>Well you're probably right, but I don't think that you can do too much, realistically, to regulate early access to very fresh ideas through networks like that

>Well you're probably right, but I don't think that you can do too much, realistically, to regulate early access to very fresh ideas through networks like that - and I think that's fine so long as there's no purposeful or unnecessary delay in spreading the information more widely. Keep the team distributed across the world and make all communication surrounding the projects open as well. If it's for the world it should be by the world. >You could for instance make the same kind of point about YC companies' access to investor networks, advice of partners, all those sorts of things which aren't explicitly reserved just for them but of course are more readily accessible by virtue of being in the program. It's not something that's inherently bad, it's just how it works. I wouldn't argue that, that's just how business works. I would argue that the founders are playing OpenAI up as humanitarian aid when really it disproportionately benefits them (autonomous cars, paid for by research grants? Investment in early adopters of the technology? Uh yeah). >I'm not saying that having very close contact with this research group won't be advantageous to YC companies, of course it will, but with that as a given, the ethos of this group's findings being made open and freely available for anyone to use is well-intentioned and to be applauded, when it's a privately funded initiative that could just as easily be justified in being somewhat or completely closed and proprietary. Is it really important if some YC companies happen to have a slight advantage from this, as an inevitable side effect, in the big picture? YC's business is growing businesses, and they'll take any advantage they can get. If it benefits them more at all then it's not charity or non-profit, and they shouldn't be billing it as such.