia) without any critical thinking.

The average person on the street is smarter than him.

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

#845

Post by llamaimperative »

paulddraper wrote: post #745
llamaimperative wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USAID was audited by an (actual) independent (actual) auditor in November of 2024. They recommended a review of leases and to tighten up their employee expense reporting requirements. You have no reason to believe Elon is either competent, nor independent, nor well-intentioned on any of this. No, no one is against “a more efficient government.” Obviously. No one is “pro-fraud.” Obviously. Please post specific example…

> congressionally approved You say that like it’s a good thing…

Following the constitutionally designed balance of powers is a good thing, even when some line items appear in the budget which I personally disagree with.

This is what’s known as “compromise,” or otherwise “being a fucking adult.”

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

#846

Post by HqatsR »

motorest wrote: post #811
fshr wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it seems to have very little to do with his antics. Surely inflation, market saturation, and increased competition is more probable?

> To me it seems to have very little to do with his antics. For your hypothesis to make sense, first you would have to establish that Musk's antics have no negative impact on Musk's public opinion or public image. In the meantime, you've started to see a global wave of both Tesla stores and Tesla cars being vandalized in protest over Musk's public support for Nazism. In some cases such as Germany you even had public…

[dead]

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

#847

Post by WhyOhWhyQ »

jebarker wrote: post #44
WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #16

Since my goal is to see the failure of LLM technology, I think this is fantastic.

Why is that your goal?

At this point I think the burden of proof should be on ML people to explain why that shouldn't be my goal. Every person in that industry has stated that the technology is going to displace 30% of jobs within the decade. Why should anybody support something which is certain to absolutely destroy society while simultaneously having no positive payoff?

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

#848

Post by llamaimperative »

porridgeraisin wrote: post #842
harperawl wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> auditing government spending Pretending like anything Elon Musk is doing is legitimate auditing is absurd. Do you recall when he/DOGE gutted NIH and research funding on a whim, and he didn't even know? ( https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888575713629925769 ) > super-competent outsider I'd disagree about him being particularly competent at anything other than venture capital, and auditing ≠ venture capital. Regardless,…

> Gutted NIH and research funding This is simply factually wrong. The twitter-engagement-bait driven nonsense like the OP in the tweet you linked is just so bad. I only got flagged about this when talking with an acquaintance working on medical research under NIH grants in the US. (I'm not from the US) What has actually happened is adjustment of what they call the "indirect cost rate". This refers to the portion of f…

[flagged]

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

#849

Post by porridgeraisin »

llamaimperative wrote: post #848
porridgeraisin wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gutted NIH and research funding This is simply factually wrong. The twitter-engagement-bait driven nonsense like the OP in the tweet you linked is just so bad. I only got flagged about this when talking with an acquaintance working on medical research under NIH grants in the US. (I'm not from the US) What has actually happened is adjustment of what they call the "indirect cost rate". This refers to the portion of f…

[flagged]

> Why on earth would this be the case? Do you hear yourself? Here’s the answer: no, obviously.

I have no skin in the game. I just hypothesised as to why the timing might overlap with your new government's crusade

> If Elon thinks they’re too high, the new administration can negotiate them more vigorously next time around. They can take a position of across the board cuts if they want, but obviously the outcome is likely to be fewer orgs accepting the negotiated rates, I.e. they have just cut research

But the NSF, and every single private grant foundations, operates at ~15% rates. Why would the NIH converging to the same rate affect anything?

> Are we supposed to ignore the actual impacts of a decision and instead refer to it by its alleged intent?

No, you're just supposed to avoid lossy compression.

"NIH cuts research funding for administrative overhead. This could impact cancer research"

Is a better, factual statement. It separates the objective, factual, action taken by the NIH and your hypothesised effect of that action on two separate sentences and qualifies the hypothesis with "could".

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

#850

Post by lm28469 »

tqi wrote: post #169
minimaxir wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon's response: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889062013109703009 > Swindler In another tweet chain: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889063777792069911 > Scam Altman

I absolutely hate how much CEOs acting like children / influencers has become the norm. Maybe they were always like this, and twitter has just given us a window into it, but I for one would wholeheartedly welcome a return to "respectability" norms for business and civic leaders.

It's the mirror of society, you have as many people who find him dumb and childish as you have people seeing him as a role model. Same with Tate and other influencers, the hard truth is that a lot of people are perfectly fine with these behaviours, and through internet's anonymity they thrive in ways they couldn't back in the days.
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