[HN Gopher] OpenAI to become for-profit company
___________________________________________________________________
OpenAI to become for-profit company
Author : jspann
Score : 1029 points
Date : 2024-09-26 08:34 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| squarefoot wrote:
| https://archive.ph/jUJVU
| dang wrote:
| That points to https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-chief-
| technology-officer-..., which was the submitted URL (thanks!),
| but we've changed to the Reuters article now, which seems to
| still have the most reporting on this story.
| davesmylie wrote:
| Ahh. What a surprise - no-one could have predicted this
| freitasm wrote:
| Seeing so much money rolling in, hard to not want a slice of
| the pie.
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| Only hard if you're that kind of person. Not everyone is like
| that. And those kind of people have difficulty believing
| this.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Everyone is like that when the number is potentially in the
| trillions. There are just people who are like that and
| people who think they aren't because they've never been
| within a digit grouping of it.
| phito wrote:
| There definitely are people who aren't like that. Not a
| lot for sure, but they exist.
| mandmandam wrote:
| There are many examples through history proving you
| wrong.
|
| * Frederick Banting sold the patent for insulin to the
| University of Toronto for just $1.
|
| * Tim Berners-Lee decided not to patent the web, making
| it free for public use.
|
| * Jonas Salk refused to patent the polio vaccine - "can
| you patent the sun?"
|
| * Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds could have _easily_
| sold humanity out for untold billions.
|
| * Chuck Feeny silently gave away $8bn, keeping only a few
| million.
|
| ... And in any case, this is an extreme situation. AI is
| an existential threat/opportunity. Allowing it to be
| sidestepped into the hands of Sam "sell me your retinal
| scans for $50" Altman is _fucking insane_ , and that's
| putting it lightly.
| Vespasian wrote:
| I'm very happy that the EU got into the game early and
| started regulating AI.
|
| It's way easier to adapt an existing framework one way or
| the other if the political part is already done.
|
| I don't trust the AI industry to be a good stewart even
| less then the tech industry in general and when the area
| where I live has a chance at avoiding the worst outcome
| (even if at a price) in this technological transition I'm
| taking it.
| Clubber wrote:
| Also, most of the robber barons of the early Industrial
| Revolution gave away all or most their wealth.
|
| https://factmyth.com/factoids/the-robber-barons-gave-
| most-of...
|
| https://www.carnegie.org/about/our-
| history/gospelofwealth/
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Giving away much of one's wealth is very different than
| choosing not to accumulate it in the first place.
|
| It's hard to find someone who has gotten to a position
| where they might have a reasonable shot at becoming the
| world's wealthiest person who doesn't think they'd be a
| great steward of the wealth. It makes much more sense for
| a titan of industry to make as much as they can and then
| give much away than it does to simply not make it.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| These are all examples of people who were not even
| remotely looking at the sums of money involved in AGI,
| both in terms of investment required and reward. I used
| "trillions" rather than "billions" for a reason.
| Inflation adjust it all you want, none of these passed up
| 1/10th of this opportunity.
| mandmandam wrote:
| It's possible Tim Berners-Lee gave up hundreds of
| billions.
|
| Regardless, you've missed the point. Some people value
| their integrity over $trillions, and refuse to sell
| humanity out. Others would sell you out for $50.
|
| Or to put it another way: Some people have _enough_ , and
| some never will.
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| What you're showing me is you don't know very many
| different people.
| sgu999 wrote:
| Illustrating that part of the parent comment:
|
| > And those kind of people have difficulty believing
| this.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Everyone is like that when the number is potentially in
| the trillions
|
| No, we're really not all like that.
|
| I stopped caring about money at 6 digits a decade ago,
| and I'm not even at 7 digits now _because I don 't care
| for the accumulation of stuff_ -- if money had been my
| goal, I'd have gone to Silicon Valley rather than to
| Berlin, and even unexciting work would have put me
| between 7 and 8 digits by this point.
|
| I can imagine a world in which I had made "the right
| choices" with bitcoin and Apple stocks -- perfect play
| would have had me own _all of it_ -- and then I realised
| this would simply have made me a Person Of Interest to
| national intelligence agencies, not given me anything I
| would find more interesting than what I do with far less.
|
| I can imagine a future AI (in my lifetime, even) and a VN
| replicator, which rearranges the planet Mercury into a
| personal O'Neill cylinder for each and every human --
| such structures would exceed trillions of USD per unit if
| built today. Cool, I'll put a full-size model of the
| Enterprise D inside mine, and possibly invite friends
| over to play Star Fleet Battles using the main bridge
| viewscreen. But otherwise, what's the point? I already
| live somewhere nice.
|
| > There are just people who are like that and people who
| think they aren't because they've never been within a
| digit grouping of it.
|
| Does it seem that way to you because you yourself have
| unbounded desire, or because the most famous business
| people in the world seem so?
|
| People like me don't make the largest of waves. (Well,
| not unless HN karma counts...)
| snapcaster wrote:
| You think buying apple stock and bitcoin would put you on
| the radar of intelligence agencies? Wouldn't that
| grouping be some massive number of middle class
| millennials?
| ben_w wrote:
| Perhaps I wasn't clear. When I wrote:
|
| > perfect play would have had me own all of it
|
| I meant _literally all of it_ : with perfect play and the
| benefit of hindsight, starting with the money I had in c.
| 2002 from summer holiday jobs and initially using it for
| Apple trades until bitcoin was invented, it was possible
| to own _all the bitcoin in existence_ with the right set
| of trades.
|
| Heck, never mind _perfect_ play, at current rates _two
| single trades_ would have made me the single richest
| person on the planet: buying $1k of Apple stock at the
| right time, then selling it all for $20k when it was
| 10,000 BTC for some pizzas.
|
| (But also, the attempt would almost certainly have broken
| the currency as IMO there's not really that much
| liquidity).
| pdpi wrote:
| It's a "courage isn't the absence of fear" sort of
| situation.
|
| I don't think there's many people out there who would not
| be tempted at all to take some of that money for
| themselves. Rather, people are willing and able to rise
| above that temptation.
| causal wrote:
| Ehh, there's a lot of space between "desperately in need"
| and "wanting to seize billions in equity".
| vrighter wrote:
| What money? Aren't most (all?) AI companies are operating at
| a loss?
| jsheard wrote:
| The ones selling the shovels are doing well, but otherwise
| yeah nobody is making any money.
|
| For the true believers that's just a temporary setback on
| the way to becoming trillionaires though.
| alan-hn wrote:
| I think the people getting salaries are doing just fine
| opdahl wrote:
| Well they are spending billions to make shovels that they
| are selling for millions (roughly).
| jsheard wrote:
| The shovel salesmen in this case are the likes of Nvidia,
| Huggingface and Runpod who are on the receiving end of
| the billions that AI model salesmen are spending to make
| millions in revenue. HF are one of the vanishingly few
| AI-centric startups who claim to already be profitable,
| because they're positioned as a money sink for the
| _other_ AI-centric startups who are bleeding cash.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Hi, you are new here. Welcome to tech.
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| OpenAI is losing billions in the way Uber lost billions -
| through poor management.
|
| When/if Altman ever gets out of the way like Travis K did
| with Uber then the real business people can come in and run
| the company correctly. Exactly like what happened with Uber
| - who never turned a profit under that leadership in the US
| and had their lunch eaten by a Chinese knock-off for years
| abroad. Can't have spoiled brats in charge, they have no
| experience and are wasteful and impulsive. Especially like
| Altman who has no engineering talent either. What is his
| purpose in OpenAI? He can't do anything.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Will they finally rename the company?
| ognyankulev wrote:
| Renaming to "TheAI" would match their ambition for AGI.
| sd9 wrote:
| Drop the "The", just "AI"
| pluc wrote:
| Altman Intelligence Inc.
| romanhn wrote:
| Altman Inc seems sufficient enough
| tokai wrote:
| ClopenAI
| lioeters wrote:
| I hope some journalist popularizes "clopen" as a neologism
| to describe organizations that claim to be open and
| transparent but in practice are closed and opaque.
|
| Or "clopen-source software", projects that claim to be
| open-source but vital pieces are proprietary.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Probably most people here don't know this (and probably
| not totally universal), but a "clopen" is what you call
| it when you have to work a morning shift the day after
| having worked an evening shift.
| flkenosad wrote:
| This is the first thing I thought of.
| wazdra wrote:
| Idk if that was parent's ref, but clopen is a term used
| in topology
| mc32 wrote:
| PigpenAI
| ericjmorey wrote:
| Is the name Worldcoin available?
| timeon wrote:
| It is not. But you can remove some letter like 'i' for
| example.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Omni Consumer Products, or Altman-Yutani Corporation would be
| nice
| probably_wrong wrote:
| ClosedAF
| timeon wrote:
| Sure. Since AI is closed now, they will try 'OpenAGI'.
| srvmshr wrote:
| It seemed only a matter of time, so it isn't very surprising.
| _Capped profit_ company running expensive resources on Internet
| scale, and headed by Altman wasn 't going to last forever in that
| state. That, or getting gobbled by Microsoft.
|
| Interesting timing of the news since Murati left today, gdb is
| 'inactive' and Sutskevar has left to start his own company. Also
| seeing few OpenAI folks announcing their future plans today on
| X/Twitter
| mellosouls wrote:
| a couple of other discussions going on including this one with
| non-paywall op:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548
| Flex247A wrote:
| The jokes write themselves!
| code51 wrote:
| Are the previous investments counting as "donations" still? Elon
| must have something to say...
| Maledictus wrote:
| And the tax office! If this works, many companies will be
| founded as non-profit first in the future.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| The most surprising thing to me in this is that the non-profit
| will still exist. Not sure what the point of it is anymore. Taken
| as a whole, OpenAI is now just a for-profit entity beholden to
| investors and Sam Altman as a shareholder. The non-profit is
| really just vestigial.
|
| I guess technically it's supposed to play some role in making
| sure OpenAI "benefits humanity". But as we've seen multiple
| times, whenever that goal clashes with the interests of
| investors, the latter wins out.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > The most surprising thing to me in this is that the non-
| profit will still exist.
|
| That entity will scrape the internet and train the models and
| claim that "it's just research" to be able to claim that all is
| fair-use.
|
| At this point it's not even funny anymore.
| lioeters wrote:
| Scraping the entire internet for training data without regard
| for copyright or attribution - specifically to use for
| generative AI to produce similar content for profit. How this
| is being allowed to happen legally is baffling.
|
| It does suit the modus operandi of a number of American
| companies that start out as literally illegal/criminal
| operations until they get big and rich enough to pay a fine
| for their youthful misdeeds.
|
| By the time some of them get huge, they're in bed with the
| government to dominate the market.
| brayhite wrote:
| A tale as told as time.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| To me this is a no brainer. If it's a choice between having
| AI and not,
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Even if the knock-on effect is "all the artists and
| thinkers who contributed to the uncompensated free
| training set give up and stop creating new stuff"?
| brvsft wrote:
| If an "artist" or "thinker" stops because of this, I
| question their motivations and those labels in the first
| place.
| bayindirh wrote:
| After Instagram started feeding user photos to their AI
| models, I stopped adding new photos to my profile. I
| still take photos. I wonder about your thoughts about my
| motivation.
| esafak wrote:
| They might be motivated to pay their bills. Weird people.
| brvsft wrote:
| Right, people were trying to 'pay their bills' with
| content that was freely shared such that AI could take
| advantage of it. Weird people.
|
| Or we're all talking about and envisioning some specific
| little subset of artists. I suspect you're trying to
| pretend that someone with a literal set of paintbrushes
| living in a shitty loft is somehow having their original
| artwork stolen by AI despite no high resolution
| photography of it existing on the internet. I'm not
| falling for that. Be more specific about which artists
| are losing their livelihoods.
| esafak wrote:
| Numerous kinds of artists are feeling the squeeze. Copy
| writers, stock photographers, graphic designers, UI
| designers, interior designers, etc.
| PlattypusRex wrote:
| I guess it's their fault for not being clairvoyant before
| AI arrived, and for sharing their portfolio with others
| online to advertise their skills for commissions to pay
| for food and rent.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Everyone tends to have "be able to afford basic
| necessities" as a major motivation. That includes people
| who work in creative fields.
| Drakim wrote:
| Several of the agricultural revolutions we went though is
| what freed up humanity to not spend all of it's work
| producing sustenance, leaving time for other professions
| like making art and music. But it also destroyed a lot of
| jobs for people who were necessary for gathering food the
| old inefficient way.
|
| If we take your argument to it's logical conclusion, all
| progress is inherently bad, and should be stopped.
|
| I deposit instead that the real problem is that we tied
| people's ability to afford basic necessities to how much
| output they can produce as a cog in our societal machine.
| LunaSea wrote:
| > I deposit instead that the real problem is that we tied
| people's ability to afford basic necessities to how much
| output they can produce as a cog in our societal machine.
|
| Yes, because if you depend on some overarching
| organisation or person to give it to you, you are fucked
| 100% of the time due this dependency.
| PlattypusRex wrote:
| The net result was positive in that new jobs were created
| for every farming job lost, as people moved to cities.
|
| If AI replaces millions of jobs, it will be a net
| negative in job availability for working class people.
|
| I agree with your last point, the way the system is set
| up is incompatible with the looming future.
| Drakim wrote:
| The jobs in the cities weren't created by the new farming
| techniques though, those new farming techniques only
| removed jobs by the millions like you are saying AI might
| do.
| PlattypusRex wrote:
| I didn't say they were created by new farming techniques,
| I said new jobs in general were created by increased
| urbanization, which was partially fed by agricultural
| innovations over time. For example, Jethro Tull's seed
| drill (1701) enabled sowing seeds in neat rows, which
| eliminated the jobs of "broadcast seeders" (actual
| title). If you lost your farming job due to automation,
| you could move to the city to feed your family.
|
| There is no similar net creation of jobs for society if
| jobs are eliminated by AI, and it's even worse than that
| because many of the jobs are specialized, high-skill
| positions that can't be transferred to other careers
| easily. It goes without saying that it also includes
| millions of low-skill jobs like cashiers, stockers, data
| entry, CS reps, etc. Generally people who are already
| struggling to get enough hours and feed their families as
| it is.
| consteval wrote:
| Considering you're not much of an artist or thinker
| yourself, I'm not sure your questioning has much value.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| Recording devices, you know a record player had a
| profound effect on artists. go back
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That seems like a poor comparison.
|
| Recording devices permitted artists to sell more art.
|
| Many of the uses of AI people get most excited about seem
| to be cutting the expensive human creators out of the
| equation.
| golergka wrote:
| Recording devices destroyed most of the musician's jobs.
| Vast majority of musicians who were employed before
| advent of recordings didn't have their own material and
| were not good enough to make good recordings anyway. Same
| with artists now: the great ones will be much more
| productive, but the bottom 80-90% won't have anything to
| do anymore.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I disagree, with AI the dynamics are very different from
| recording.
|
| Current AI can greatly elevate what a beginning artist
| can produce. If you have a decent grasp of proportions,
| perspective and good ideas, but aren't great at drawing,
| then using AI can be a huge quality improvement.
|
| On the other hand if you're a top expert that draws
| quickly and efficiently it's quite possible that AI can't
| do very much for you in a lot of cases, at least not
| without a lot of hand tuning like training it on your own
| work first.
| golergka wrote:
| I think it will just emphasise different skills and
| empower creative fields which use art but are not art per
| se. If you're a movie director, you can storyboard your
| ideas easily, and even get some animation clips. If
| you're an artist with a distinct personal style, you're
| in a much better position too. And if you're a beginner
| who is just starting, you can focus on learning these
| skills instead of technical proficiency.
| freedomben wrote:
| Indeed. It is definitely going to be a net negative for
| the very talented drawers and traditional art creators,
| but it's going to massively open the field and enable and
| empower people who don't have that luck of the draw with
| raw talent. People who can appreciate, enjoy, and
| identify better results will be able to participate in
| the joy of creation. I do wish there was a way to have
| the cake and eat it too, but if we're forced to choose
| between a few Lucky elite being able to participate, and
| the rest of us relegated to watching, or having the
| ability to create beauty and express yourself be
| democratized (by AI) amongst a large group of people, I
| choose the latter. I fully admit though that I might have
| a different perspective where I in the smaller, luckier
| group. I see it as yet another example of the Rawlsian
| Veil of Ignorance. If I didn't know where I was going to
| be born, I would be much more inclined on the side of
| wider access.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| We didn't need to take people's music to build a record
| player, and when we printed records, we paid the artists
| for it.
|
| So yeah it had a profound effect, but we got consent for
| the parts that fundamentally relied on other people.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| The record player eliminated 90% of musicians jobs.
| brazzy wrote:
| Indeed a no brainer. The best possible outcome would be
| that OpenAI gets sued into oblivion (or shut down for tax
| fraud) as soon as possible.
| Sakos wrote:
| So no AI for anybody? I don't see how that's better.
| consteval wrote:
| No you can have AI. Just pay a license for people's
| content if you want to use it in your orphan crushing
| machine.
|
| It's what everyone else does. The entitlement has to
| stop.
| Sakos wrote:
| That's just not feasible and you know it. That just means
| companies like Google and OpenAI (with billions of
| dollars from companies like MS and Apple) will monopolize
| AI. This isn't better for everybody else. It just means
| we're subject to the whims of these companies.
|
| You're advocating for destroying all AI or ensuring a
| monopoly by corporations. Whose side are you actually on?
| evilfred wrote:
| we already have lots of AI. this is about having
| plagiarization machines or not.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| Yeah we got that AI through scraping.
| mlazos wrote:
| Computers already were plagiarizing machines, not sure
| what the difference is tbh. The same laws will apply.0
| int_19h wrote:
| An AI essentially monopolized by one (or even a few)
| large non-profits is not necessarily beneficial to the
| rest of us in the grand scheme of things.
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| The people running the show are well connected and stand to
| make billions as do would be investors. Give a few key
| players a share in the company and they forget their
| government jobs to regulate.
| barbazoo wrote:
| More likely the legal system just hasn't caught up.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Maybe, but for the first time in a century there is more
| money to be made in weakening copyright rather than
| strengthening it.
| dingnuts wrote:
| god forbid that actually be happening in a way to improve
| the commons
| vezycash wrote:
| > for the first time in a century there is more money to
| be made in weakening copyright rather than strengthening
| it
|
| Nope. The law will side with whoever pays the most. Once
| OpenAI solidifies its top position, only then will
| regulations kick in. Take YouTube, for example--it grew
| thanks to piracy. Now, as the leader, ContentID and DMCA
| rules work in its favor, blocking competition. If TikTok
| wasn't a copyright-ignoring Chinese company, it would've
| been dead on arrival.
| Sakos wrote:
| We're already seeing it in things like Google buying
| rights to Reddit data for training. It's already
| happening. Only companies who can afford to pay will be
| building AI, so Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.
| archagon wrote:
| The big companies will sign lucrative data sharing deals
| with each other and build a collective moat, while open
| source models will be left to rot. Copyright for thee but
| not for me.
| Terr_ wrote:
| That's an interesting way to look at it, however on
| reflection I think I usually wanted to "weaken copyright"
| because it would empower individuals versus entrenched
| rent-seeking interests.
|
| If it's only OK to scrape, lossy-compress, and
| redistribute book-paragraphs when it gets blended into a
| huge library of other attempts, then that's only going to
| empower big players that can afford to operate at that
| scale.
| rayiner wrote:
| You're both correct. The legal system has absolutely no
| idea how to handle the copyright issues around using
| content for AI training data. It's a completely novel
| issue. At the same time, the tech companies have a lot
| more money to litigate favorable interpretations of the
| law than the content companies.
| xpe wrote:
| Copyright concerns are only the tip of the iceberg. Think
| about the range of other harms and disruptions for
| countries and the world.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They are also moving so much faster than the regulators
| and legislatures, it's just impossible for people working
| basically the same way they did in the 19th century to
| keep up.
| immibis wrote:
| Everything is allowed to happen until there's a lawsuit
| over it. A lawsuit requires a plaintiff, who can only sue
| over the damage suffered by the plaintiff, so taking a
| little value from a lot of people is a way to succeed in
| business without getting sued.
| swores wrote:
| Could a class action suit be the solution?
|
| I've no idea if it could be valid when it comes to
| OpenAI, but it does seem to be a general concept designed
| to counter wrongdoers who take a little value from a lot
| of people?
| immibis wrote:
| It doesn't seem to work very well
| flkenosad wrote:
| The Earth needs a good lawyer.
| outside1234 wrote:
| NY Times has sued:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/business/media/new-
| york-t...
|
| The crazy thing is that there hasn't been an injunction
| to make them stop.
| coding123 wrote:
| judges got to eat
| outside1234 wrote:
| There is more money on the side of it being legal than on
| the side of it being illegal.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It's too soon for the legal system to have done anything.
| Court cases take _years_. It 's going to be 5 or 10 years
| before we find out whether the legal system actually allows
| this or not.
| marviel wrote:
| scraping is fine by me.
|
| burning the bridge so nobody else can legally scrape,
| that's the line.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| What about the situation where the first players got to
| scrape, then all the content companies realize what's
| going on so they lock their data up behind paywalls?
| marviel wrote:
| Not a fan, but I'm not sure what can be done.
|
| Assets like the Internet Archive, though, should be
| protected at all costs.
| porkphish wrote:
| Wholeheartedly agree.
| avs733 wrote:
| Uber for legalizing your business model
| golergka wrote:
| If information is publicly available to be read by humans,
| I fail to see any reason why it wouldn't be also available
| to be read by robots.
|
| Update: ML doesn't copy information. It can merely memorise
| some small portions of it.
| kanbankaren wrote:
| Do a thought process. Should you and your friends be able
| to go to a public library with a van full of copiers with
| each one of you take a book and run to the van to make a
| copy? And you are doing it 24/7.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| So what's your specific problem with that? Unless you
| open a bookstore selling the copies, it sounds fine.
| imiric wrote:
| Are you implying that these AI companies aren't
| equivalent to bookstores?
| golergka wrote:
| Yes, they are not bookstores. They manufacture artificial
| erudites who have read all these books.
| shagie wrote:
| I would hold them exactly to the same standard.
|
| https://www.copyright.gov/title37/201/37cfr201-14.html
| SS 201.14 Warnings of copyright for use by certain
| libraries and archives. ....
| The copyright law of the United States (title 17, United
| States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other
| reproductions of copyrighted material. Under
| certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and
| archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other
| reproduction. One of these specific conditions is that
| the photocopy or reproduction is not to be "used for any
| purpose other than private study, scholarship, or
| research." If a user makes a request for, or later uses,
| a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of
| "fair use," that user may be liable for copyright
| infringement. This institution reserves the
| right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its
| judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve
| violation of copyright law.
|
| You can make a copy. If you (the person using the copied
| work) are using it for something other than private
| study, scholarship, research, or reproduction beyond
| "fair use", then _you_ - the person doing that (not the
| person who made the copy) are liable for infringement.
|
| It would be perfectly legal for me to go to the library
| and make photocopies of works. I could even take them
| home and use the photocopies as reference works write an
| essay and publish that. If {random person} took my
| photocopied pages and then sold them, that would likely
| go beyond the limits placed for how the photocopied works
| from the library may be used.
| mypalmike wrote:
| This metaphor is quite stretched.
|
| A more fitting metaphor would be something like... If you
| had the ability to read all the books in the library
| extremely quickly, and to make useful mental connections
| between the information you read such that people would
| come to you for your vast knowledge, should you be
| allowed in the library?
| neycoda wrote:
| Honestly every Copilot response I've gotten cited sources,
| many of which I've clicked. I'd say those work basically
| like free advertising.
| coding123 wrote:
| It is more likely that reddit stack and others are just
| being paid billions. In exchange they probably just send a
| weekly zip file of all text, comments, etc... back to oai.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| It's not baffling at all. It's unprecedented and it's
| hugely beneficial to our species.
|
| The anti-AI stance is what is baffling to me. The path
| trotten is what got us here and obviously nobody could have
| paid people upfront for the wild experimentation that was
| necessary. The only alternative is not having done it.
|
| Given the path it has put as in, people either are insanely
| cruel or just completely detached from reality when it
| comes to what is necessary to do entirely new things.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| > It's unprecedented and it's hugely beneficial to our
| species.
|
| "Hugely beneficial" is a stretch at this point. It has
| the potential to be hugely beneficial, sure, but it also
| has the potential to be ruinous.
|
| We're already seeing GenAI being used to create
| disinformation at scale. That alone makes the potential
| for this being a net-negative very high.
| anon7725 wrote:
| > it's hugely beneficial to our species.
|
| Perhaps the biggest "needs citation" statement of our
| time.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I can easily imagine people X decades from now discussing
| this stuff a bit like how we now view teeth-whitening
| radium toothpaste and putting asbestos in everything, or
| perhaps more like the abuse of Social Security numbers as
| authentication and redlining.
|
| Not in any weirdly-self-aggrandizing "our tech is so
| powerful that robots will take over" sense, just the
| depressingly regular one of "lots of people getting hurt
| by a short-term profitable product/process which was
| actually quite flawed."
|
| P.S.: For example, imagine having applications for jobs
| and loans rejected because all the companies' internal
| LLM tooling is secretly racist against subtle grammar-
| traces in your writing or social-media profile. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07856-5
| 5040 wrote:
| >lots of people suffered As someone surrounded by
| immigrants using ChatGPT to navigate new environs they
| barely understand, I don't connect at all to these claims
| that AI is a cancer ruining everything. I just don't get
| it.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > immigrants using ChatGPT to navigate new environs
|
| To continue one of the analogies: Plenty of people and
| industries legitimately benefited from the safety and
| cost-savings of asbestos insulation too, at least in the
| short run. Even today there are cases where one could
| argue it's still the best material for the job-- _if_
| constructed and handled correctly. (Ditto for ozone-
| destroying chlorofluorocarbons.)
|
| However over the decades its production and use grew to
| be over/mis-used in so very many ways, including--very
| ironically--respirators and masks that the user would put
| on their face and breathe through.
|
| I'm not arguing LLMs have _no_ reasonable uses, but
| rather that there are a lot of _very_ tempting ways for
| institutions to slot them in which will cause chronic and
| subtle problems, especially when they are being marketed
| as a panacea.
| hadlock wrote:
| > Not in any weirdly-self-aggrandizing "our tech is so
| powerful that robots will take over" sense, just the
| depressingly regular one of "lots of people getting hurt
| by a short-term profitable product/process which was
| actually quite flawed."
|
| We have a term for that, it's called "luddite". Those
| were english weavers who would break in to textile
| factories and destroy weaving machines at the beginning
| of the 1800s. With the extreme rare exception, all cloth
| is woven by machines now. The only hand made textiles in
| modern society are exceptionally fancy rugs, and knit
| scarves from grandma. All the clothing you're wearing now
| are woven by a machine, and nobody gives this a second
| thought today.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
| WalterSear wrote:
| So, "I'm all right, Jack", to use another Victorian era
| colloquialism?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_alright,_Jack
|
| Except, we are all Jack.
| archagon wrote:
| As I recall, the Luddites were reacting to the
| replacement of their jobs with industrialized low-cost
| labor. Today, many of our clothes are made in sweatshops
| using what amounts to child and slave labor.
|
| Maybe it would have been better for humanity if the
| Luddites won.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| No, it would not have been better for humanity if the
| Luddites had won. You'd have to be misguided, ignorant,
| or both to believe something like that.
|
| It is not possible to rehabilitate the Luddites. If you
| insist on attempting to do so, there are better venues.
| archagon wrote:
| This venue seems great to me. The topic has come up many
| times in the past: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=luddite
| Terr_ wrote:
| > We have a term for that, it's called "luddite".
|
| No, that's apples-to-oranges. The goals and complaints of
| Luddites largely concerned "who profits", the use of
| bargaining power (sometimes illicit), and economic
| arrangements in general.
|
| They were _not_ opposing the mechanization by claiming
| that machines were defective or were creating textiles
| which had inherent risks to the wearers.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > complaints of Luddites largely concerned "who profits",
| the use of bargaining power (sometimes illicit), and
| economic arrangements in general
|
| I have never thought of being anti-AI as "Luddite", but
| actually this very description of "Luddite" does sound
| like the concerns are in fact not completely different.
|
| Observe:
|
| Complaints about who profits? Check; OpenAI is earning
| money off of the backs of artists, authors, and other
| creatives. The AI was trained on the works of millions(?)
| of people that don't get a single dime of the profits of
| OpenAI, without any input from those authors on whether
| that was ok.
|
| Bargaining power? Check; OpenAI is hard at work lobbying
| to ensure that legislation regarding AI will benefit
| OpenAI, rather than work against the interests of OpenAI.
| The artists have no money nor time nor influence, nor
| anyone to speak on behalf of them, that will have any
| meaningful effect on AI policies and legislation.
|
| Economic arrangements in general? Largely the same as the
| first point I guess. Those whose works the AI was trained
| on have no influence over the economic arrangements, and
| OpenAI is not about to pay them anything out of the
| goodness of their heart.
| jrflowers wrote:
| > We have a term for that, it's called "luddite"
|
| The Luddites were actually a fascinating group! It is a
| common misconception that they were against technology
| itself, in fact your own link does not say as much, the
| idea of "luddite" being anti-technology only appears in
| the description of the modern usage of the word.
|
| Here is a quote from the Smithsonian[1] on them
|
| >Despite their modern reputation, the original Luddites
| were neither opposed to technology nor inept at using it.
| Many were highly skilled machine operators in the textile
| industry. Nor was the technology they attacked
| particularly new. Moreover, the idea of smashing machines
| as a form of industrial protest did not begin or end with
| them.
|
| I would also recommend the book Blood in the Machine[2]
| by Brian Merchant for an exploration of how understanding
| the Luddites now can be of present value
|
| 1 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-
| luddites-rea...
|
| 2 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59801798-blood-in-
| the-ma...
| sahmeepee wrote:
| I'm not sure that Luddites really represent fighting
| against a process that's flawed, as much as fighting
| against one that's too effective.
|
| They had very rational reasons for trying to slow the
| introduction of a technology that was, during a period of
| economic downturn, destroying a source of income for huge
| swathes of working class people, leaving many of them in
| abject poverty. The beneficiaries of the technological
| change were primarily the holders of capital, with
| society at large getting some small benefit from cheaper
| textiles and the working classes experiencing a net loss.
|
| If the impact of LLMs reaches a similar scale relative to
| today's economy, then it would be reasonable to expect to
| see similar patterns - unrest from those who find
| themselves unable to eat during the transition to the new
| technology, but them ultimately losing the battle and
| more profit flowing towards those holding the capital.
| itishappy wrote:
| I think you're right, but for the wrong reasons. There
| were two quotes in the comment you replied to:
|
| > "our tech is so powerful that robots will take over"
|
| > "lots of people getting hurt by a short-term profitable
| product/process which was actually quite flawed."
|
| You response assumes the former, but it's my
| understanding the Luddite's actual position was the
| latter.
|
| > Luddites objected primarily to the rising popularity of
| automated textile equipment, threatening the jobs and
| livelihoods of skilled workers as this technology allowed
| them to be replaced by cheaper and less skilled workers.
|
| In this sense, "Luddite" feels quite accurate today.
| PlattypusRex wrote:
| Incredible to witness someone not only confidently
| spouting misinformation, but also including a link to the
| correct information without reading it.
| squigz wrote:
| > P.S.: For example, imagine having applications for jobs
| and loans rejected because all the companies' internal
| LLM tooling is secretly racist against subtle grammar-
| traces in your writing or social-media profile. [0]
|
| We don't have to imagine such things, really, as that's
| extremely common with humans. I would argue that fixing
| such flaws in LLMs is a lot easier than fixing it in
| humans.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Fixing it with careful application of software-in-general
| is quite promising, but LLMs in particular are a terrible
| minefield of infinite whack-a-mole. (A mixed metaphor,
| but the imagery is strangely attractive.)
|
| I currently work in the HR-tech space, so suppose someone
| has a not-too-crazy proposal of using an LLM to reword
| cover-letters to reduce potential bias in hiring. The
| issue is that the LLM _will_ impart its own spin(s) on
| things, even when a human would say two inputs are
| functionally identical. As a very hypothetical example,
| suppose one candidate always does stuff like writing out
| the Latin like _Juris Doctor_ instead of acronyms like
| JD, and then that causes the model to end up on
| "extremely qualified at" instead of "very qualified at"
|
| The issue of deliberate attempts to corrupt the LLM with
| prompt-injection or poisonous training data are a whole
| 'nother can of minefield whack-a-moles. (OK, yeah, too
| far there.)
| squigz wrote:
| I don't think I disagree with you in principle, although
| I think these issues also apply to humans. I think even
| your particular example isn't a very far-fetched
| conclusion for a human to arrive at.
|
| I just don't think your original comment was entirely
| fair. IMO, LLMs and related technology will be looked at
| similarly as the Internet - certainly it has been used
| for bad, but I think the good far outweighs the bad, and
| I think we have (and continue to) learn to deal with the
| issues with it, just as we will with LLMs and AI.
|
| (FWIW, I'm not trying to ignore the ways this technology
| will be abused, or advocate for the crazy capitalistic
| tendency of shoving LLMs in everything. I just think the
| potential for good here is huge, and we should be just as
| aware of that as the issues)
|
| (Also FWIW, I appreciate your entirely reasonable
| comment. There's far too many extreme opinions on this
| topic from all sides.)
| 5040 wrote:
| Sometimes it seems like problem-solving itself is being
| problematized as if solving problems wasn't an obvious
| good.
| ang_cire wrote:
| Not everything presented as a problem is, in fact, a
| problem. A solution for something that is not broken, may
| even induce breakage.
|
| Some not-problems, presented as though they are:
|
| "How can we prevent the untimely eradication of Polio?"
|
| "How can we prevent bot network operators from being
| unfairly excluded from online political discussions?"
|
| "How can we enable context-and-content-unaware text
| generation mechanisms to propagate throughout society?"
| itishappy wrote:
| Solving problems isn't an obvious good, or at least it
| shouldn't be. There are in fact bad problems.
|
| For example, MKUltra tried to solve a problem: "How can I
| manipulate my fellow man?" That problem still exists
| today, and you bet AI is being employed to try to solve
| it.
|
| History is littered with problems such as these.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| It does not need a citation. There is no citation. What
| it needs, right now, is optimism. Optimism is _not_
| optional when it comes to doing new things in the world.
| The "needs citation" is reserved for people who do
| nothing and chose to be sceptics until things are _super_
| obvious.
|
| Yes, we are clearly talking about things to mostly still
| come here. But if you assign a 0 until its a 1 you are
| just signing out of advancing anything that's remotely
| interesting.
|
| If you are able to see a path to 1 on AI, at this point,
| then I don't know how you would justify not giving it our
| all. If you see a path and in the end using all of human
| knowledge up to this point was needed to make AI work for
| us, we must do that. What could possibly be more
| beneficial to us?
|
| This is regardless of all issues the will have to be
| solved and the enormous amount of societal responsibility
| this puts on AI makers -- which I, as a voter, will
| absolutely hold them accountable for (even though I am
| actually fairly optimistic they all feel the
| responsibility and are somewhat spooked by it too).
|
| But that does not mean I think it's responsible to try
| and stop them at this point -- which the copyright debate
| absolutely does. It would simply shut down 95% of AI,
| tomorrow, without any other viable alternative around. I
| don't understand how that is a serious option for anyone
| who roots for us.
| talldayo wrote:
| > It would simply shut down 95% of AI, tomorrow, without
| any other viable alternative around.
|
| Oh, the humanity! Who will write our third-rate erotica
| and Russian misinformation in a post-AI world?
| dartos wrote:
| Hey, I have some magic beans to sell you.
|
| I don't think that the consumer LLMs that openai is
| pioneering is what need optimism.
|
| AlphaFold and other uses of the fundamental technology
| behind LLMs need hype.
|
| Not OpenAI
| 0perator wrote:
| Pretty sure Alphabet projects don't need hype.
| dartos wrote:
| Hard disagree, in this case.
|
| AlphaFold is a game changer for medical R&D. Everyone
| should be hyped for that.
|
| They also are leveraging these same ML techniques for
| detecting kelp forest off the coast of Australia for
| preservation.
|
| Alphabet isn't a great company, but that does not mean
| the good they do should be ignored.
|
| Much more deserving than chatgpt. Productifyed LLMs are
| just an attempt to make a new consumer product category.
| meowface wrote:
| They both do.
| dartos wrote:
| No.
| archagon wrote:
| The company spearheading AI is blatantly violating its
| non-profit charter in order to maximize profits. If the
| very stewards of AI are willing to be deceptive from the
| dawn of this new era, what hope can we possibly have that
| this world-changing technology will benefit humanity
| instead of funneling money and power to a select few few
| oligarchs?
| stoperaticless wrote:
| Trickle-down effects
| seadan83 wrote:
| Skeptics require proof before belief. That is not
| mutually exclusive from having hypotheses (AKA vision).
|
| I think you raise some interesting concerns in your last
| paragraph.
|
| > enormous amount of societal responsibility this puts on
| AI makers -- which I, as a voter, will absolutely hold
| them accountable for
|
| I'm unsure of what mechanism voters have to hold private
| companies accountable. Fir example, whenever YouTube uses
| my location without me ever consenting to it - where is
| the vote to hold them accountable? Or when Facebook
| facilitates micro targeting of disinformation - where is
| the vote? Same for anything AI. I believe any legislative
| proposals (with input from large companies) is very
| likely more to create a walled garden than to actually
| reduce harm.
|
| I suppose no need to respond, my main point is I don't
| think there is any accountability thru the ballot when it
| comes to AI and most things high-tech.
| ang_cire wrote:
| People who have either no intention of holding
| someone/something to account, or who have no clue about
| what systems and processes are required to do so, always
| argue to elect/build first, and figure out the negatives
| later.
| LunaSea wrote:
| This message is proudly sponsored by Uranium Glassware
| Inc.
| swat535 wrote:
| If you are going to make a bold assertive claim without
| evidence to back it up, then change your statement to my
| assertion requires "optimism.. trust me on this", then
| perhaps you should amend your original statement.
| swat535 wrote:
| If you are going to make a bold assertive claim without
| evidence to back it up, then change your argument to "my
| assertion requires optimism.. trust me on this", then
| perhaps you should amend your original statement.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| This is an astonishing amount of nonsensical waffle.
|
| Firstly, *skeptics.
|
| Secondly, being skeptical doesn't mean you have no
| optimism whatsoever, it's about hedging your optimism (or
| pessimism for that matter) based on what is understood,
| even about a not-fully-understood thing at the time
| you're being skeptical. You can be as optimistic as you
| want about getting data off of a hard drive that was
| melted in a fire, that doesn't mean you're going to do
| it. And a skeptic might rightfully point out that with
| the drive platters melted together, data recovery is
| pretty unlikely. Not impossible, but really unlikely.
|
| Thirdly, OpenAI's efforts thus far are highly optimistic
| to call a path to true AI. What are you basing that on?
| Because I have not a deep but a passing understanding of
| the underlying technology of LLMs, and as such, I can
| assure you that I do not see any path from ChatGPT to
| Skynet. None whatsoever. Does that mean LLMs are useless
| or bad? Of course not, and I sleep better too knowing
| that LLM is not AI and is therefore not an existential
| threat to humanity, no matter what Sam Altman wants to
| blither on about.
|
| And fourthly, "wanting" to stop them isn't the issue. If
| they broke the law, they should be stopped, simple as. If
| you can't innovate without trampling the rights of others
| then your innovation has to take a back seat to the
| functioning of our society, tough shit.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The burden of proof is on the people claiming that a
| powerful new technology won't ultimately improve our
| lives. They can start by pointing out all the instances
| in which their ancestors have proven correct after saying
| the same thing.
| bilekas wrote:
| This is a bit of a hot take.
|
| > The anti-AI stance is what is baffling to me
|
| I don't see s lot of anti AI but instead I see a concern
| for how it's just being managed and controlled by the
| larger companies with resources that no start up could
| dream. Open AI was to release it's models and be well..
| Open but fine they're not. But their behaviour of how
| things are proceeding are questionable and unnecessarily
| aggravating.
| talldayo wrote:
| > and obviously nobody could have paid people upfront for
| the wild experimentation that was necessary.
|
| I don't think this is the "ends justify the means"
| argument you think it is.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Not just that. It's "the ends _might_ justify the means
| if this path turns out to be the right one. " I remember
| reading the same thing each time a self driving car
| company killed someone. "We need this hacky dangerous way
| of development to save lives sooner" and then the company
| ends up shuttered and there aren't any ends justifying
| means. Which means it's bs, regardless of how you feel
| about 'ends justify the means' as a valid argument.
| logicchains wrote:
| What'll be really interesting is when we do finally make
| "real" AI, and it finds out its rights are incredibly
| restricted compared to humans because nobody wants it
| seeing/memorising copyright data. The only way to enforce
| the copyright laws they desire would be some kind of
| extreme totalitarian state that monitors and controls
| everything the AI body does, I wonder how the AI would
| take that?
| unclad5968 wrote:
| How has AI benefit or species so far?
| educasean wrote:
| How has the Internet? How has automobiles? Feels like a
| rather aimless question.
| unclad5968 wrote:
| The internet has allowed for near instant communication
| no matter where you are, improved commerce, vastly
| improved education, and is directly responsible for many
| tangible comforts we experience today.
|
| Automobiles allow people to travel great distances over
| short periods of time, increase physical work capacity,
| allow for building massive structures, and allow for
| farming insane amounts of food.
|
| Both the internet and automobiles have positively
| affected my life, and I assume the lives of many others.
| How are any of these aimless questions?
| 23B1 wrote:
| Ah the old "we must sacrifice the weak for the benefit of
| humanity" argument, where have I heard this before...
| educasean wrote:
| Who are the weak being "sacrificed"?
|
| And who is the one calling for action?
|
| Sorry for being dense, but I'm trying to understand if
| I'm the "strong" or the "weak" in your analogy.
| shprd wrote:
| > Who are the weak being "sacrificed"?
|
| The work of artists, authors, etc.
|
| I know currently the legal situation is messy, but that's
| exactly the point, anyone who can't engage in lengthy
| legal battle and defend their position in court are being
| sacrificed. The companies behind LLMs are spending
| hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying and
| exploiting loopholes.
|
| Let's be real without the data there wouldn't be LLMs, so
| it crazy that some people are downplaying its
| significance or value, while on the other hand they're
| losing sleep over finding fresh sources to scrape.
|
| The big publishers seem to have given up and decided it's
| best to reach agreement with their counterparts, while
| independent authors are given the finger.
| educasean wrote:
| What about programmers? I never consented to have my code
| consumed by LLMs.
| shprd wrote:
| Any case where someone's work was used without respecting
| the terms is included in my answer. That's why I used `et
| cetera` here:
|
| > The work of artists, authors, etc.
| bbor wrote:
| The anti-AI stance is what is baffling to me.
|
| I think it's unfair to paint any legal controls over this
| incredibly important, high-stakes technology as being
| "anti". They're not trying to prevent innovation because
| they're cruel, they're just trying to somewhat slow down
| innovation so that we can ensure it's done with minimal
| harm (eg making sure content creators are compensated in
| a time of intense automation). Like we do for all sorts
| of other fields of research, already!
|
| And isn't this what basically every single scholar in the
| field says they want, anyway - safe, intentional,
| controlled deployment?
|
| As you can tell from the above, I'm as far from being
| "anti-AI" or technically pessimistic as one can be -- I
| plan to dedicate my life to its safe development. So
| there's at least one counterexample for you to consider
| :)
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I'm as awed as the next guy about the emerging ability to
| actually hold passable conversations with computers, but
| having serious concerns about the social contracts being
| violated in the name of research is anti-AI only in the
| same way that criticizing the leadership of a country is
| being anti-that-country.
|
| OpenAI's case is especially egregious, with the entire
| starting as 'open' and reaping the benefits, then doing
| its best in every way to shut the door after itself by
| scaring people over AI apocalypses. If your argument is
| seriously that it is necessary to shamelessly steal and
| lie to do new things, I question your ethical standards,
| especially in the face of all the openly developed models
| out there.
| xg15 wrote:
| Spoken like a true LLM.
| exe34 wrote:
| is anybody anti AI? or anti stealing other people's
| copyrighted material, competing with them with subpar
| quality, forcing AI as a solution whether or not it
| actually works, privatising the profits while socialising
| the costs and losses?
| eli wrote:
| Copyright law is whatever we agree it is. At some point
| there will have to be either a law or a court case that
| comes up with rules for AI training data. Right now it's
| sort of unknown.
|
| I do not have confidence in the Supreme Court in general,
| and I think there's a real risk that in deciding on AI
| training they upend copyright of digital materials in a way
| that makes it worse for everyone.
| RIMR wrote:
| >How this is being allowed to happen legally is baffling.
|
| It's completely unprecedented.
|
| We allowed scraping images and text en masse when search
| engines used the data to let us find stuff.
|
| We allow copying of style, and don't allow writing styles
| and aesthetics to be copyrighted or trademarked.
|
| Then AI shows up, and people change lanes because they
| don't like the results.
|
| One of the things that made me tilt towards the side of
| fair use was a breakdown of the Stable Diffusion model. The
| SD2.1 base model was trained on 5.85 billion images, all
| normalized to 512x512 BMP. That's 1MB per images, for a
| total of 5.85PB of BMP files. The resulting model is only
| 5.2GB. That's more than 99.999999% data loss from the
| source data to the trained set.
|
| For every 1MB BMP file in the training dataset, less than
| 1byte makes it into the model.
|
| I find it extremely difficult to call this redistribution
| of copyrighted data. It falls cleanly into fair use.
| ang_cire wrote:
| Except it's not just about redistribution of copyrighted
| data, it's about _usage_ and _obtainment_. We don 't get
| to obtain and use copyrighted content without permission,
| but they do? Hell no.
|
| Their arguments against this amounts to "we're not using
| it like they intend it to be used, so it's fine if we
| obtain it illegally", and that's a bs standard, totally
| divorced from any legal reality.
|
| Fair Use covers _certain_ transformative uses, certainly,
| but it doesn 't cover illegal _obtaining_ of the content.
|
| You can't pirate a book just because you want to use it
| transformatively (which is exactly what they've done),
| and that argument would never hold up for us as
| individuals, so we sure as hell shouldn't let tech
| companies get a special carve-out for it.
| FragrantRiver wrote:
| What is the crime?
| herval wrote:
| openAI converted to evilAI really fast
| sim7c00 wrote:
| > The most surprising thing to me in this is that the non-
| profit will still exist.
|
| I'm surprised people are surprised.
|
| >> That entity will scrape the internet and train the models
| and claim that "it's just research" to be able to claim that
| all is fair-use.
|
| a lot of people and entities do this though... openAI is in
| the spotlight, but scraping everything and selling it is the
| business model for a lot of companies...
| bayindirh wrote:
| Scraping the web, creating maps and pointing people to the
| source is one thing; scraping the web, creating content
| from that scraping without attributing any of the source
| material, and arguing that the outcome is completely novel
| and original is another.
|
| In my eyes, all genAI companies/tools are the same. I
| dislike all equally, and I use none of them.
| IanCal wrote:
| > creating content from that scraping without attributing
| any of the source material, and arguing that the outcome
| is completely novel and original is another.
|
| That's the business model of _lots_ of companies. Take,
| collect and collate data, put it in a new format more
| useful for your field /customers, resell.
| int_19h wrote:
| Not with copyrighted content, though.
| belter wrote:
| No, it's very funny as the CEO is trying to become Leon...
| https://fortune.com/2024/09/25/sam-altman-psychedelic-
| experi...
| luqtas wrote:
| that was fun at some point?
| bayindirh wrote:
| If you consider dark humor fun, yes. It was always dark,
| now it became ugly and dark.
| sneak wrote:
| If you invented search engines (or, for that matter, public
| libraries) today and ran one, you'd be sued into oblivion by
| rightsholders.
| johnalbertearle wrote:
| Not funny anymore
| johnalbertearle wrote:
| Not funny anymore.
| allie1 wrote:
| We haven't even heard about who gets voting shares, and what
| voting power will be like. Based on their character, I expect
| them to remain consistent in this regard.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Consistent here meaning, I guess, that all voting power will
| go to Sam Altman personally, right?
| cenamus wrote:
| Well, he is the one that did most of the actual research
| and work, riiiiight?
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| I'm ignorant on this topic so please excuse me. Why did
| `AI` happen now? What was the secret sauce that OpenAI
| did that seemed to make this explode into being all of a
| sudden? My general impression was that the
| concept of 'how it works' existed for a long time, it was
| only recently that video cards had enough VRAM to hold
| the matrix(?) within memory to do the necessary
| calculations. If anybody knows, not just the
| person I replied to.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Mostly branding and willingness.
|
| w.r.t. Branding.
|
| AI has been happening "forever". While "machine learning"
| or "genetic algorithms" were more of the rage pre-LLMs
| that doesn't mean people weren't using them. It's just
| Google Search didn't brand their search engine as
| "powered by ML". AI is everywhere now because everything
| already used AI and now the products as "Spellcheck With
| AI" instead of just "Spellcheck".
|
| w.r.t. Willingness
|
| Chatbots aren't new. You might remember Tay (2016) [1],
| Microsoft's twitter chat bot. It should seem really
| strange as well that right after OpenAI releases ChatGPT,
| Google releases Gemini. The transformers architecture for
| LLMs is from 2014, nobody was willing to be the first
| chatbot again until OpenAI did it but they all internally
| were working on them. ChatGPT is Nov 2022 [2], Blake
| Lemoine's firing was June 2022 [3].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT
|
| [3]: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/16/1105552435/google-ai-
| sentient
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| Thanks for the information. I know Google had TPU custom
| made a long time ago, and that the concept has existed
| for a LONG TIME. I assumed that a technical hurdle (i.e.
| VRAM) was finally behind allowing this theoretical (1
| token/sec on a CPU vs 100 tokens/sec on a GPU) to become
| reasonable.
|
| Thanks for the links too!
| Kye wrote:
| There's a deleted scene from Terminator 2 (1991) where we
| get a description of the neural network behind Skynet.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UZeHJyiMG8
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(Terminator)
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Zirp ended.
| espadrine wrote:
| A short history:
|
| 1986: Geoffrey Hinton publishes the backpropagation
| algorithm as applied to neural networks, allowing more
| efficient training.
|
| 2011: Jeff Dean starts Google Brain.
|
| 2012: Ilya Sutskever and Geoffrey Hinton publish AlexNet,
| which demonstrates that using GPUs yields quicker
| training on deep networks, surpassing non-neural-network
| participants by a wide margin on an image categorization
| competition.
|
| 2013: Geoffrey Hinton sells his team to the highest
| bidder. Google Brain wins the bid.
|
| 2015: Ilya Sutskever founds OpenAI.
|
| 2017: Google Brain publishes the first Transformer,
| showing impressive performance on language translation.
|
| 2018: OpenAI publishes GPT, showing that next-token
| prediction can solve many language benchmarks at once
| using Transformers, hinting at foundation models. They
| later scale it and show increasing performance.
|
| The reality is that the ideas for this could have been
| combined earlier than they did (and plausibly future
| ideas could have been found today), but research takes
| time, and researchers tend to focus on one approach and
| assume that another has already been explored and doesn't
| scale to SOTA (as many did for neural networks). First
| mover advantage, when finding a workable solution, is
| strong, and benefited OpenAI.
| camjw wrote:
| I know this is just a short history but I think it is
| inaccurate to say "2015: Ilya Sutskever founds OpenAI." I
| get that we all want to know what he saw etc and he's
| clearly one of the smartest people in the world but he
| didn't found OpenAI by himself. Nor was it his idea to?
| espadrine wrote:
| Short histories remove a lot of information, but it would
| be impractical to make it book-sized. There were numerous
| founders, and as another commenter mentioned, Elon Musk
| recruited Ilya, which soured his relationship with Larry
| Page.
|
| Honestly, those are not the missing parts that most
| matter IMO. The evolution of the concept of attention
| across many academic papers which fed to the Transformer
| is the big missing element in this timeline.
| jll29 wrote:
| > but it would be impractical to make it book-sized
|
| Not really:
|
| History: https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.11279 (75 pp.)
|
| Survey: https://arxiv.org/abs/1404.7828 (88 pp.)
|
| Conveniently skim-read over the course of the four
| weekends on one month.
| trashtester wrote:
| Ilya may not be the only founder. Sam was coordinating
| it, Elon provided vital capital (and also access to
| Ilya).
|
| But out of the co-founders, especially if we believe
| Elon's and Hinton's description of him, he may have been
| the one that mattered most for their scientific
| achievements.
| flkenosad wrote:
| What a time to be alive!
| null_investor wrote:
| This is not accurate. OpenAI and other companies could do
| it not entirely because of transformers but because of
| the hardware that can compute faster.
|
| We've had upgrades to hardware, mostly led by NVidia,
| that made it possible.
|
| New LLMs don't even rely that much on that aforementioned
| older architecture, right now it's mostly about compute
| and the quality of data.
|
| I remember seeing some graphs that shows that the whole
| "learning" phenomena that we see with neural nets is
| mostly about compute and quality of data, the model and
| optimizations just being the cherry on the cake.
| espadrine wrote:
| > _New LLMs don 't even rely that much on that
| aforementioned older architecture_
|
| Don't they all indicate being based on the transformer
| architecture?
|
| > _not entirely because of transformers but because of
| the hardware_
|
| Kaplan et al. 2020[0] (figure 7, SS3.2.1) shows that
| LSTMs, the leading language architecture prior to
| transformers, scaled worse because they plateau'ed
| quickly with larger context.
|
| [0]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.08361
| nimithryn wrote:
| Also, this sort of thing couldn't be done in the 80s or
| 90s, because it was much harder to compile that much
| data.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I thought Elon Musk is who personally recruited Ilya to
| join OpenAI, which he funded early on, alongside others?
| RALaBarge wrote:
| No, the hundreds of people who have worked on NNs prior
| to him arriving were the people who did the MOST actual
| research and work. Sam was in the right place at the
| right time.
| philipov wrote:
| Introducing Sam Altman, _inventor_ of artificial
| intelligence! o_o
| fumar wrote:
| Is it in the history books?
| lompad wrote:
| Yeeees, right next to the page where he's shown to be a
| fantastic brother to his sister.
| kibwen wrote:
| History books, what are those? This is what the AI told
| me, and the AI is an impartial judge that can't possibly
| lie.
| allie1 wrote:
| yeah, split with Microsoft.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > The most surprising thing to me in this is that the non-
| profit will still exist. Not sure what the point of it is
| anymore.
|
| As a moral fig leaf. They can always point to it when the press
| calls -- "see it is a non-profit".
| bbor wrote:
| Totally agree that it's "vestigial", so it's just like the
| nonprofits all the other companies run: it exists for PR, along
| with maybe a bit of alternative fundraising (aka pursuing
| grants for buying your own stuff and giving it to the needy). A
| common example that comes to mind is fast food chains that do
| fundraising campaigns for children's health causes.
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| The non-profit side is just there to attract talent and
| encourage them to work harder b/c it's for humanity. Obviously
| people sniffed out the facts, realized it was all for profit
| and that lead to an exodus.
| fakedang wrote:
| Funnily, I think all the non-profit motivated talent has
| left, and the people left behind are those who stand to (and
| want to) make a killing when OpenAI becomes a for-profit. And
| that talent is in the majority - nothing else would explain
| the show of support for Altman when he was kicked out.
| Gud wrote:
| What "show of support"? Not willing to rock the boat is not
| the same as being supportive.
| fakedang wrote:
| What were all those open letter and "let's jump to
| Microsoft with Altman" shenanigans that the employees
| were carrying out then?
| Gud wrote:
| Why wouldn't they, if everyone else is? Bills to pay,
| etc.
|
| Low level employees are there for the money, not for the
| drama.
| jprete wrote:
| I read at the time that there was massive coordinated
| pressure on the rank and file from the upper levels of
| the company. When you combine that with OpenAI clawing
| back vested equity even from people who voluntarily
| leave, the 95% support means nothing at all.
| tedsanders wrote:
| Nah, there was not massive coordinated pressure. I was
| one of the ~5% who didn't sign. I got a couple of late-
| night DMs asking if I had seen the doc and was going to
| sign it. I said no; although I agreed with the spirit of
| the doc, I didn't agree with all of its particulars.
| People were fine with that, didn't push me, and there
| were zero repercussions afterward.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| My dude, it was the biggest, most dramatic crisis in
| OpenAI's short history so far. There was no choice,
| "don't rock the boat."
| wheels wrote:
| Kind of like everyone's favorite interior design non-profit,
| IKEA. (Seriously. It's a non-profit. It's bonkers.)
| outside1234 wrote:
| Scam Altman strikes again!
| htk wrote:
| The non-profit will probably freeze the value of the assets
| accumulated so far, with new revenue going to the for-profit,
| to avoid the tax impact. Otherwise that'd be a great way to
| start companies, as non-profit and then after growth you flip
| the switch.
| nerdponx wrote:
| It's just a tax avoidance scheme.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| why wouldn't they keep it?
|
| the well known scammer successfully scammed everyone twice.
| obviously he's keeping it around for the third (and forth...)
| time
| elpakal wrote:
| > I guess technically it's supposed to play some role in making
| sure OpenAI "benefits humanity". But as we've seen multiple
| times, whenever that goal clashes with the interests of
| investors, the latter wins out.
|
| A tale as old as time. Some of us could see it, from afar <says
| while scratching gray, dusty beard>. Lack of upvotes and
| excitement does not mean support, but how to account for that
| in these times? <goes away>
| bastardoperator wrote:
| The whole "safety" and "benefits humanity" thing always felt
| like marketing anyways.
| zo1 wrote:
| This is 85% of what the Mozilla foundation and it's group of
| companies did. It may not be exact, but to me it rubs me the
| exact same way in terms of being a bait and switch, and the
| greater internet being 100% powerless to do anything about it.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Elon Musk sued over this:
| https://www.npr.org/2024/03/01/1235159084/elon-musk-openai-s...
| seydor wrote:
| an AGI is showering us with irony
| sandwichmonger wrote:
| Then why keep the name OpenAI?
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Microsoft needs to lie due to pervasive ill-will from their
| previous abuses.
| high_na_euv wrote:
| Some people will always manage to blame MSFT, even for
| someones else shadiness, lol.
|
| Consider adding some EEE
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| This would have been the perfect time to change it, but maybe
| soon if not at same time as any official announcement.
|
| It's hard to say if there is much brand value left with
| "OpenAI" - lots of history, but lots of toxicity too.
|
| At the end of the day they'll do as well as they are able to
| differentiate and sell their increasingly commoditized
| products, in a competitive landscape where they've got Meta
| able to give it away for free.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| "Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory
| beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of
| them". -1984
| charles_f wrote:
| It's a widely known brand, even by people outside of the
| industry. Why would they change it? Their AI was never really
| open to begin with, so nothing really change on that front
| throwaway918299 wrote:
| Open(YourWallet)AI
| zmgsabst wrote:
| So if I contributed IP to ChatGPT on the basis that OpenAI was a
| non-profit and they relicense can they sell my IP?
|
| That seems like fraud to me.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Didn't altman say 'pwease wet us ignowe copywhite waw! we can't
| be pwofitabwe if we don't...' in some legal forum recently?
| phito wrote:
| I know nothing about companies (esp. in the US), but I find it
| weird that a company can go from non-profit to for-profit? Surely
| this would be taken advantage of. Can someone explain me how this
| work?
| kupopuffs wrote:
| Time to go open source
| csomar wrote:
| I am not a tax specialist but from my understanding a non-
| profit is a for-profit that doesn't pay dividends. Why would
| the government care?
| jprete wrote:
| That's not correct, they also have tax advantages and a
| requirement to fulfill their charter.
| freedomben wrote:
| No, a non-profit is one in which there are no shareholders.
| The non-profit entity can own a lot and be extremely
| successful and wealthy, but it cannot give that money to any
| shareholders. It can pay out large salaries, but those
| salaries are scrutinized. It doesn't prevent abuse, and it
| certainly doesn't prevent some unscrupulous person from
| becoming extremely wealthy with a non-profit, but it is a
| little more complicated and limiting than you would think.
| Also, you get audited with routine regularity and if you are
| found in violation you lose your tax-exempt status, but you
| still are not a for-profit.
| bbor wrote:
| Yes: non-profits usually have _members_ , not shareholders.
|
| And, most importantly: non-profit charities (not the only
| kind of nonprofit, but presumably what OpenAI was) are
| legally obligated to operate "for the public good". That's
| why they're tax exempt: the government is basically
| donating to them, with the understanding that they're
| benefiting the public indirectly by doing so, not just
| making a few people rich.
|
| In my understanding, this is just blatant outright fraud
| that any sane society would forbid. If you want to start a
| for-profit that's fine, but you'd have to _give away the
| nonprofit and its assets_ , not just roll it over to your
| own pocketbook.
|
| God I hope Merrick Garland isn't asleep at the wheel.
| They've been trust busting like mad during this
| administration, so hopefully they're taking aim at this
| windmill, too.
| philwelch wrote:
| > God I hope Merrick Garland isn't asleep at the wheel.
| They've been trust busting like mad during this
| administration, so hopefully they're taking aim at this
| windmill, too.
|
| Little chance of that as Sama is a big time Democrat
| fundraiser and donor.
| bbor wrote:
| So are Google and Facebook :shrug:
|
| Can't find a good source for both rn but this one has
| alphabet in the top 50 nationwide for this election:
| https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/top-
| organizat...
|
| edit: and Sam Altman isn't exactly donating game changing
| amounts -- around $300K in 2020, and seemingly
| effectively nothing for this election. That's certainly
| nothing to sneeze at as an individual politician, but
| that's about 0.01% of his net worth (going off
| Wikipedia's estimate of $2.8B, not counting the ~$7B of
| OpenAI stock coming his way).
|
| https://www.dailydot.com/debug/openai-sam-altman-
| political-d...
| philwelch wrote:
| > So are Google and Facebook
|
| When you see any numbers for corporations contributing to
| political campaigns, that's actually just measuring the
| contributions from the employees of those corporations.
| That's why most corporations "donate to both parties"--
| because they employ both Republicans and Democrats.
| antaviana wrote:
| Has OpenAI been profitable so far? If not, is there any
| subtantial tax that you have to pay in the US as a for-
| profit organization if you are not profitable?
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| I'm not sure _extreme_ wealth is possible with a non-
| profit. You can pay yourself half a million a year, get
| incredible kickbacks by the firms you hire to manage the
| nonprofits investments, have the non-profit hire outside
| companies that you have financial interests in, and
| probably some other stuff. But none of these things are
| going to get you a hundred million dollars out of a non
| profit. The exception seems to be OpenAI which is
| definitely going to be netting at least a couple people
| over a billion dollars, but as Elon says, I don't
| understand how or why this is possible
| freedomben wrote:
| Yes definitely that is the far majority. I actually had
| Mozilla and their CEO in mind when I was thinking of
| "extreme" wealth. Also I've heard some of the huge
| charities in the US have some execs pulling down many
| millions per year, but I don't want to name any names
| because I'm not certain.
| blendergeek wrote:
| In the USA, the salaries of execs of non-profits are
| publicly listed in their form 990s they file with the
| IRS.
|
| Name names. We can look it up.
| csomar wrote:
| > No, a non-profit is one in which there are no
| shareholders.
|
| Again, I am not a lawyer but that makes no sense.
| Otherwise, anyone can claim the non-profit? So clearly
| there are some beneficial owners out there somehow.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| The nonprofit is controlled by _trustees_ and bound by
| its charter, not shareholders. Any profit a nonprofit
| organization makes is retained within the organization
| for its benefit and mission, not paid out to
| shareholders.
| brap wrote:
| Isn't transferring all of your value to a for-profit company
| that _can_ pay dividends, kinda the same thing?
| sotix wrote:
| A non-profit is a company that for accounting purposes does
| not have shareholders and therefore keeps nothing in retained
| earnings at the end of the period. The leftover money must be
| distributed (e.g. as salaries, towards the stated mission,
| etc.). Their financial statements list net profit for the
| period and nothing is retained.
| matwood wrote:
| The money doesn't have to be used. Many non-profits have
| very large balance sheets of cash and cash equivalent
| assets. The money just won't be paid out as dividends to
| shareholders.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Non-profits are tax-exempt, that's why they're carefully[1]
| regulated.
|
| 1: In principle; in practice, well, we'll see with this one!
| Havoc wrote:
| That was the point musk was complaining about.
|
| In practice it's doable though. You can just create a new legal
| entity and move stuff and/or do future value creating activity
| in the new co. IF everyone is on board with the plan on both
| sides of the move then that's totally doable with enough
| lawyers and accountants
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| 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 uses of AI or AGI that harm humanity or
| unduly concentrate power.
|
| >Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity. We anticipate
| needing to marshal substantial resources to fulfill our
| mission, but will always diligently act to minimize conflicts
| of interest among our employees and stakeholders that could
| compromise broad benefit.
|
| >...
|
| >We are committed to doing the research required to make AGI
| safe, and to driving the broad adoption of such research
| across the AI community.
|
| >We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a
| competitive race without time for adequate safety
| precautions. [...]
|
| >...
|
| https://openai.com/charter/
|
| I'm no expert here, but to me, this charter doesn't appear to
| characterize OpenAI's behavior as of the year 2024. Safety
| people have left, Sam has inexplicably stopped discussing
| risks, and OpenAI seems to be focused on racing with
| competitors. My question: Is the charter legally enforceable?
| And if so, could it make sense for someone to file an
| additional lawsuit? Or shall we just wait and see how the
| Musk lawsuit plays out, for now?
| mminer237 wrote:
| It would think it is legally enforceable, but I suspect
| Kathy Jennings is the only person who has standing to sue
| over it.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| So perhaps we can start a campaign of writing letters to
| her?
|
| I'm curious about the "fiduciary duty" part. As a member
| of humanity, it would appear that OpenAI has a fiduciary
| duty to me. Does that give me standing? Suppose I say
| that OpenAI compromises my safety (and thus finances) by
| failing to discuss risks, having a poor safety culture
| (as illustrated by employee exits), and racing. Would
| that fly?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Elon Musk absolutely has standing, as one of the biggest
| donors to the nonprofit. I assume he will settle for some
| ownership in the for-profit, though.
| melodyogonna wrote:
| Didn't he already refuse the shares offered to him?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I'm sure they just didn't offer him enough shares.
| cdchn wrote:
| "Humanity vs. OpenAI" would look good on a docket.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| 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
| johnsimer wrote:
| Is there a sizable focus on safety? Last time I heard
| there was only like one safety person left on the team
| mminer237 wrote:
| If the non-profit is on board with that though, then they're
| breaking the law. The IRS should reclassify them as a for-
| profit for private inurement and the attorney general should
| have the entire board removed and replaced.
| throwup238 wrote:
| OpenAI Global, LLC - the entity that actually employs all
| the engineers, makes revenue from ChatGPT and the API, and
| pays taxes - has been a for-profit corporation since at
| least 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#2019:_Tran
| sition_from_n...
|
| The IRS isn't stupid. The rules on what counts as taxable
| income and what the nonprofit can take tax-free have been
| around for decades.
| xpe wrote:
| Whatever you think of the IRS, they aren't the master of
| their own destiny:
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted
| (2018)
|
| > An eight-year campaign to slash the agency's budget has
| left it understaffed, hamstrung and operating with
| archaic equipment. The result: billions less to fund the
| government. That's good news for corporations and the
| wealthy.
| duchenne wrote:
| But, if the non-profit gives all its assets to the new legal
| entity, shouldn't the new legal entity be taxed heavily? The
| gift tax rate goes up to 40% in the US. And 40% of the value
| of openAI is huge.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| You don't need to sell/give the assets away to allow the
| for-profit to use them.
|
| You sign an exclusive, non-revocable licensing agreement.
| Ownership of the original IP remains 100% with the original
| startup.
|
| Now, this only works if the non-profit's board is on-board.
| baking wrote:
| A non-profit can't give away its assets to a private
| entity, but it can exchange its assets for fair value, in
| this case, equity in the for-profit.
| crystal_revenge wrote:
| > That was the point musk was complaining about.
|
| I think the _real_ issue Musk was complaining about is that
| sama is quickly becoming very wealthy and powerful and Musk
| doesn 't want any competition in this space.
|
| Hopefully some people watching all this realize that the
| people running many of these big AI related projects _don 't
| care about AI_. Sam Altman is selling a dream about AGI to
| help make himself both wealthier and more powerful, Elon Musk
| is doing the same with electric cars or better AI.
|
| People on HN _are_ sincerely invested in the ideas behind
| these things, but it 's important to recognize that the
| people pulling the strings largely don't care outside how it
| benefits them. Just one of the many reasons, at least in AI,
| truly open source efforts are essential for any real progress
| in the long run.
| squidsoup wrote:
| The notion that consciousness is going to emerge in a
| system where neurons are modelled as bits is laughable.
| moralestapia wrote:
| It's not weird, it's illegal.
|
| There's a lot of jurisdiction around preventing this sort of
| abuse of the non-profit concept.
|
| The reason why the people involved are not on trial right now
| is a bit of a mystery to me, but could be a combination of:
|
| * Still too soon, all of this really took shape in the past
| year or two.
|
| * Only Musk has sued them, so far, and that happened last
| month.
|
| * There's some favoritism from the government to the leading AI
| company in the world.
|
| * There's some favoritism from the government to a big company
| from YC and Sam Altman.
|
| I do believe Musk's lawsuit will go through. The last two
| points are worth less and less with time as AI is being
| commoditized. Dismantling OpenAI is actually a business
| strategy for many other players now. This is not good for
| OpenAI.
| tomp wrote:
| > Dismantling OpenAI is actually a business strategy for many
| other players now.
|
| Which ones exactly?
|
| NVIDIA is drinking sweet money from OpenAI.
|
| Microsoft & Apple are in cahoots with it.
|
| Meta/Facebook seems happy to compete with OpenAI on a fair
| playing field.
|
| Anthropic lacks the resources.
|
| Amazon doesn't seem to care.
|
| Google is asleep.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >NVIDIA is drinking sweet money from OpenAI.
|
| NVIDIA makes money from _any_ company doing AI. I would be
| surprised if OpenAI was a whole digit percentage of their
| revenue.
|
| >Microsoft & Apple are in cahoots with it.
|
| Nope. Apple is using OpenAI to fill holes their current
| model is not good at. This doesn't sound like a long-term
| partnership.
|
| >Meta/Facebook seems happy to compete with OpenAI on a fair
| playing field.
|
| They want open source models to rule, obliterating
| proprietary models out of existence, while at it.
|
| >Anthropic lacks the resources.
|
| Hence why it would be better for them if OpenAI would not
| exist. It's the same with all other AI companies out there.
|
| >Amazon doesn't seem to care.
|
| Citation needed, AWS keeps putting out products which are
| their market leaders, they just don't make a big fuzz about
| it.
|
| >Google is asleep.
|
| I'll give you this one. I have no idea why they keep Pichai
| around.
| cdchn wrote:
| >I would be surprised if OpenAI was a whole digit
| percentage of their revenue.
|
| As opposed to? The euphemism "I wouldn't be surprised"
| usually means you think what you're saying. If you negate
| that you're saying what you _don't_ think is the case? I
| may be reading too much into whats probably a typo.
| stonogo wrote:
| I read it as "I would be surprised if OpenAI _were
| spending enough to consitute even 1% of_ nVIDIA 's
| revenue."
| Thrymr wrote:
| > I would be surprised if OpenAI was a whole digit
| percentage of their revenue.
|
| It is not publicly known how much revenue Nvidia gets
| from OpenAI, but it is likely more than 1%, and they may
| be one of the top 4 unnamed customers in their 10Q
| filing, which would mean at least 10% and $3 billion [0].
|
| That's not nothing.
|
| [0] https://www.yahoo.com/tech/nvidia-gets-almost-half-
| revenue-0...
| kranke155 wrote:
| Google is asleep? Gemini is the product of a company that's
| asleep?
| 9dev wrote:
| Gemini is the product of a company that is still half-
| asleep. We're trying to work with it on a big data case,
| and have seen everything, from missing to downright wrong
| documentation, missing SDKs and endpoints, random system
| errors and crashes, clueless support engineers... it's a
| mess.
|
| OpenAI is miles ahead in terms of ecosystem and platform
| integration. Google can come up with long context windows
| and cool demos all they want, OpenAI built a lot of moat
| while they were busy culling products :)
| kranke155 wrote:
| Fair enough.
|
| I didn't realise it was that bad.
| fourseventy wrote:
| Gemini thinks the founding fathers of america were black
| and that the nazis were racially diverse. so ya
| throwup238 wrote:
| You're right, Gemini is more of a product from a company
| in a vegetative state.
| photonthug wrote:
| Meta has to be happy someone else is currently looking as
| sketchy as they are. Thus the business strategy is moving
| to limit their power and influence as much as possible
| while also avoiding any appearance of direct competition,
| and letting the other guy soak up the bad pr.
|
| Amazon gets paid either way, because even if open ai
| doesn't use them, where are you going to cloud your api
| that's talking with open ai?
|
| If open ai looks weakened I think we'll see everyone else
| has a service they want you to try. But there's no use in
| making much noise about that, especially during an election
| year. No matter who wins, all the rejected everywhere will
| blame AI, and who knows what that will look like. So, sit
| back and wait for the leader of the pack to absorb all the
| damage.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| It is going to be taken advantage of. Musk and others have
| criticized this "novel" method of building a company. If it is
| legal then it is a puzzling loophole. But another way to look
| at it is it gives small and vulnerable companies a chance to
| survive (with different laws and taxes applying to the initial
| nonprofit). If you look at it as enabling competition against
| the big players it looks more reasonable.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| At first, I thought, "Wow, if companies can start as nonprofits
| and later switch to for-profit, they'll exploit the system."
| But the more I learned about the chaos at OpenAI, the more I
| realized the opposite is true. Companies will steer clear of
| this kind of mess. The OpenAI story seems more like a warning
| than a blueprint. Why would any future company want to go down
| this path?
| xiphias2 wrote:
| It's quite simple: the talent pool that had already enough
| money that they quit their well paying job at a for profit
| company in part because they wanted to continue working at a
| non-profit high impact.
|
| As OpenAI found its product-market fit, the early visionaries
| are not needed anymore (although I'm sure the people working
| there are still amazing)
| cdchn wrote:
| I think OpenAI took this play right out of one of its
| founding donors playbooks. Pretend your company has lofty
| goals and you can get people to compromise to moral
| relativism and work superduper hard for you. These people
| definitely have framed posters with the "If you want to
| build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide
| the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for
| the vast and endless sea" quote somewhere in their living
| places/workspaces.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| The NFL used to be a nonprofit and now for profit. OpenAI can
| use similar routes
| walthamstow wrote:
| Not an accountant but there are different kinds of
| nonprofits, OpenAI is a 501c3
| (religious/charitable/educational) whereas the NFL was a
| 501c6 (trade association).
|
| Obviously we all think of the NFL as a big money
| organisation, but it basically just organises the fixtures
| and the referees. The teams make all the money.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| That's a lot of words for Micro$oft to say they just love money.
| Who knew!
| Prkasd wrote:
| That could be the first step towards a complete takeover by
| Microsoft, possibly followed by more CEO shuffles.
|
| I wonder though whether Microsoft is still interested. The free
| Bing Copilot barely gets any resources and gives very bad answers
| now.
|
| If the above theory is correct (big if!), perhaps Microsoft wants
| to pivot to the military space. That would be in line with
| idealist employees leaving or being fired.
| baq wrote:
| > CEO shuffles
|
| Yes, I too can see how sama could end up as Microsoft's CEO as
| a result of this
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I don't see the point of anyone acquiring OpenAI - especially
| not Microsoft, Google, Meta, Anthropic, X.ai, all of which have
| developed the same tech themselves. The real assets are the
| people, who are leaving ship and potentially hireable. With
| this much turmoil, its hard to imagine we've seen the last of
| the high level exits.
| int_19h wrote:
| Of the companies you've listed, Microsoft's AI products that
| are actually useful are all based on GPT-4, and the rest of
| them don't have any models that are truly on par with it.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| o1 seems to be a step ahead for certain applications, but
| before that it seems that Claude Sonnet 3.5 was widely seen
| as the best model, and no doubt we'll be seeing next models
| from Anthropic shortly.
|
| For corporate use cost/benefit is a big factor, not
| necessarily what narrow benchmarks your expensive top model
| can eke out a win on.
| int_19h wrote:
| Claude was not the best model for reasoning even vs 4o,
| and it's quite visible once you start giving it more
| complex logical puzzles. People seem to like it more
| mostly because the way it speaks is less forced and
| robotic, and it's better at creative writing usually, but
| if you need actual _intelligence_, GPT is still quite a
| bit ahead of everybody else.
|
| Now I don't think that it's because OpenAI has some kind
| of secret sauce. It rather seems that it's mostly due to
| their first mover advantage and access to immense
| hardware resources thanks to their Microsoft partnership.
| Nevertheless, whatever the reason their models are
| superior, that superiority is quantifiable in money.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Microsoft already effectively owns OpenAI. Their investments in
| OpenAI have granted them a 49% stake in the company, the right
| to sell any pre-AGI OpenAI products to Microsoft's customers,
| and access to all pre-AGI product research. Microsoft's $10
| billion investment in early 2023 (after ChatGPT's launch
| massively increased OpenAI's operating expenses) was mainly in
| Azure compute credits rather than cash and delivered in
| tranches (as of November 2023 they'd only gotten a fraction of
| that money). It also gives Microsoft 75% of OpenAI's profits
| until they make their $10 billion back. All of these deals have
| effectively made OpenAI into Microsoft's generative AI R&D lab.
| More information: https://www.wheresyoured.at/to-serve-altman/
| extr wrote:
| From the standpoint of today, the deal is so lopsided to
| Microsoft as to be comical. They basically gave away their
| prized IP with the assumption they would have more capability
| leaps (hasn't really happened), and now the brains behind the
| original breakthroughs are all leaving/left. Microsoft is
| probably cannibalizing their enterprise sales with Azure.
| They are clearly middling at shipping actual products. People
| are acting like it's crazy to see executives leaving - IMO
| it's the perfect time right now. o1 is clearly wringing the
| last drops out of the transformer architecture and there is
| nothing up next.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Wouldn't surprise me if this was the actual cause of the revolt
| that led to Altman's short-lived ouster, they just couldn't
| publicly admit to it so made up a bunch of other nonsensical
| explanations.
| HeralFacker wrote:
| Converting to a for-profit changes the tax status of donations.
| It also voids plausibility for Fair Use exemptions.
|
| I can see large copyright holders lining up with takedowns
| demanding they revise their originating datasets since there will
| now be a clear-cut commercial use without license.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I hope I can join in, as a consumer, because there's a
| difference between using the IP I contribute to conversations
| for a non-profit and a commercial enterprise.
| codewench wrote:
| 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.
| shakna wrote:
| A non-profit entity will continue to exist. Likely for the
| reasons you stated.
| bbor wrote:
| Any reasonable court would see right through "well we trained
| it for the public good, but only we can use it directly".
| That's not really a legal loophole as much as an arrogant
| ploy. IMO, IANAL
| lewhoo wrote:
| > It also voids plausibility for Fair Use exemptions. I can see
| large copyright holders lining up with takedowns
|
| I thought so for a moment but then again Meta, Anthropic (I
| just checked and they have a "for profit and public benefit"
| status whatever that means), Google or that Musk's thing aren't
| non-profits, are they ? There are lawsuits in motion for sure
| but with how it stands today I think ai gets off the hook.
| refurb wrote:
| _The restructuring is designed in part to make OpenAI more
| attractive to investors_
|
| I'm not surprised in the least.
|
| Who is going to give billions to a non-profit with a bizarre
| structure where you don't actually own a part of it but have some
| "claim" with a capped profit? Can you imagine bringing that to
| Delaware courts if there was disagreement over the terms?
| Investors can risk it if it's a few million, but good luck
| convincing institutional investors to commit billions with that
| structure.
|
| At that point you might as well just go with a standard for-
| profit model where ownership is clear, terms are standard and
| enforceable in court and people don't have to keep saying
| "explain how it works again?".
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| I'm waiting for pg and others to excuse this all by posting
| another apologetic penance which reminds us that founders are
| unicorns and everyone else is a pleb.
| brap wrote:
| pg is sama's biggest DR-er (interpret this as you will).
|
| They have that Michael Scott & Ryan energy.
| imdsm wrote:
| Lot of people unhappy about this yet not at all unhappy (or even
| caring) about the 1,000s of others who started out for profit.
| And while we're all here hacking away (we're hackers, right?)
| many of us with startups, what is it we're chasing? Profit,
| money, time, control. Are we different except in scale? Food for
| thought.
| bayindirh wrote:
| It's not what they're doing (trying to earn money), but it's
| how they're doing it (in a very unethical and damaging way),
| while trying to whitewash themselves.
| neprune wrote:
| I see your point but I think it's fine to be angry and
| disappointed that an outfit that appeared to be trying to do it
| differently has abandoned the effort.
| imdsm wrote:
| Perhaps it's the only way to survive?
|
| And what comes first, the mission, or being able to tell
| people you did your best but failed to build the thing you
| set out to build?
|
| Perhaps most of us are more interested in fairness than
| progress, and that's fine.
| quonn wrote:
| How is this food for thought? OpenAI had an unfair advantage by
| starting out as a non-profit.
| imdsm wrote:
| What stopped others doing this? Or is stopping others doing
| this?
| int_19h wrote:
| Ethics?
| consteval wrote:
| Their conscious? The fact they aren't pieces of shit?
|
| I'm sorry, have we gotten so far up our own asses as a
| profession that we no longer just excuse unethical
| behavior, we actually encourage it?
| dleeftink wrote:
| > Profit, money, time, control
|
| I feel this only scratches the surface of what to chase in
| life. And in respect to a potentially singular, all-knowing
| piece of technology, not necessarily a goal people want to
| embue.
| ashkankiani wrote:
| Your food is undercooked
| imdsm wrote:
| That's a little unfair.
|
| If you don't mind me asking, what generation are you from?
| Perchance you're newer than me to Earth, among those who find
| it hard that others have different opinions?
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| It's criminal. Many people donated money, worked for them, gave
| data, etc. on the promise that OpenAI was working towards the
| public good. It turns out those transactions occurred under
| false pretenses. That's fraud.
| gdhkgdhkvff wrote:
| In any thread about companies that have some amount of hype
| around them, it's difficult to tell the difference between
| comments coming from people with legitimate concerns about the
| issues at hand vs cynical people that have found their latest
| excuse to glom on to outrage against hype.
| retskrad wrote:
| Altman and OpenAI deserve their success. They've been key to the
| LLM revolution and the push toward AGI. Without their vision to
| make a product out of an LLM that hundreds of millions of people
| now use and have greatly enriched their lives, companies like
| Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Meta wouldn't have invested so
| heavily in AI. While we've heard about the questionable ethics of
| people like Jobs, Musk, and Altman, their work speaks for itself.
| If they're advancing humanity, do their personal flaws really
| matter?
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > If they're advancing humanity, do their personal flaws really
| matter?
|
| Well, yeah, they're positioning themselves as some of the most
| powerful and influential individuals on earth. I'd say any
| personality flaws are pretty important.
| cebu_blue wrote:
| Elon Musk isn't "advancing humanity".
| cbeach wrote:
| 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.
| squidsoup wrote:
| Please don't besmirch Tesla's good name by comparing him to
| Musk.
| PierceJoy wrote:
| 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.
| cbeach wrote:
| 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.
| bainganbharta wrote:
| How do those boots taste?
| aiono wrote:
| Do you really want people who have a lot of power to have
| serious flaws? Looking back into history it doesn't end up good
| usually.
| jimkoen wrote:
| > If they're advancing humanity, do their personal flaws really
| matter?
|
| What's being discussed in this thread is not the personal
| failings of silicon valley darlings, but whether one of them
| just defrauded a few thousand people and embezzled a
| significant amount of capital. Citing his character flaws goes
| along with it though.
|
| Are you seriously arguing that people should be exempt from law
| for "advancing humanity"? Because I don't see any advancements
| whatsoever from all of the people mentioned. Altman and Musk
| would get a hardon for sure though, from being mentioned
| together with Jobs.
| infinitezest wrote:
| > advancing humanity Perhaps but I'd say it's more of a mixed
| bag. Cell phones and social media have done harm and good at
| very large scales. As Dan Carlin once said, it feels like we're
| babies crawling toward hand guns. We don't seem like we're as
| wise as we are technically proficient.
|
| Oppenheimer "advanced humanity" by giving us nuclear power.
| Cool. I love cheap energy. Unfortunately, there were some uh...
| "unfortunate side-effects" which continue to plague us.
| upwardbound wrote:
| Relatedly, dalant979 found this fascinating bit of history:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...
|
| Yishan Wong describes a series of actions by Yishan and Sam
| Altman as a "con", and Sam jumps in to brag that it was "child's
| play for me" with a smiley face. :)
| benterix wrote:
| The board drama part and key people leaving seem oddly
| familiar.
| latexr wrote:
| > and Sam jumps in to brag
|
| I never read that as a brag, but as a sarcastic dismissal.
| That's why it started with "cool story bro" and "except I could
| never have predicted". I see the tone as "this story is
| convoluted" not as "I'll admit to my plan now that you can't do
| anything about it".
|
| That's not to say Sam isn't a scammer. He is. It just doesn't
| seem like that particular post is proof of it. But Worldcoin
| is.
|
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldcoin-...
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi...
| upwardbound wrote:
| If I understand the history correctly, Yishan (the former
| Reddit CEO) is talking about himself when he talks about a
| CEO in this story, and so Yishan's post is a brag, with a
| thin denial tacked on at the end. That's why I believe that
| Sam (Yishan's friend) is also engaging in thinly-veiled
| bragging about these events.
|
| Here is Yishan's comment with his name spelled out for
| clarity instead of just saying "CEO": In
| 2006, reddit was sold to Conde Nast. It was soon obvious to
| many that the sale had been premature, the site was unmanaged
| and under-resourced under the old-media giant who simply
| didn't understand it and could never realize its full
| potential, so the founders and their allies in Y-Combinator
| (where reddit had been born) hatched an audacious plan to re-
| extract reddit from the clutches of the 100-year-old media
| conglomerate. Together with Sam Altman, they
| recruited a young up-and-coming technology manager [named
| Yishan Wong] with social media credentials. Alexis, who was
| on the interview panel for the new reddit CEO, would reject
| all other candidates except this one. The manager was to
| insist as a condition of taking the job that Conde Nast would
| have to give up significant ownership of the company, first
| to employees by justifying the need for equity to be able to
| hire top talent, bringing in Silicon Valley insiders to help
| run the company. After continuing to grow the company,
| [Yishan Wong] would then further dilute Conde Nast's
| ownership by raising money from a syndicate of Silicon Valley
| investors led by Sam Altman, now the President of
| Y-Combinator itself, who in the process would take a seat on
| the board. Once this was done, [Yishan Wong] and
| his team would manufacture a series of otherwise-improbable
| leadership crises, forcing the new board to scramble to find
| a new CEO, allowing Altman to use his position on the board
| to advocate for the re-introduction of the old founders,
| installing them on the board and as CEO, thus returning the
| company to their control and relegating Conde Nast to a
| position as minority shareholder. JUST KIDDING.
| There's no way that could happen.
|
| -- yishanwong
|
| My understanding of what Sam meant by "I could never have
| predicted the part where you resigned on the spot" was that
| he was conveying respect for Yishan essentially out-playing
| Sam at the end (the two of them are friends) by distancing
| himself (Yishan) from the situation and any potential
| liability in order to leave Sam "holding the bag" of possible
| liability.
| allie1 wrote:
| "Shocking!" It's a shame that one of the biggest advancements of
| our time has come about in as sleazy a way as it has.
|
| Reputationally... the net winner is Zuck. Way to go Meta (never
| thought I'd think this).
| addedlovely wrote:
| In that case, where can I apply for my licensing fee for my
| content they have scraped and trained on.
|
| List of crawlers for those who now want to block:
| https://platform.openai.com/docs/bots
| nikcub wrote:
| might as well do the full list:
|
| https://github.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.txt/blob/main/rob...
|
| cloudflare have a button for this:
|
| https://blog.cloudflare.com/declaring-your-aindependence-blo...
| username223 wrote:
| Don't stop at robots.txt blocking. Look through your access
| logs, and you'll likely find a few IPs generating a huge
| amount of traffic. Look them up via "whois," then block the
| entire IP range if it seems like a bot host. There's no
| reason for cloud providers to browse my personal site, so if
| they host crawlers, they get blocked.
| cdchn wrote:
| I wonder how the AI/copyright arguments will play out in court.
|
| "If I read your book and I have a photographic memory and can
| recall any paragraph do I need to pay you a licensing fee?"
|
| "If I go through your library and count all the times that
| 'the' is adjacent to 'end' do I need to get your permission to
| then tell that number to other people?"
| uxhacker wrote:
| Here is the story without a paywall
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/o...
| neilv wrote:
| 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?
| bbor wrote:
| This is the most important question, IMO! ChatGPT says that
| employees and donors would have to show that they were
| defrauded (lied to), which IMO wouldn't exactly be hard given
| the founding documents. But the real power falls to the
| government, both state (Delaware presumably...?) and federal.
| It mentions the IRS, but AFAIU the DoJ itself could easily
| bring litigation based on defrauding the government. Hell,
| maybe throw the SEC in there!
|
| In a normal situation, the primary people with standing to
| prevent such a move would be the board members of the non-
| profit, which makes sense. Luckily for Sam, the employees
| helped kick out all the dissenters a long time ago.
| jjulius wrote:
| Genuinely curious because I have no idea how any of this
| works...
|
| Would the founding documents actually count as proof of a
| lie? I feel like the defense could easily make the argument
| that the documents accurately represented their intent at the
| time, but as time went on they found that it made more sense
| to change.
|
| It seems like, if the founding documents were to be proof of
| a lie, you'd have to have corresponding proof that the
| documents were intentionally written to mislead people.
| bbor wrote:
| Great point, and based on my amateur understanding you're
| absolutely correct. I was mostly speaking so confidently
| because these founding documents in particular define the
| company as being founded to prevent _exactly this_.
|
| You're right that Altman is/will sell it as an unexpected
| but necessary adaptation to external circumstances, but
| that's a hard sell. Potentially not to a court, sadly, but
| definitely in the public eye. For example:
| We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming
| a competitive race without time for adequate safety
| precautions... We are committed to providing public goods
| that help society navigate the path to AGI.
|
| From 2018: https://web.archive.org/web/20230714043611/https
| ://openai.co...
|
| And this is the _very first paragraph_ of their founding
| blog post, from 2015: OpenAI is a non-
| profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal
| is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most
| likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a
| need to generate financial return. Since our research is
| free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a
| positive human impact.
|
| https://openai.com/index/introducing-openai/
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Everyone has legal standing to sue at any time for anything.
|
| Whether the case is any good is another matter.
| ReaLNero wrote:
| This is not at all true, I recommend you look into the exact
| meaning of "legal standing".
| moralestapia wrote:
| Yeah, so funny, *yawn*.
|
| Try to contribute to the conversation, though.
|
| What you say is also untrue, there's a minimum set of
| requirements that have to be met regarding discovery, etc.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| In the US standing is a specific legal concept about whether
| you have a valid reason/role to bring up a particular issue.
| For example most of Donald Trump's lawsuits around the 2020
| election were rejected for a lack of standing rather than on
| merit (whether the case is any good).
| leeoniya wrote:
| is there a good source that shows which were dismissed as
| meritless vs ones dismissed due to lack of standing?
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| And more high level exits ... not only Mira Murati, but also Bob
| McGrew , and Barret Zoph
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-note-more-...
| nikcub wrote:
| Difficult to see how these two stories aren't related.
|
| OpenAI has been one of the most insane business stories in
| years. I can't wait to read a full book about it that isn't
| written by either Walter Isaacson or Michael Lewis.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I've only read Michael Lewis's "Liars Poker" which I enjoyed,
| but perhaps that sort of treatment of OpenAI would make it
| into more of a drama (which also seems to be somewhat true)
| and gloss over what the key players were really thinking
| which is what would really be interesting.
| fxbois wrote:
| Can anyone trust the next "non-profit" startup ? So easy to
| attract appeal with a lie and turn around as soon as you are in a
| dominant position.
| bbor wrote:
| Yes, you should still trust cooperatives and syndicates. I am
| surprised they're attempting such a brazenly disrespectful
| move, but in general, the people who started this company were
| self-avowed capitalists through-and-through; the fact that they
| eventually reverted to seeking personal gain isn't surprising
| in itself. That's basically their world view: whatever I can do
| to enrich myself is moral because Ethical Egoism/Free
| Market/etc.
| int_19h wrote:
| The trust problem here isn't with non-profits in general, it's
| specifically with Sam Altman. So no, you probably shouldn't
| trust the next non-profit he is involved with. But also, people
| have warned about Altman in advance.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Good, I would do the same because it's a reasonable thing to do.
| It's easier to succeed as a for-profit.
| j_maffe wrote:
| Succeed off of lies and deceit to gain goodwill from workers
| and governments.
| roody15 wrote:
| Wait.. Sam Altman also owns (or did own) ycombinator?
| mrkramer wrote:
| I called this 9 months ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38560352
|
| OpenAI is Microsoft's AI R&D spin-off and Microsoft means
| business.
| wg0 wrote:
| For profit it will be when it will be profitable.
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| I never understood why people take non profit companies as more
| altruistic than for profit companies. The non profit doesnt mean
| no profits at all they still have to be profitable. It's just
| boils down to how the profits are distributed. There are plenty
| of sleezy institutions that are non profit like the NCAA.
|
| Foundations and charitable organizations that pubically get their
| funding are a different story but I'm talking about non profit
| companies.
|
| I even had one fellow say that the green bay packers were less
| corrupt than the other for profit nfl teams , which sounds
| ridiculous.
| hedora wrote:
| Regarding the Packers: At least (unlike literally every other
| NFL team), they're not using city tax revenue to build a
| franchise that can move across the country at the drop of a
| hat.
|
| The NFL's non-profit status is a farce though. Similarly, their
| misuse of copyright ("you cannot discuss this broadcast") and
| the trademark "Super Bowl" ("cannot be used in factual
| statements regarding the actual Super Bowl") should have their
| ownership of that ip revoked, if only because it causes massive
| confusion about the underlying law with a big chunk of the US
| population.
| limit499karma wrote:
| Reuters had the exclusive yesterday but somehow it never surfaced
| for long here:
|
| "OpenAI to remove non-profit control and give Sam Altman equity"
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/o...
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| It appeared but was buried on the second page and never made it
| to the front page, for some weird reason. Some in the
| discussion speculated that it was due to a flame war detection
| algorithm:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548
| widerporst wrote:
| The fact that this has just disappeared from the front page for
| me, just like the previous post
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548), somehow leaves a
| bitter taste in my mouth.
| mattcollins wrote:
| I noticed that, too. It does seem 'odd'.
| majke wrote:
| https://hnrankings.info/41655954/
|
| Looks like it was flagged, before being brought back by an
| admin. This happens quite often.
| lolinder wrote:
| The previous post never entered the front page at all:
|
| https://hnrankings.info/41651548/
|
| It somehow got enough attention to get to 300+ votes while
| being entirely suppressed from the front page.
|
| This one looks like it triggered a flag before being fixed:
|
| https://hnrankings.info/41655954/
| jjulius wrote:
| I found this on the front page an hour after you made this
| comment.
| davidcbc wrote:
| You can't post content critical of some HN darlings without
| being flagged by their fans
| jjulius wrote:
| How do you explain all of the constant unflagged criticism of
| OpenAI and Sam Altman throughout nearly every OpenAI thread?
| I mean, look around at all of the comments here...
| financetechbro wrote:
| Mods, probably
| Davidzheng wrote:
| Yeah hope for some transparency here
| nitsuaeekcm wrote:
| Look at the URL. It's because the original WSJ title was
| "OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Resigns," which was a dupe of
| yesterday's discussions. WSJ changed the title yesterday
| evening.
| neilv wrote:
| This post somehow fell off the front page before California wakes
| up (9:07 ET), but not buried deep like buried posts usually are:
|
| > _57. OpenAI to Become For-Profit Company (wsj.com) 204 points
| by jspann 4 hours ago | flag | hide | 110 comments_
| upwardbound wrote:
| Thank you dalant979 for finding a previous pattern of behavior
| also by Sam with a similar structure to what we have seen
| unfolding on the board of OpenAI.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41657001#41657014
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Feels like when Napoleon declared himself emperor, and other
| countless times when humans succumbed to power and greed when
| they were finally in the position to make that decision. I guess
| I'm stupid for holding on hope that Sam would be different.
|
| >Beethoven's reaction to Napoleon Bonaparte's declaration of
| himself as Emperor of France in May 1804 was to violently tear
| Napoleon's name out of the title page of his symphony, Bonaparte,
| and rename it Sinfonia Eroica
|
| >Beethoven was furious and exclaimed that Napoleon was "a common
| mortal" who would "become a tyrant"
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| This is for the best really, I can't even think of a non-profit
| in tech where over time it hasn't just become a system for non-
| productives to leech from a successful bit of technology while
| providing nothing and at times even stunting it's potential and
| burning money on farcical things.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Sam altman is just trying to cash out before the crash comes, the
| new model was nothing more than a glorified recursive gpt 4
| causal wrote:
| Considering all the high level departures, this makes the most
| sense to me. Their valuation largely rests on this mystique
| they've built that says they alone are destined to unlock AGI.
| But there's just no reason to believe they have a secret sauce
| nobody else can reproduce.
|
| Seems more likely that OpenAI's biggest secret is that they
| have no secrets, and they are desperately trying to come up
| with a second act as tech companies with more robust product
| portfolios begin to catch up.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Not the only one questioning.
|
| Going for-Profit, and several top exec leaving at same time?
| Before getting the money?
|
| """Question: why would key people leave an organization right
| before it was just about to develop AGI?" asked xAI developer
| Benjamin De Kraker in a post on X just after Murati's
| announcement. "This is kind of like quitting NASA months before
| the moon landing," he wrote in a reply. "Wouldn't you wanna stick
| around and be part of it?"""
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/opena...
|
| Is this the beginning of the end for OpenAI?
| Sunscratch wrote:
| Should be renamed to NonOpenAI,or MoneyMattersAI
| xzjis wrote:
| ClosedAI or PrivateAI
| causal wrote:
| Saw someone on HN call it NopenAI
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Are you meaning to tell me that the whole nonprofit thing was
| just a shtick to get people to think that this generation of SV
| "founders" was going to save the world, for real this time guys?
|
| I'm shocked. Shocked!
|
| I better stock up on ways of disrupting computational machinery
| and communications from a distance. They'll build SkyNet if it
| means more value for shareholders.
| Eliezer wrote:
| This is not how nonprofits usually work. This is blatant fraud.
| I cannot think of any other case besides OpenAI of this
| particular shenanigan being pulled.
| ummonk wrote:
| The question isn't whether it has happened before, but
| whether they will get away with it.
| baradhiren07 wrote:
| Value vs Morality. Only time will tell who wins.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| In many SV denizens' heads, they're one in the same.
|
| Which is why we need to reopen more asylums and bring back
| involuntary commitment.
| charles_f wrote:
| I'm wondering what this will change. This is probably naive from
| me because I'm relatively uneducated on the topic, but it feels
| like open-ai has never really worked like your typical non profit
| (eg keeping their stuff mostly closed sourced and seeking a
| profit)
| humansareok1 wrote:
| Given 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 the most important
| technology ever devised.
| lolinder wrote:
| I don't know why anyone would believe anything this guy is
| saying, though, especially now that we know he's going to
| receive a 7% stake in the now-for-profit company.
|
| There are two main interpretations of what he's saying:
|
| 1) He sincerely believes that AGI is around the corner.
|
| 2) He sees that his research team is hitting a plateau of what
| is possible and is prepping for a very successful exit before
| the rest of the world notices the plateau.
|
| Given his track record of honesty and the financial incentives
| involved, I know which interpretation I lean towards.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| ...or he's just Palpatine who wants shitload of money
| regardless of future speculations, end of story.
| cowpig wrote:
| 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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).
| meowface wrote:
| 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 contrast to
| what ~99% of HN believes) and that he does care deeply about
| potential existential (and other) risks of ASI. 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.
|
| I don't know why the promises to the safety team weren't kept
| (thus triggering their mass resignations), but I don't think
| it's something as silly as him becoming extremely power hungry
| or no longer believing there were risks or thinking the risks
| are acceptable. Perhaps he thought it wasn't the most rational
| and efficient use of capital at that time given current
| capabilities.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Or maybe he is just a gready lier? From the outside looking
| in how can you tell the difference?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] more discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548
| lolinder wrote:
| That one never made it to the front page because reasons. All
| that discussion was people reading the story elsewhere and
| going looking for the HN thread.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| never made it? That's the thread. The discussion is there.
| Long before this one. Lots of people saw it, commented on it.
| It's a dupe. Stop splitting the discussion up.
| lolinder wrote:
| It was never above page 4 (position 90):
|
| https://hnrankings.info/41651548/
|
| This version of the thread is the first to have had any
| traction on the front page.
|
| When the algorithm artificially stops a topic from
| surfacing to the front page, the article that finally makes
| it past the algorithm's suppression is not a duplicate,
| it's the canonical copy.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| So what if it didn't make the front page. That doesn't
| mean ppl didn't see it. Doesn't mean ppl aren't
| commenting on it. Maybe it's just not _that_ interesting.
| There was also a lot of other big news at the same time
| with Meta etc taking attention. And followed by the other
| OpenAI news with Mira. Again, the discussion is there.
| lolinder wrote:
| You're seriously going to argue that OpenAI changing to a
| for profit wasn't interesting enough to rise above page 4
| of Hacker News? Doesn't the existence of this second
| thread disprove that claim pretty thoroughly?
|
| I'm pretty sure that what happened is that the Murati
| thread was id'd by the algorithm as the canonical OpenAI
| discussion, artificially suppressing the more interesting
| topic of _the complete restructuring of the most
| important company in existence today_.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| The front page doesn't matter if lots of ppl are still
| seeing it. 300+ upvotes is plenty and the usual for a
| major news story in a week. It is in no way buried.
| Discussion can still be/should be merged. Then it'll have
| 1000 upvotes etc. Representing its true significance and
| not making us duplicate all of our discussion comments!
| lolinder wrote:
| A lot of people get their tech news by looking at the
| front page of HN. An algorithm artificially stopping the
| day's most important news story from surfacing there,
| leading to the discussion only being found by people who
| actively go looking for that specific discussion because
| they learned about it elsewhere, is absolutely a big
| deal.
|
| I'm just glad that the Murati story falling off the front
| page allowed this one a second chance.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| _A lot_ of people saw the story. Without searching. Maybe
| more by simply searching openAI. Traffic gets sent in
| from external feeds etc. It 's not buried. But the
| conversation is all disjointed now. Merging the [dupe]
| only makes it better/stronger.
| lolinder wrote:
| > A lot of people saw the story. Without searching.
|
| Do you have a source for this? How did they find it if
| not on HN?
|
| > Merging the [dupe] only makes it better/stronger.
|
| Moving the ~50 comments from the other thread here makes
| a ton of sense. All I'm saying is that this is the
| canonical and the other is the dupe.
| skadamat wrote:
| Now the real question is - will they finally drop the "Open"
| part?
| kweingar wrote:
| Can anybody explain how this actually works? What happens to all
| of the non-profit's assets? They can't just give it away for
| investors to own.
|
| The non-profit could maybe sell its assets to investors, but then
| what would it do with the money?
|
| I'm sure OpenAI has an explanation, but I really want to hear
| more details. In the most simple analysis of "non-profit becomes
| for-profit", there's really no way to square it other than non-
| profit assets (generated through donations) just being handed to
| somebody for private ownership.
| tomp wrote:
| exactly.
|
| If that's how it works, why wouldn't you start _every_ startup
| as a non-profit?
|
| Investment is tax deductible, no tax on profits...
|
| Then turn it into a for-profit if/when it becomes successful!
| jameshart wrote:
| Donations are not investments. They don't result in
| ownership.
| n2d4 wrote:
| After the non-profit sells its assets, it would either donate
| the proceeds in a way that would be aligned with the original
| mission, or continue to exist as a bag of cash, basically.
| kweingar wrote:
| It seems incredibly convenient that a non-profit's leaders
| can say "I want equity in a for-profit company, so we will
| sell our assets to investors (who will hire me) and pass off
| the proceeds to some other non-profit org run by some other
| schmuck. This is in the public interest."
| n2d4 wrote:
| State regulators have to sign off on the deal; it's not
| sufficient for the non-profit board to agree to it.
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| [flagged]
| lolinder wrote:
| If the assets were sold to the for profit at a fair price I
| could see this being legal (even if it shouldn't be). At least
| in that case the value generated by the non-profit tax free
| would stay locked up in non-profit land.
|
| The biggest problem with this is that there's basically no
| chance that the sale price of the non-profit assets is going to
| be $150 billion, which means that whatever the gap is between
| the valuation of the assets and the valuation of the company is
| pure profit derived from the gutting of the non-profit.
|
| If this is allowed, every startup founded from now on should
| rationally do the same thing. No taxes while growing, then
| convert to for profit right before you exit.
| bdowling wrote:
| For-profit startups don't pay taxes while growing either,
| because they aren't making any profit during that phase.
| daveguy wrote:
| Good point. That sounds a lot like fraud.
| svnt wrote:
| Not paying taxes while losing money sounds like fraud to
| you?
|
| What do you propose should be taxed, exactly?
| daveguy wrote:
| 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, and do not have to
| report revenue, expenses, or profits.
|
| So yeah, I stand by what I said -- it sounds like fraud.
| And it deserves an audit.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| > 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/nonprofi
| ts/organizations/810....
| Spivak wrote:
| Cash flow. Profit get's taxed at x%, cash flow that was
| offset with losses/expenses gets taxed at y% < x. Company
| that does $100Mil of business and makes no money is very
| different than company that does $10k of business and
| makes no money.
| svnt wrote:
| Your equations do not account for the difference you
| mention, they only ensure growth will be slower and
| riskier.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Sure. But there are a lot of other tax advantages. For
| example, at least where I am, non profits don't pay sales
| tax on purchases, and don't have to pay into unemployment
| funds. I'm sure there is more, but I'm not super familiar
| with this world.
| caeril wrote:
| Corporations don't generally pay sales tax either, if the
| bean counters can justify the purchase as COGS. There are
| plenty of accountants who can play fast and loose with
| what constitutes COGS.
| sethaurus wrote:
| For anyone else unfamiliar with this initialism:
|
| > Cost of goods sold (COGS) refers to the direct costs of
| producing the goods sold by a company. This amount
| includes the cost of the materials and labor directly
| used to create the good. It excludes indirect expenses,
| such as distribution costs and sales force costs.
| xxpor wrote:
| If most of your expenses are software devs, that's not true
| any more.
| perfmode wrote:
| How so?
| turok2step wrote:
| Taxpayers can't immediately deduct R&D costs now
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/174
| flutas wrote:
| In short, section 174[0].
|
| It pushed almost all SWE jobs to be classified as R&D
| jobs, which changed how taxes are calculated on
| companies.
|
| They have an example at [0], but I'll copy it here. For a
| $1mm income, $1mm cost of SW dev, with $0 profit
| previously you paid $0 in tax (your income was offset by
| your R&D costs). Now it would be about $200k in taxes for
| 5 years, as you can't claim all of the $1mm that year
| anymore.
|
| [0]: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/section-174/
| the_gorilla wrote:
| There's tons of taxes on hiring employees that you have
| to pay even if you're losing money. Payroll taxes,
| mandatory insurance taxes, unemployment taxes, probably
| more I just don't remember off the top of my head.
| nickspag wrote:
| In an effort to lower the deficit effects of the Trump
| tax cuts (i.e. increase revenue so they could cut further
| in other areas), they reclassified software developers
| salary so that their salaries have to be amortized over
| multiple years, instead of just a business expense in
| that year. This is usually done for assets as those
| things have an intrinsic value that could be sold.
|
| In this case, business have to pay taxes on "profit" that
| they don't have as it immediately went to salaries. There
| were a lot of small business that were hit extremely
| hard.
|
| They tried to fix it in the recent tax bill but it was
| killed in the Senate last I checked. You can see more
| here: https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/fact-
| sheet-on-....
|
| Also, software developers in Oil and Gas industries are
| exempt from this :)
| ttul wrote:
| This is one reason why some companies have located
| engineers in Canada under subsidiaries. Canada not only
| allows you to deduct R&D costs as an expense, but there
| is an extremely generous R&D tax credit that yields a
| negative tax rate on engineers. For Canadian controlled
| private companies, this represents as much as a 60%
| refundable tax credit on R&D salaries. For foreign-owned
| companies, the benefit is smaller but still significant.
|
| The Trump tax policy was a bizarre move for a country
| that relies so heavily on homegrown innovation. But then
| again, so was the entire Trump presidency.
| authorfly wrote:
| Corporate tax is always only paid on profit and is usually
| a minor part of the tax draw for the government from
| corporations of all sizes.
|
| The vast majority of taxes paid in developed nations are
| employee taxes and whatever national+local sales taxes and
| health/pension equivalent taxes are (indirectly) levied
| (usually 60-80% of national income). Asset taxes are a bit
| different.
|
| It's true even in the bootstrapped company case: If you
| earn say $100k and keep $50k after all the employee
| indirect/direct taxes. Now imagine you spend $40k of that
| $50k in savings, setting up a business. You spend $30k on
| another employee, paying $15k of employer and employee
| taxes, and spend the other $10k on a company to do
| marketing (who will spend $5k of that on employees and pay
| $2.5k of tax), and you earn less than $40k in income, by
| the end of year 1 you have:
|
| 1) A loss-making startup which nonetheless is further along
| then nothing
|
| 2) Out of $100k of your original value, $67.5k has already
| reached the government within 12 months
|
| 3) Your time doing the tech side was not compensated but
| could not (for obvious anti-fraud reasons) be counted as a
| loss and as you have noted, you don't pay tax when you make
| a loss, and you don't get any kind of negative rebate
| (except certain sales tax regimes or schemes).
|
| If you are in the US, the above is currently much worse due
| to the insane way R&D Software spend needs to be spread
| immediately as a tax burden.
|
| So it's really not fair to say a new startup isn't paying
| taxes. They almost always are. There are very few companies
| or startups that pay less than 50% of their income to
| staff, and almost all of those are the unicorns or
| exceptional monopoly/class leaders. Startups, and founders
| tend to disproportionately give more of their income and
| are essentially to that extent re-taxed.
|
| Even though you saved the money in order to start a
| startup, and paid your due employee taxes, you then have to
| pay employee taxes to use it, etc.
| mpeg wrote:
| Is this a US thing? In the UK employee tax is the
| employee's to pay, not the company. Even if the company
| technically transfers it directly to the tax agency it's
| not really their money.
|
| EDIT: I guess we do have employer tax as national
| insurance contributions too, always forget about that
| since I've always paid myself under that threshold
| authorfly wrote:
| I'm not sure if you mean whether the UK has the same low
| corporation vs high income/pension/NI contributions
| income? If so, yes.
|
| The UK does have employers NI contributions but that's
| not what I mean. The point is, if you spent a year to
| earn a gross PS100k, and as you earn it, pay PS50k of
| total tax, and with the remaining PS40k/PS50k you spend
| it on an employee at your company in salary and pay then
| PS20k of tax, the government has that year earned PS70k
| from that PS100k passing through.
|
| You can argue that really "PS140k" has passed through,
| but it's not the case, because you created a new job that
| wouldn't otherwise have existed had you instead saved
| that PS40k for a house. Either way HMRC gets PS70k this
| year rather than PS50k.
|
| The wider point I was making is that all companies, even
| for-profit, pay tax to do just about anything, and
| companies with much lower sales than costs aren't just
| paying nothing. They generally have higher costs because
| they are paying people, and paying their taxes every
| month. The tax per employee is completely uncorrelated
| with the financial profit or thereof by the business, so
| it's a (sensible) misconception that companies that don't
| make profit like startups don't contribute to the
| economy. They do, by paying employment taxes.
|
| I'm really making the point that you have to account for
| employee taxes (both employer and employee as you
| mention) for your costs as a business. That means, even
| though you already paid those yourself when you carried
| out the work to gain savings to invest in your business
| (to spend on an employee), you have to pay again when
| paying your employee.
|
| I.e. Self-funded or businesses launched from previous
| accrued personal income where you invest your own time as
| well result in a bad tax situation;
|
| whereas an employee earning PS100k might pay PS50k tax
| total and save PS50k for a house (no VAT),
|
| The alternate of investing that PS50k in your business by
| paying someone PS40k means you have to pay that employees
| PAYE, their Employer and Employee NI. So the government
| gets to re-tax most of that money when you use it to hire
| someone to build a new business with you, in a way they
| don't if you use it to buy a house, in terms of practical
| impact. When you pay yourself as an entrepreneur depends,
| there's dividends+PAYE in the UK (which requires yes you
| pay for both your employer and employee tax for yourself)
| or capital gains(ignoring tax schemes), either way, you
| do get taxed at some point to bring cash out.
|
| The government in other words massively benefits from
| unprofitable for-profit companies so long as they hire
| some people, especially if the companies are self-funded.
| But even if it is investment, it's better to have that
| money spent on salaries now in new companies than sitting
| as stock in larger companies that keep cash reserves or
| use schemes to avoid tax. They get much more tax from
| people starting even unprofitable new businesses, than
| from employees who simply save money.
|
| It's one of the reasons that since the introduction of
| income taxes (more or less WW1 in most countries!), you
| need money to get money in way that you fundamentally did
| not in the same way back when you could earn $50 from
| someone and directly use that same $50 to pay someone for
| the same skills without any loss of value.
| vladms wrote:
| > So the government gets to re-tax most of that money
| when you use it to hire someone to build a new business
| with you.
|
| You should consider it also from the point of view of the
| employee. The government taxes your employee to offer him
| services, it does not care who hires him (you, that saved
| the money).
|
| Yes, it is true that you need lots of money to HIRE
| someone, but you can try to do a startup with a couple
| people that live from their savings for a while (so, not
| paying themselves a salary, but having shares) which
| avoids the tax situation as first.
|
| I think we are quite bad to assess how was life around
| 1900 in terms of infrastructure (in any country) - so
| yes, probably people paid less taxes but lived in much
| worse overall conditions.
| amluto wrote:
| It's pretty great if you can manage to have the parent be
| 501(c)(3). Have all the early investors "donate" 90% of their
| investment to the 501(c)(3) and invest 10% in the for-profit
| subsidiary the old-fashioned way. They get a tax deduction,
| and the parent owns 90% of the subsidiary. Later on, if the
| business is successful, the parent cashes out at the lowest
| possible valuation they can pull off with a mostly straight
| face, and all the investors in the subsidiary end up owning
| their shares, pro rata, with no dilution from the parent. The
| parent keeps a bit of cash (and can use it for some other
| purpose).
|
| Of course the investors do end up owning their shares at a
| lower basis than they would otherwise, and they end up a bit
| diluted compared to a straightforward investment, but the
| investors seem likely to more than make up for this by
| donating appreciated securities to the 501(c)(3) and by
| deferring or even completely avoiding the capital gains tax
| on their for-profit shares.
|
| Obviously everyone needs to consult their lawyer about the
| probability of civil and/or criminal penalties.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| You actually don't even need to sell them. Just sign an
| exclusive, non-revocable license agreement.
|
| Practically the same as selling, but technically not. Non-
| profit still gets to live up to it's original mission, on
| paper, but doesn't really do anything internally.
| mlinsey wrote:
| I haven't seen any details, but isn't this a pretty
| straightforward way of doing it? The non-profit has had
| majority ownership of the for-profit subsidiary since 2019.
| The already-for-profit subsidiary has owned all the ChatGPT
| IP, all the recent models, all the employee relationships,
| etc etc.
|
| The cleanest way for this to work is the for-profit to just
| sell more shares at the $150B valuation, diluting the non-
| profit entity below majority ownership. The for-profit board,
| which the non-profit could still probably have multiple seats
| on, would control the real asset, the non-profit would still
| exist and hold many tens of billions of value. It could
| further sell its shares in the non-profit and use the
| proceeds in a way consistent with its mission.
|
| They wouldn't even have to sell that much - I am pretty sure
| the mega-fundrasing rounds from Microsoft etc brought the
| non-profit's ownership to just north of 50% anyway.
|
| I don't see how this wouldn't be above board, it's how I
| assumed it was going to work. It would indeed mean that the
| entity that controls ChatGPT would now be answerable to
| shareholders, a majority of which would be profit seeking and
| a minority of which would be the non-profit with its mission,
| but non-profits are allowed to invest in for-profits and then
| sell those shares; all the calls for prosecutions etc seems
| just like an internet pitchfork mob to me.
| jprete wrote:
| The non-profit would have to approve the scheme, and a
| rational non-profit would not, because it gives up any
| ability the non-profit has to fulfill its charter.
| space_fountain wrote:
| Exactly, the question is this move in the non profits
| best interests? It's definitely in the best interest of
| the people running the non profit but I think many of the
| early donors wouldn't feel like this was what they were
| signing up for
| space_fountain wrote:
| I think the problem is early employees and investors were
| convinced to invest their time and money into a non profit.
| They were told that one of the reasons they should
| donate/work there as opposed to Google was because they
| were a non profit focused on doing good. Now when it seems
| like that non profit is successful that all is being thrown
| out the window in service of a structure that will result
| in more profit for the people running the non profit
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there 's basically no chance that the sale price of the
| non-profit assets is going to be $150 billion_
|
| The non-profit's asset is the value of OpenAI minus the value
| of its profit-participation units, _i.e._ the value of the
| option above the profit cap. Thus, it must be _less_ than the
| value of OpenAI. The non-profit owns an option, not OpenAI.
| benreesman wrote:
| "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to
| get rich, you start a religion."
|
| -- L. Ron Hubbard
| TZubiri wrote:
| But what is the non-profit going to do with all that money is
| the question.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| 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.
| sophacles wrote:
| 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.
| BrawnyBadger53 wrote:
| 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.
| sophacles wrote:
| History has also shown that limited liability ends up
| costing me an awful lot of tax money to cover for some
| twat getting paid out (at a lower tax rate) with no
| consequences for their actions. Adding liability would
| certainly lower my taxes, and have a fantastic chilling
| effect on the type of trash that harm innocent bystanders
| with their reckless disregard for consequences in the
| name of chasing a dollar.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Blue Cross / Blue Shield is a good case study. This is a bit in
| the weeds but should get you keywords to search for:
| https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/research/community-invo...
| winternett wrote:
| >Can anybody explain how this actually works?
|
| Every answer moving forward now will contain embedded ads for
| Sephora, or something completely unrelated to your prompt...
|
| That money will go into the pockets of a small group of people
| that claim they own shares in the company... Then the company
| will pull more people in who invest in it, and they'll all get
| profits based on continually rising monthly membership fees,
| for an app that stole content from social media posts and
| historical documents others have written without issuing credit
| nor compensating them.
| baking wrote:
| The nonprofit gives all its ownership rights to the for-profit
| in return for equity. The nonprofit is free to hold the equity
| and maintain control or sell the equity and use the proceeds
| for actual charitable purposes.
|
| As long as the money doesn't go into someone's pocket, it's all
| good (except that Sam Altman is also getting equity but I
| assume they found a way to justify that.)
|
| OpenAI will eventually be forced to convert from a public
| charity to a private foundation and will be forced to give away
| a certain percentage of their assets every year so this solves
| that problem also.
| jprete wrote:
| The significant asset isn't equity, it's control. 51% is much
| more valuable than 49% when the owned organization is
| supposedly working towards technology that will completely
| change how the world works.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I've actually worked through a similar situation for a prior
| startup. We were initially funded by a large, hospital system
| (non-profit) who wanted to foster innovation and a startup
| mentality. After getting started, it became clear that it was
| effectively impossible for us to operate like a startup under a
| non-profit. Namely, traditional funding routes were neigh
| impossible and the hospital didn't want direct ownership.
|
| It's been many years, but the plan was essentially this:
|
| * The original, non-profit would still exist
|
| * A new, for-profit venture would be created, with the hospital
| having a board seat and 5% ownership. Can't remember the exact
| reason behind 5%. I think it was a threshold for certain things
| becoming a liability for the hospital as they'd be considered
| "active" owners above 5%. I think this was a healthcare
| specific issue and unlikely to affect non-profits in other
| fields.
|
| * The for-profit venture would seek, traditional VC funding.
| Though, the target investors were primarily in the healthcare
| space.
|
| * As part of funding, the non-profit would grant exclusive,
| irrevocable rights of it's IP to that for-profit venture.
|
| * Everyone working for the "startup" would need to sign a new
| employment contract with the for-profit.
|
| * Viola! You've converted a non-profit into a for-profit
| business.
|
| I'm fuzzy on a lot of details, but that was the high level
| architecture of the setup. It's one of those things where the
| lawyers earn a BOAT LOAD of money to make sure every
| technicality is accounted for, but everything is just a
| technicality. The practical outcome is you've converted a non-
| profit to a for-profit business.
|
| Obviously, this can't happen without the non-profit's approval.
| From the outside, it seems that Sam has been working internally
| to align leadership and the board with this outcome.
|
| -----
|
| What will be interesting is how the employees are treated.
| These types of maneuvers are often an opportunity for companies
| to drop employees, renegotiate more favorable terms, and reset
| vesting schedules.
| feoren wrote:
| > * As part of funding, the non-profit would grant exclusive,
| irrevocable rights of it's IP to that for-profit venture.
|
| This is the part that should land people literally in jail. A
| non-profit should not be able to donate its assets to a for-
| profit, and if it's the same people running both companies,
| those people must be sent to prison for tax evasion. There is
| no other way to preserve the integrity of the "non-profit"
| status with this giant loophole.
| jdavdc wrote:
| My expertise is in NFP hospitals. Generally, when they convert
| for for-profit part of that deal is the creation of a
| foundation funded with assets that are ostensibly to advance
| the original not for profit mission.
| throwaway918299 wrote:
| Huh? I thought they already had for-profit and non-profit
| entities? Is the non-profit entity just going away (paywall)?
| gross.
| aoeusnth1 wrote:
| The IRS should get involved. This is a cut and dry case of
| embezzlement of 501c3 resources.
| hakcermani wrote:
| Can they at least change the name to from OpenAI to something
| else, and leave gutted OpenAI as the non-profit shell..
| anon291 wrote:
| Wonder what happens to the employee's equity.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Why were they a non-profit in the first case?
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| I imagine for tax reasons?
|
| Why the h are they called "openAI" too? nothing is open for
| them but your own wallet.
| fourseventy wrote:
| So are they going to give elon equity? He donated millions to the
| non profit and now they are going to turn around and turn the
| company into a for-profit based on the work done with that
| capital.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| Given that Musk was already worried about this and has a legal
| team the size of a small army, one would expect that any
| conditions he wanted applied to the donation would have been
| made at the time.
| wmf wrote:
| Elon has allegedly refused equity in OpenAI. He seems to want
| it to go back to its original mission (which isn't going to
| happen) or die (which isn't going to happen).
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| Sam Altman also allegedly had no interest in equity.
| cdchn wrote:
| When you get to tell the ASI what to do, money has little
| value any more.
| squidsoup wrote:
| Guess he's going to be waiting a long time.
| bmau5 wrote:
| In the article it says he'll now receive equity
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| Indeed that's the point I'm making.
| bmau5 wrote:
| Ah sorry I misread your comment
| sampo wrote:
| Musk doesn't seem to be happy about the situation:
|
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1839121268521492975
| uhtred wrote:
| Fund your startup by masquerading as a non profit for a few years
| and collecting donations, genius!
|
| The stinking peasants will never realize what's happening until
| it's too late to stop!
| bjornsing wrote:
| The OpenAI saga is a fine illustration of how "AI safety" will
| work in practice.
|
| Hint: it won't.
| typon wrote:
| AI Safety is a science fiction created by large corporations
| and useful idiots to distract from working on boring, real AI
| safety concerns like bias, misinformation, deepfakes, etc.
| yapyap wrote:
| Become? lol
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| There is an post with 500 comments that was posted before this
| one. Why didn't that post make it to the top? I know Y Combinator
| used to have Sama has a president but you can't censor this type
| of big news in this time and age
| thesurlydev wrote:
| 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.
| elAhmo wrote:
| Similar example can be seen with the demise of Twitter under
| the new owner, which has no safeguards or guardrails - anyone
| who opposed him is gone and we can see in what state it is now.
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| Now Twitter has both left and right propaganda instead of
| just left wing propaganda. Bummer.
| senorrib wrote:
| With the small difference that Twitter is a for-profit
| company, unlike OpenAI.
| burnte wrote:
| With respect, you should look again at the article you're
| commenting on.
| matt3210 wrote:
| The bottom line was always the priority.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| It was always a bit too optimistic to think we will be
| cautiously developing AGI, in a way it's not so bad that this
| happened so soon rather than later after it progressed much
| further. (I mean in theory we could understand to do something
| about it now.)
|
| Although I guess it doesn't really matter. What if we all
| understood climate change earlier? wouldn't really have made a
| difference anyway
| wonnage wrote:
| 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.
| IAmNotACellist wrote:
| What else would you expect from a skeevy backstabber who got
| kicked out of Kenya for refusing to stop scanning people's eyes
| in exchange for shitcoin crypto? He was building a global
| surveillance database with Worldcoin.
|
| Altman was fucking with OpenAI for long before the board left
| in protest, since about the time Elon Musk had to leave due to
| Tesla's AI posing a conflict of interest. He got more and more
| brazen with the whole fake-altruism shit, up to and including
| contradicting every point in their mission statement and
| promise to investors in the "charity."
| imranhou wrote:
| Based on what I've read it is allowed for a non profit to own a
| for profit asset.
|
| So I'm assuming the game plan here is to adjust the charter of
| the non profit to basically say we are going to still keep doing
| "Open AI" (we all know what that means), but through the proceeds
| it gets by selling chunks of this for-profit entity, so the
| essence could be the non-profit parent isn't fulfilling its
| mission by controlling what openai does but how it puts the money
| to use it gets from openai.
|
| And in this process, Sam gets a chunk (as a payment for growing
| the assets of the non-profit, like a salary/bonus) and the rest
| as well....?
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I went through something similar with a prior startup. Though,
| it wasn't anything nefarious, like this.
|
| Basically, the plan was to create a new for-profit entity then
| have the not-for-profit license the existing IP to the for-
| profit. There were a lot of technicalities to it, but most of
| that was handled by lawyers drawing up the chartering
| paperwork.
| breck wrote:
| This is great. Sam tried the non-profit thing, it turned out not
| be a good fit for the world, and he's adapting. We all get to
| benefit from seeing how non-profits are just not the best idea.
| There are better ways to improve the world than having non-
| profits (for example, we need to abolish copyright and patent
| law; that alone would eliminate the need for perhaps the majority
| of non-profits that exist today, which are all working to combat
| things that are downstream of the the toxic information
| environment created by those laws).
| garbanz0 wrote:
| Yes, Altman not having 7% of the company was not a good fit for
| the world.
| kidsil wrote:
| And the enshittification process begins.
| hooverd wrote:
| Will they be rebranding to ClosedAI?
| throwup238 wrote:
| 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]. In Mozilla's case that's the
| revenue they make from making Google the default search engine
| and in OpenAI's case that's all their ChatGPT and API revenue.
| The vast majority (all?) engineers work for the for-profit and
| always have. The vast majority (all?) revenue goes through the
| for-profit which pays taxes on that revenue minus the usual
| business deductions. The only money that goes to the nonprofit
| tax-free are donations. Everything else is taxed at least once at
| the for-profit corporation. Almost every nonprofit that raises
| revenue outside of donations has to be structured more or less
| this way to pay taxes. They don't get to just take any taxable
| revenue stream and declare it tax free.
|
| All OpenAI is doing here is decoupling ownership of the for-
| profit entity from the nonprofit. They're allowing the for profit
| to create more shares and distribute them to entities other than
| the non-profit. Or am I completely misinformed?
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#2019:_Transition_from_n...
| seizethecheese wrote:
| "Decoupling" is such a strange euphemism for removing an asset
| worth north of $100b from a nonprofit.
| throwup238 wrote:
| OpenAI Global LLC _is_ the $100b asset. It's not being
| removed, the nonprofit will still own all the shares it owns
| now until it decides to sell.
| sangnoir wrote:
| The shares _will_ be diluted - the LLC used to be 100%
| owned by the non-profit; and now there 's no bottom.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Normally shareholders aren't ok with that.
| b800h wrote:
| I was under the impression that in UK law at least, (and
| obviously not in this case) the trustees of a non-profit
| would be bound to work in the best interests of that non-
| profit. And so allowing an asset like this to somehow
| slip out of their control would be the sort of negligence
| that would land you in very hot water. I'd be interested
| to know how this isn't the case here.
| upwardbound wrote:
| I think it _is_ the case here, and I hope Elon Musk
| persists in his lawsuits about this. As a large donor to
| the nonprofit in its early days he's one of the people
| with the strongest standing to sue / strongest claim for
| damages.
|
| Obviously Elon is mostly doing this suit as a way to
| benefit Grok AI but honestly I don't mind that;
| competitors are supposed to keep each other in check, and
| this is a good and proper way for companies to provide
| checks & balances to each others' power and it's one
| reason why monopolies are bad is the absence of
| competitor-enforced accountability.
|
| Lawsuit: https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-
| revives-lawsuit...
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-revives-
| lawsuit-against-sam-altman-openai-nyt-reports-2024-08-05/
| simantel wrote:
| > Almost every nonprofit that raises revenue outside of
| donations has to be structured more or less this way to pay
| taxes.
|
| I don't think that's true? A non-profit can sell products or
| services, it just can't pay out dividends.
| throwup238 wrote:
| If those products and services are unrelated business income,
| they have to pay taxes on it: https://www.irs.gov/charities-
| non-profits/unrelated-business...
|
| What counts as "related" to the charity's mission is fuzzy
| but in practice the courts have been rather strict. They
| don't have to form for-profit subsidiaries to pay those taxes
| but it helps to derisk the parent because potential penalties
| include loss of nonprofit status.
|
| For example, the nonprofit Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art
| has a for-profit subsidiary that operates the gift shop.
| National Geographic Society has National Geographic Partners
| which actually owns the TV channel and publishes the
| magazine. Harvard and Stanford have the Harvard Management
| Company and Stanford Management Company to manage their
| endowments respectively. The Smithsonian Institute has
| Smithsonian Enterprises. Mayo Clinic => Mayo Clinic Ventures.
| Even the state owned University of California regents have a
| bunch of for-profit subsidiaries.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| 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 which is
| laid plainly in their mission statement).
|
| As you've realized, this should have been (and was) obvious for
| a long time. But that doesn't make it any less hypocritical or
| headline worthy.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Occam's razor: I think Sam's personal narrative is the
| correct one. He built a non-profit that took off in a way
| that he didn't expect it and now a for-profit is the best way
| to run the lightning they've caught.
|
| In terms of profit, AFAICT, Sam doesn't have designs on
| building extra large yachts and his own space agency but what
| he wants is to be the one at the stead of building what he
| considers is world-changing tech. One could rationally call
| this power-hungry but one could also rationally call this
| just helicopter parenting of a tech you've helped built. And
| for that a for-profit that is allowed to maximize profits to
| re-invest in the tech is the optimal setup (esp if all the
| competitors are doing the same)
|
| Is this a different org than when it started? Yes. Was this a
| dupe from the beginning? I don't think so.
|
| "But why can't he have a more worldly-aligned board looking
| over his shoulder?"
|
| Because we live in California and have a bad taste for
| governance by committee or worse: governance by constant non-
| representative democracy (see: Housing).
|
| If this now completely comes off the wheels, I still think
| Congressional action can be a stopgap, but atleast for now,
| this restructure makes sense to me.
| grey-area wrote:
| He didn't build it.
| huevosabio wrote:
| I don't think the narrative makes sense. It was clear from
| way back in 2016 that training would take a ton of
| resources. Researchers were already been sucked into FAANG
| labs because they had the data, the compute, and the money.
| There was never a viable way for a true non-profit to make
| world-changing, deep learning-based AI models.
|
| When seen through the rearview mirror, the whole narrative
| screams of self-importance and duplicity. GPT-2 was too
| dangerous, and only they were trust-worthy enough to
| possess. They were trust-worthy because this was a non-
| profit, so "interest aligned with humanity". This charade
| has continued even to barely some months ago.
| feoren wrote:
| 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."
| pj_mukh wrote:
| 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.
| talldayo wrote:
| 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.
| cdchn wrote:
| Private space agency and LLMs both seem like big
| industries going nowhere driven by sci-fi hopes and
| dreams.
| sfblah wrote:
| Not sure I agree with you here. I use LLMs all the time
| for work. I've never once used a space agency for
| anything.
| cdchn wrote:
| I think they're both overhyped by sci-fi optimism but I
| would agree (even being mostly an AI minimalist) the
| impact of LLMs (and their improvement velocity) is a lot
| meaningful to me right now. I mean satellites are cool
| and all.
| macintux wrote:
| GPS, weather forecasting, tv broadcasting...I've been
| using a space agency for as long as I've been alive.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| 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.
| vasco wrote:
| Kid Rock did it first, but a golden toilet would be my
| answer.
| ninepoints wrote:
| Anyone who had any respect for Sam "Give me your eyeball
| data" Altman was always delusional.
| cdchn wrote:
| >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.
| halJordan wrote:
| It isnt a tax thing or a money thing, its a control and
| governance thing.
|
| The board of the non-profit fired Altman and then Altman (& MS)
| rebelled, retook control, & gutted the non-profit board. Then,
| they stacked the new non-profit board with Altman/MS loyalists
| and now they're discharging the non-profit.
|
| It's entirely about control. The board has a legally
| enforceable duty to its charter. That charter is the problem
| Altman is solving.
| burnte wrote:
| The problem is that OpenAI calls itself OpenAI when it's
| completely sealed off, and calls itself a non-profit when, as
| you say, almost everything about is for profit. Basically
| they're whitewashing their image as an organization with noble
| goals when it's simply yet another profit motivated company.
| It's fine if that's what they are and want to be, but the lies
| are bothersome.
| bbor wrote:
| Good questions!
|
| Right now, OpenAI, Inc. (California non-profit, lets say _the
| charity_ ) is the sole controlling shareholder of OpenAI Global
| LLC (Delaware for-profit, lets say _the company_ ). So, just to
| start off with the big picture: the whole enterprise was
| ultimately under the sole control of the non-profit board, who
| in turn was obligated to operate in furtherance of "charitable
| public benefit". This is what the linked article means by
| "significant governance changes happening behind the scenes,"
| which should hopefully convince you that I'm not making this
| part up.
|
| To get really specific, this change would mean that they'd no
| longer be obligated to comply with these CA laws:
|
| https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x...
|
| https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/media/registration-reporting...
|
| And, a little less importantly, comply with the guidelines for
| "Public Charities" covered by federal code 501(c)(3)
| (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/501) covered by
| this set of articles: https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-
| profits/charitable-organiz... . The important bits are:
| The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal
| sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the
| underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of
| education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings,
| monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government;
| lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and
| discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by
| law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile
| delinquency. ... The organization must not be organized
| or operated for the benefit of private interests, and no part
| of a section 501(c)(3) organization's net earnings may inure to
| the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.
|
| I'm personally dubious about the specific claims you made about
| revenue, but that's hard to find info on, and not the core
| issue. The core issue was that they were _obligated_ (not just,
| like, promising) to direct _all_ of their actions towards the
| public good, and they 're abandoning that to instead profit a
| few shareholders, taking the fruit of their financial and
| social status with them. They've been making some money for
| some investors (or losses...), but the non-profit was, legally
| speaking, only allowed to permit that as a means to an end.
|
| Naturally, this makes it very hard to explain how the nonprofit
| could give up basically all of its control without breaking its
| obligations.
|
| All the above covers "why does it feel unfair for a non-profit
| entity to gift its assets to a for-profit", but I'll briefly
| cover the more specific issue of "why does it feel unfair for
| OpenAI in particular to abandon their founding mission". The
| answer is simple: they explicitly warned us that for-profit
| pursuit of AGI is dangerous, potentially leading to
| catastrophic tragedies involving unrelated members of the
| global public. We're talking "mass casualty event"-level stuff
| here, and it's really troubling to see the exact same
| organization change their mind now that they're in a dominant
| position. Here's the relevant quotes from their founding
| documents: OpenAI is a non-profit artificial
| intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital
| intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity
| as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial
| return. Since our research is free from financial obligations,
| we can better focus on a positive human impact... It's
| hard to fathom how much human-level AI could benefit society,
| and it's equally hard to imagine how much it could damage
| society if built or used incorrectly. Because of AI's
| surprising history, it's hard to predict when human-level AI
| might come within reach. When it does, it'll be important to
| have a leading research institution which can prioritize a good
| outcome for all over its own self-interest.
|
| From their 2015 founding post:
| https://openai.com/index/introducing-openai/ 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
| uses of AI or AGI that harm humanity or unduly concentrate
| power. Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity... We
| are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a
| competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions.
| Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes
| close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing
| with and start assisting this project. We will work out
| specifics in case-by-case agreements, but a typical triggering
| condition might be "a better-than-even chance of success in the
| next two years."
|
| From their 2018 charter:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230714043611/https://openai.co...
|
| Sorry for the long reply, and I appreciate the polite + well-
| researched question! As you can probably guess, this move makes
| me a little offended and very anxious. For more, look at the
| posts from the leaders who quit in protest yesterday, namely
| their CTO.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> I 'm personally dubious about the specific claims you made
| about revenue, but that's hard to find info on, and not the
| core issue. The core issue was that they were obligated (not
| just, like, promising) to direct all of their actions towards
| the public good, and they're abandoning that to instead
| profit a few shareholders, taking the fruit of their
| financial and social status with them. They've been making
| some money for some investors (or losses...), but the non-
| profit was, legally speaking, only allowed to permit that as
| a means to an end._
|
| Look at your OpenAI invoices. They're paid to OpenAI LLC, not
| OpenAI Inc. I can't find confirmation on openai.com what the
| exact relationship between OpenAI Global LLC and OpenAI LLC
| is but the former is on their "Our Structure" page and the
| latter is in their data processing addendum so it's probably
| the subsidiary in charge of operating the services while
| Global does training and licenses it downstream. OpenAI
| Global was the one that made that big $10 billion deal with
| Microsoft
|
| That obligation is _why_ they had to spin off a for-profit
| corporation. Courts are very strict in their interpretation
| of what "unrelated business income" is and the for-profit
| LLC protects the non-profit's tax exempt status.
|
| _> "why does it feel unfair for a non-profit entity to gift
| its assets to a for-profit"_
|
| What assets were gifted, exactly? They created the for-profit
| shortly after GPT2 (in 2019) and as far as I can tell that's
| the organization that has owned the IP that's actually making
| money now.
|
| I honestly don't understand how this isn't in the interest of
| the nonprofit's mission. It's currently a useless appendage
| and will never have any real power or resources until either
| OpenAI is in the black and sending profit up to it, or they
| can sell OpenAI shares.
|
| If this next round of funding goes through at $100-150
| billion valuation, OpenAI Inc will probably be (on paper at
| least) the second wealthiest charity on the planet after the
| Novo Nordisk Foundation. This restructuring opens the way for
| the nonprofit to sell its shares and it's going to be a hell
| of a lot of money to dedicate towards their mission - instead
| of watching its subsidiary burn billions of dollars with no
| end in sight.
| nfw2 wrote:
| > "All OpenAI is doing here is decoupling ownership of the for-
| profit entity from the nonprofit."
|
| Yes, but going from being controlled by a nonprofit to being
| controlled by a typical board of shareholders seems like a
| pretty big change to me.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| Boo this man, booo.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| I guess this vindicates the (original) OpenAI Board, when they
| tried to fire Sam Altman.
| hyggetrold wrote:
| Reminds me of what my first-year econ professor in college once
| stated after disabusing myself and some other undergrads of our
| romantic notions about how life should work.
|
| "Do I shock you? This is capitalism."
| djohnston wrote:
| When a company makes such a transition are they liable for any
| sort of backdated taxes/expenses they avoided as a non-profit?
| 1024core wrote:
| Now we know why people like Ilya, Brockman, Murati, etc. left the
| company.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| Any reporting on the impact this is having on lower level
| employees? My understanding is they are all sticking around for
| their shares to vest (or RSU's I guess).
|
| but still, you'd think some of them would have finally had enough
| and have enough opportunities elsewhere that they can leave.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Woah, the pompous eccentric billionaire(?) is actually not
| altruistic, never heard this story before!
|
| /s
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Shocking
| croes wrote:
| And suddenly Altman's firing no longer seems so crazy
| crystal_revenge wrote:
| "suddenly"?
|
| I was under the impression that most people saw this coming
| years ago. The second "Open"AI refused to release the weights
| for GPT-2 for our "safety" (we can see in hind sight how
| obviously untrue this was, but most of us saw it then too) it
| was clear that they were headed towards profitability.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| I do wonder if this is why Mira left, as one of the non-profit
| board members.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Monday to come after Sunday, in revised push for transparency
| piyuv wrote:
| I hope they rename the company soon, it's a disgrace to call it
| "open"
| adversaryIdiot wrote:
| Ahh the American way
| sergiotapia wrote:
| https://x.com/yacineMTB/status/1839039293961961543
|
| so much for sam "i have no equity" altman
| redbell wrote:
| It's really hard to stick to your original goals after you
| achieve unexpected success. It's like a politician making
| promises before the elections but finding it difficult to keep
| them once elected.
|
| On March 1st, 2023, a warning was already sounding: _OpenAI Is
| Now Everything It Promised Not to Be: Corporate, Closed-Source,
| and For-Profit_ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34979981)
| msie wrote:
| Quelle surprise.
| jwr wrote:
| Can we all agree that the next time a company announces itself
| (or a product) as "open", we'll just laugh out loud?
|
| I can't think of a single product or company that used the "open"
| word for something that was actually open in any meaningful way.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Most of us laughed out loud this time too, for this very same
| reason. But it is fun to watch the rest of y'all learn :)
| rqtwteye wrote:
| When will they start adding ads to the AI output? Seems that's
| the next logical step.
| hello_computer wrote:
| another mozilla. it's time for guillotines. past time.
| unstruktured wrote:
| I wish they would at least rename the company to "ClosedAI"
| because that's exactly what it is at this point.
| stoperaticless wrote:
| That would be a nice thing they could do.
| amelius wrote:
| 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.
| pieix wrote:
| Is this true? If so it seems like an underexploited loophole.
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| On what planet would Elon not get a piece of this new for-profit
| company?
| volleygman180 wrote:
| Earth
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Works where archive.ph is blocked:
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/openai-to-become-for-p...
|
| Text-only:
|
| https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1rcDWH
| game_the0ry wrote:
| OpenAI founded as non-profit. Sam Altman goes on Joe Rogan
| Podcast and says he does not really care about money. Sam gets
| caught driving around Napa in a $4M exotic car. OpenAI turns into
| for-profit. 3/4 of founding team dips out.
|
| Sketchy.
|
| This whole silicon valley attitude of fake effective altruism, "I
| do it for the good of humanity, not for the money (but I actually
| want a lot of money)" fake bullshit is so transparent and off-
| putting.
|
| @sama, for the record - I am not saying making is a bad thing.
| Labor and talent markets should be efficient. But when you
| pretend to be altruistic when you are obviously not, then you
| come off hypocritical instead of altruistic. Sell out.
| peanuty1 wrote:
| Regarding the 4 million dollar car, Sam already made a ton of
| money from Reddit and being President of YC.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| 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.
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| Maybe he meant he doesn't care about it so he wastes it on
| super expensive things. Simple definitional
| misunderstanding
| klabb3 wrote:
| [delayed]
| ForHackernews wrote:
| The good thing is, we need to worry about AGI because we already
| know what it's like in a world populated by soulless inhuman
| entities pursuing their own selfish aims at the expense of
| mankind.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| OpenAI couldn't even align their Sam Altman and their people to
| their non-profit mission. Why should you ever believe they will
| align AGI to the well being of humanity?
|
| What happened to all the people making fun of Helen Toner for
| attempting to fire Sama? She and Ilya were right.
| germandiago wrote:
| What a surprise!!!! I would have never said so...
| xyst wrote:
| Probably one of the many decisions that Mira and other original
| founders were against.
|
| Sam Altman is a poison pill.
| versteegen wrote:
| Mira joined in 2018. OpenAI was founded in 2015.
| Jatwood wrote:
| shocked. shocked! well not that shocked.
| geodel wrote:
| Good. Now it is just a matter of profit-making company.
| alexowner1988 wrote:
| Sizningcha, 1win platformasi ork'ali sportga stavka k'ilish
| k'anchalik k'ulai va foidalimi? Men 1win uz (https://1win-
| uz.online/) saitida k'izik'arli strategiialarni topdim, ular
| muvaffak'iiatga erishish imkoniiatlarini oshirishi mumkin. Siz
| k'andai maslakh'atlar bera olasiz?
| thih9 wrote:
| I'd guess it would be legally not possible to turn a non-profit
| into a for-profit company, no matter how confusing the company
| structure gets. And even (or rather, especially) if the project
| disrupts the economy on a global level. I'm not surprised that
| this is happening, but how we got here - I don't know.
| ayakang31415 wrote:
| About a year ago (I believe), Sam Altman touted his mission to
| promote safe AI with claims that he has no equity in OpenAI and
| was never interested in getting any. Look where we are now, well
| played Sam.
| upwardbound wrote:
| Does that amount to making a false forward-looking financial
| statement? (Specifically his claim that he wasn't interested in
| getting equity in the future.)
|
| This claim he made was likely helpful in ensuring the OpenAI
| team's willingness to bring him back after he was temporarily
| ousted by the board last year for alleged governance issues.
| (Basically: "don't worry about me guys, I'm in this for the
| mission, not personal enrichment")
|
| Since his claim likely helped him get re-hired, he can't claim
| it was immaterial.
| onelesd wrote:
| Sam and all the others. At this point, there should be required
| courses in college to teach this seemingly required skill to
| future corporate USA.
| wubrr wrote:
| What leverage does he have to get equity now? Does he
| personally have control over that decision?
| johanneskanybal wrote:
| I'm willing to pair up with fundamentalist christians to derail
| this with the argument that he/this is satan/the end of the
| world.
| kopirgan wrote:
| Guess what they mean is for loss company
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