26 ms·

OpenAI LP

269 points by gdb 8y ago

lawrenceyan 8y ago
Sam Altman here to shake things up it seems!
- gdb 8y ago
  We've been working on this new structure together for the past two years!
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - lawrenceyan 8y ago
    Oh that’s pretty cool. Do you by chance have any articles or posts going through your initial thought process and/or eventual realization for why you ultimately thought this transition was necessary for OpenAI? Was it a particular event, a conversation, perhaps just an incremental ideation without any actual epiphany needed, etc?
estsauver 8y ago
Really neat corporate structure! We'd looked into becoming a B-Corp, but the advice that we'd gotten was that it was an almost strictly inferior vehicle both for achieving impact and for potentially achieving commercial success for us. I'm obviously not a lawyer, but it's great to see Open AI contributing to the new interesting structures to solve hard global scale problems. I wonder if the profit cap multiple is going to end up being a significant signalling risk for them. A down-round is such a negative event in the valley, I can imagine a "increasing profit multiple" would have to be treated the same way. One other question for the folks at OpenAI: How would equity grants work here? You get X fraction of an LP that gets capped at Y dollar profits? Are the fractional partnerships/transferable if earned into? Would you folks think about publishing your docs?
- gdb 8y ago
  Yes, we're planning to release a third-party usable reference version of our docs (creating this structure was a lot of work, probably about 6-9 months of implementation). We've made the equity grants feel very similar to startup equity — you are granted a certain number of "units" which vest over time, and more units will be issued as other join employees in the future. Incidentally, these end up being taxed more favorably than options, so we think this model may be useful for startups for that reason too.
  - eanzenberg 8y ago
    >>Incidentally, these end up being taxed more favorably than options, so we think this model may be useful for startups for that reason too. Is this due to long term capital gains? Do you allow for early exercising for employees? Long term cap gains for options require holding 2 years since you were granted the options and 1 year since you exercised.
- floatrock 8y ago
  I'm also interested in how this corporate structure relates to a b-corp (or technically, a PBC) > OpenAI LP’s primary fiduciary obligation is to advance the aims of the OpenAI Charter, and the company is controlled by OpenAI Nonprofit’s board. All investors and employees sign agreements that OpenAI LP’s obligation to the Charter always comes first, even at the expense of some or all of their financial stake. One of the key reasons to incorporate as a PBC is to allow "maximizing shareholder value" to be defined in non-monetary terms (eg impact to community, environment, or workers). How is this structure different from a PBC, or why didn't you go for a PBC?
  - gdb 8y ago
    We needed to custom-write rules like: - Fiduciary duty to the charter - Capped returns - Full control to OpenAI Nonprofit LP's have much more flexibility to write these in an enforceable way.
    - 8y ago
formalsystem 8y ago
Genuine question: Is this restructure for the purpose of taking government military contracts? I don't see how investors would be getting 100x returns otherwise and my understanding was that salaries for employees was competitive with big tech companies. Curious where Open AI feels like there's money to be made.
- gdb 8y ago
  No.
ckugblenu 8y ago
Is it just me or there are not many african americans working in AI research and industry. I don't have stats to back me up but that's my personal observation. People in the field, what are your thoughts on it.
- BucketSort 8y ago
  This twitter may be of interest to you, they aggregate information on this topic. https://twitter.com/black_in_ai https://twitter.com/black_in_ai. I don't know why race is relevant to this article though. Must we make everything a race issue?
  - josourcing 8y ago
    Thank you for this!!!
    - BucketSort 8y ago
      You're welcome!!!
- nickparker 8y ago
  I don't have any statistics for you, but Google at least is looking to improve on this a bit. A good friend of mine from their NYC Brain office moved to Accra, Ghana just last week to help build out their new office there.
  - perennate 8y ago
    I don't think an office in Ghana would be employing very many African Americans (or, for that matter, very many Americans of any background).
  - duado 8y ago
    A Ghana office would be presumably to recruit Africans, not African Americans. There is a difference :)
- 8y ago
option 8y ago
And Khosla Ventures is one of their key investors. Let's not forget that Khosla himself does not exactly care about public interest or existing laws https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/technology/california-beach-access-khosla.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/tech...
- LeanderK 8y ago
  the article is probably the most selfish thing I've read in a while. It's not evil or exploitative, it's just very selfish. But I think it's not so morally wrong that OpenAI should not do business with him since they have the security mechanisms and limit his power. He just an grumpy old guy who does not want to share his beach.
  - uptown 8y ago
    "He just an grumpy old guy who does not want to share his beach." Not his beach. That's the point.
    - LeanderK 8y ago
      it wasn't meant in a literal sense, maybe some quotation marks around his would have helped.
- mises 8y ago
  Non-AMP link: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/technology/california-beach-access-khosla.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/technology/california-bea... I just read the article, and am not sure I see the issue. Quote from his lawyer: “No owner of private business should be forced to obtain a permit from the government before deciding who it wants to invite onto its property" Where's the issue here? They guy basically bought the property all around the beach, and decided to close down access. I wouldn't say it's a nice thing to do, but it's legal. If I buy a piece of property, my rights as the owner should trump the rights of a bunch of surfers who want to get to a beach. The state probably should have been smart enough not to sell all the land. Failing that, just seize a small portion via eminent domain: a 15-foot-wide strip on the edge of the property would likely come at a reasonable cost, and ought to provide an amicable resolution for all.
fuddle 8y ago
Investor returns are capped at 100x, thats quite a high cap for a non-profit.
- estsauver 8y ago
  Interesting way to think about it: This is equivalent to saying: "If you put 10m$ into us for 20% of the post-money business, anything beyond a 5B$ valuation you don't see any additional profits from" which seems like a high but not implausible cap. I suspect they're also raising more money on better terms which would make the cap further off.
  - MattRix 8y ago
    Yeah but they've already said they need to raise billions not millions. It's a completely implausible cap.
thoughtstheseus 8y ago
So are they looking for capital or they have it?
- dmix 8y ago
  Looking at their team it's basically both. They'll get whatever they want if they haven't already.
- orky56 8y ago
  "Our investors include Reid Hoffman’s charitable foundation and Khosla Ventures, among others." I'm assuming these investors have already provided capital.
elefanten 8y ago
Very cool idea. Like some others here, I really appreciate attempts to create new structures for bringing ideas to the world. Since I'm not a lawyer, can you help understand the theoretical limits of the LP's "lock in" to the Charter? In a cynical scenario, what would it take to completely capture OpenAI's work for profit? If the Nonprofit's board was 60% people who want to break the Charter, would they be capable of voting to do so?
m_ke 8y ago
> ... Sam Altman (CEO) ... Was this announced before or is this the first time they've mentioned it?
- eitally 8y ago
  It was tangentially implied in the "YC Updates" thread from a few days ago, where it mentioned Sam "stepping away" to "focus on open.ai".
  - bredren 8y ago
    I did not think this was implied by the previous statement. But I have not been following org structure of openai at all.
- mikeyouse 8y ago
  Nope, it was mentioned last Friday in a blog post (that he was stepping down from YC): https://blog.ycombinator.com/updates-from-yc/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/updates-from-yc/ And TechCrunch had a source last Friday as well that said Altman intended to become CEO of OpenAI: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/09/did-sam-altman-make-yc-better-or-worse/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/09/did-sam-altman-make-yc-bet...
ktta 8y ago
Reactions on Reddit seem different from here - https://redd.it/azvbmn https://redd.it/azvbmn
stevievee 8y ago
They were able to attract talent and PR in the name of altruism and here they are now trying to flip the switch as quietly as possible. If the partner gets a vote/profit then a "charter" or "mission" won't change anything. You will never be able to explicitly prove that a vote had a "for profit" motive. Elon was irritated that he was behind in the AI intellectual property race and this narrative created a perfect opportunity. Not surprised in the end. Tesla effectively did the same thing - "come help me save the planet" with overpriced cars. [Edit: Apparently Elon has left OpenAI but I don't believe for a second that he will not participate in this LP]
- jackpirate 8y ago
  That seems to be the general consensus of /r/MachineLearning as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/azvbmn/n_openai_lp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/azvbmn/n_o...
- dcsilver 8y ago
  No, Elon parted ways with OpenAI some time ago due to differences in opinion over their direction. Looks like we’re starting to learn the details.
  - stevievee 8y ago
    Didn't know this - thanks for clarifying. I will update my comment if it is picked on further
    - gliptic 8y ago
      So for some reason you're sure he will participate in OpenAI LP when OpenAI say he's not involved in OpenAI LP? Are they lying?
      - stevievee 8y ago
        As an investor. What is not clear about that?
dannykwells 8y ago
Yes or no: will you remain a registered non-profit organization (401/501-type orgs or similar), or were you ever? It's fine to call your self non-profit but if you don't have to abide by the rules of them then you aren't, period. I think all of us here are tired of "altruistic" tech companies which are really profit mongers in disguise. The burden is on you all to prove this is not the case (and this doesn't really help your case).
- geofft 8y ago
  The article says that OpenAI the registered non-profit now owns OpenAI LP. This isn't unprecedented: for instance, the Mozilla Foundation owns the Mozilla Corporation, and IKEA is owned by a non-profit. (I mention these two examples precisely because it's common to find Mozilla's corporate structure reasonable and IKEA's corporate structure unreasonable.)
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  'Do no evil' 'We're connecting everyone' I admire the will to want to do things differently, but the lack of self awareness of some drinking the koolaid bothers me - I don't know the word for it exactly. A 100x cap on returns is simply not a non-profit, point blank. Any investor, with any risk profile, in any industry, at any stage - would be super happy with a 100x return. I also don't doubt the 'market reality' of needing to have such a situation in order to attract investment, I mean, it'd be very hard to bring in money without providing some return .... ... but this is called 'capitalism'. i.e. the reality of the market, risks etc. are forcing their hand into a fairly normative company profile, with some structural differences which facilitate mostly PR spin. Companies are not 'for profit' because they are inherently greedy, it's just a happy equilibrium for most scenarios: you need investors? Well, they want risk-adjusted returns. Also implicit in the 100x capped returns is the implication that the company gets to keep the money! The money goes into more staff, capex, higher prices to suppliers, or lower prices to consumers. But within that framework is just massive payouts to employees as well, in a very cynical take. I love the motivation, but I wish we would be more objective in terms of 'what things really are' these days. Photos of 'families with babies' don't make a company 'better'. We all have families that we love, workmates we like (or not sometimes).
buboard 8y ago
OTOH, it is exciting to see people who are not google/facebook/uber going in the race for-profit. Perhaps they 'll feel some competition over real products now. (but the "100x cap" thing is just childish)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
syntaxing 8y ago
Interesting, I'm super tempted to apply to that Mechanical Engineer opening. How exactly does OpenAI make money though? It is sponsored or is there external investment (Can you invest in a non-profit?)?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
aerovistae 8y ago
I was buying it until he said that profit is “capped” at 100x of initial investment. So someone who invests $10 million has their investment “capped” at $1 billion. Lol. Basically unlimited unless the company grew to a FAANG-scale market value.
- gdb 8y ago
  We believe that if we do create AGI, we'll create orders of magnitude more value than any existing company.
  - nharada 8y ago
    Is there some legal structure in place to prevent you from raising the cap as partners being to approach the 100x ROI?
    - gdb 8y ago
      The nonprofit board retains full control, and can only take actions that will further our mission. As described in our Charter (https://openai.com/charter/ https://openai.com/charter/): that mission is to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity.
      - tapppi 8y ago
        So that is a no then? If the board decides that for AGI to benefit humanity they need more investors, they can just as well remove the cap for a future investor or raise it to 200x.
      - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
        There's no mention of the governing legal framework, I presume it's a US state? Also, what are the consequences for failing to meet the goals. "We commit to" could really have no legal basis depending on the prevailing legal environment. Reading pessimistically I see the "we'll assist other efforts" as a way in which the spirit the charter is apparently offered in could be subverted -- you assist a private company and that company doesn't have anything like the charter and instead uses the technology and assistance to create private wealth/IP. Being super pessimistic, when the Charter organisation gets close a parallel business can be started, which would automatically be "within 2 years" and so effort could then -- within the wording of the charter -- be diverted in to that private company. A clause requiring those who wish to use any of the resources of the Charter company to also make developments available reciprocally would need to be added. Rather like share-alike or other GPL-style license that require patent licensing to the upstream creators.
csomar 8y ago
They are looking to raise billions and cap returns at x100? That means the returns will be capped at the "trillions"? So if they raise $5bn, they need to generate $500bn for the money to start pumping to the non-profit organization. More like: If we make enough money to own the whole world, we'll give you some food not to starve.
Mizza 8y ago
Is there something about the mystical nature of AGI that attracts sketchiness and flim-flammery? I remember the "Singularity Institute for Artificial General Intelligence" trying to pull similar scams a decade ago.
i7rgf98o7fk 8y ago
Why the Limited Partnership at all? What can the nonprofit "Inc" do through the for-profit "LP" shell that it could not do in its own right?
hhw3h 8y ago
Will investing be open to all accredited investors or just a handpicked selection? Opening a crowdsourced investment opportunity would be in line with your vision to democratize the use of AI. The more people that have a non-operational ownership stake in Open AI the better.
- mark_l_watson 8y ago
  Great question, and how OpenAI LP handles accepting investments will say a lot.
czr 8y ago
Is there any indication of what avenues OpenAI will be (or would consider) using to generate revenue? A lot of the most financially lucrative opportunities for AI (surveillance/tracking, military) are morally ambiguous at best.
- komali2 8y ago
  If they actually make a strong, general artificial intelligence, sci fi has a couple answers. In one (I can't find the title), MIT students make an SGAI and somehow manage to keep it contained (away from the internet). They feed it animated Disney movies and it cranks out the best animated movies ever made. They make billions. Eventually they make "live-action" movies that are indistinguishable from the real thing. Then they make music, books, etc, and create an unstoppable media force. They could leverage the AI to discover hyper-efficient supply chain methods. They could sequence genomes and run experiments, and sell the data. Possibly exciting things around weather prediction. Very exciting things around any research.
  - czr 8y ago
    Certainly if they make a strong AGI, money is no longer an issue. I'm curious what they will do in the, ah, interim, on the off-chance that inventing SAGI turns out to be a difficult problem.
danielcampos93 8y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if OpenAI had some crazy aquisition in its future by one of the tech giants. Press release says 'We believe the best way to develop AGI is by joining forces with X and are excited to use it to seel you better ads. We also have turned the profits we would have payed taxes on to a non profit that pays us salaries for researching the quality of sand in the Bahamas'
zestyping 8y ago
OpenAI's mission statement is to ensure that AGI "benefits all of humanity", and its charter rephrases this as "used for the benefit of all". But without a more concrete and specific definition, "benefit of all" is meaningless. For most projects, one can construct a claim that it has the potential to benefit most or all of a large group of people at some point. So, what does that commitment mean? If an application benefits some people and harms others, is it unacceptable? What if it harms some people now in exchange for the promise of a larger benefit at some point in the future? Must it benefit everyone it touches and harm no one? What if it harms no one but the vast majority of its benefits accrue to only the top 1% of humanity? What is the line?
projectileboy 8y ago
I was very much behind the mission; now I’m not so sure. If it was this easy for OpenAI to start down this path, think of what Amazon or Facebook will do - people with no moral compass whatsoever. It’s probably not too early to start thinking about government regulation.
bilater 8y ago
First not publishing the GPT-2 model, now this...hopefully I am wrong but it looks like they are heading towards being a closed-off proprietary AI money making machine. This further incentivizes them to be less transparent and not open source their research. :(
lifeisstillgood 8y ago
They say they have started this new form of company because there's is no "pre-existing legal structure" suitable. But there are precedents for investing billions of dollars into blue sky technologies and still being able to spread the wealth and knowledge gathered - it's called government investment in science - it has built silicon chips and battery technologies and ... well quite a lot. Is this company planning on "fundamental" research (anti-adversarial, "explainable" outcomes?) - and why do we think government investment is not good enough? Or, worryingly, are the major tech leaders now so rich that they can honestly taken on previous government roles (with only the barest of nods to accountability and legal obligation to return value to the commons) I am a bit scared that it's the latter - and even then this is too expensive for any one firm alone.
- Cacti 8y ago
  These people have spent their entire life in the Valley, they don't know any better.
rsp1984 8y ago
Ok, so when OpenAI was still a straight non-profit the Charter made sense in the context and there wasn't much need to specify it any further. Now with OpenAI leaving the non-profit path the Charter content, fuzzy as it is, is 100% up for interpretation. It does not specify what "benefit of all" or "undue concentration of power" means concretely. It's all up for interpretation. So at this point the trust that I can put into this Charter is about the same that I can put into Google's "Don't be evil"...
- gdb 8y ago
  The Nonprofit has full control, in a legally binding way: https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/#themissioncomesfirst https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/#themissioncomesfirst
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
Clearly deep learning has solved the heardest AI problem of them all: that of funding.
chaseadam17 8y ago
Presumably OpenAI created a lot of IP with donor dollars under the original nonprofit entity. Who owns that IP now? I imagine it got appraised and sold by the original nonprofit to the new OpenAI LP. That seems like a difficult process, given no one really knows what this type of IP is worth. If this is what happened, who did that appraisal and how was it done? If no IP was sold to the new OpenAI LP because some or all of the IP created under the original nonprofit OpenAI was open sourced, will the new OpenAI LP continue that practice?
- gdb 8y ago
  (I work at OpenAI.) See my tweet about this: https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1105173883378851846 https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1105173883378851846
  - david2016 8y ago
    > We had the fair market value of anything transferred from the nonprofit to the LP determined by an outside firm. Greg, would you please elaborate more on this part of your tweet? Also, can the OpenAI LP commercialize work/research produced by OpenAI non-profit? Can you use grants that were raised by the non-profit into recruiting for the LP? Thanks for talking questions and engaging in conversations to make things clear for our community.
codekilla 8y ago
> We are traveling a hard and uncertain path, but we have designed our structure to help us positively affect the world should we succeed in creating AGI—which we think will have as broad impact as the computer itself and improve healthcare Grammar--would change to: as broad an impact
zestyping 8y ago
To "ensure it is used for the benefit of all" requires limiting how AGI is used. How will OpenAI do that?
SandersAK 8y ago
OpenAI's nonprofit board, who are largely responsible for deciding whether or not OpenAI achieves the mission of "benefits all of humanity," is compromised in majority by white millionaire men. There are two women, one of which is a person of color. There are no black or latinx voices on OpenAI's board.
jpdus 8y ago
Wow. Screw non-profit, we want to get rich. Sorry guys, but before you were probably able to get talent which is not (primarily) motivated by money. Now you are just another AI startup. If the cap would be 2x, it could still make sense. But 100x times? That's laughable! And the split board, made up of friends and closely connected people smells like "greenwashing" as well. Don't get me wrong, it's totally ok to be an AI startup. You just shouldn't pretend to be a non-profit then...
- Judgmentality 8y ago
  I agree, this sounds disappointing to me as well. My issue is how they're positioning themselves, which is basically a hyper-growth startup where you can get rich (but only 100x richer, because we're not greedy like other startups) but we're also a non-profit here to benefit humanity so don't tax us like those evil corporations. What really bothers me though is I don't know if they honestly believe what they're saying or if it's just a marketing ploy, because honestly it's so much worse if they're deluding themselves.
  - gdb 8y ago
    Any returns from OpenAI LP are subject to taxes!
    - Judgmentality 8y ago
      First of all, thank you for taking the time to respond to people criticizing this announcement. I just feel like you're trying to have the best of both worlds. You want the hypergrowth startup that attracts talent and investors, but you also want the mission statement for people that aren't motivated by money. I suspect trying to maintain this middle ground will be an incredibly damaging factor moving forward, as the people who are purely profit driven will look elsewhere and the people who are truly mission driven will also look elsewhere. I fully appreciate how challenging these things can be and that making these decisions aren't trivial and obviously you're trying to do something different...but I really think you're taking the wrong step here. But because you will see short term gains from all the extra initial investment you won't realize it for years until it's too late and the culture has permanently shifted. That said, while my trust has somewhat eroded (also because you wouldn't release details of your model recently), I still wish you luck in your mission.
tschwimmer 8y ago
Greg, you seem to be answering questions here so I have one for you: This change seems to be about ease of raising money and retaining talent. My question is: are you having difficulty doing those things today, and do you project having difficulty doing that in the foreseeable future? I'll admit I'm skeptical of these changes. Creating a 100x profit cap significantly (I might even say categorically) changes the mission and value of what you folks are doing. Basically, this seems like a pretty drastic change and I'm wondering if the situation is dire enough to warrant it. There's no question it will be helpful in raising money and retaining talent, I'm just wondering if it's worth it.
- gdb 8y ago
  Our mission is articulated here and does not change: https://openai.com/charter/ https://openai.com/charter/. As we say in the Charter, our primary means of accomplishing the mission is to build safe AGI ourselves. That means raising billions of dollars, without which the Nonprofit will fail at its mission. That's a huge amount of money and not something we could raise without changing structure. Regardless of structure, it's worth humanity making this kind of investment because building safe AGI can return orders of magnitude more value than any company has to date. See one possible AGI application in this post: https://blog.gregbrockman.com/the-openai-mission#the-impact-of-agi_1 https://blog.gregbrockman.com/the-openai-mission#the-impact-...
  - m_ke 8y ago
    How much progress do you think you've made in the past 3 years towards that goal and what makes you think that you'll get there within the next few decades? Also what makes you believe that Open AI will get there way ahead of thousands of other research labs?
estill01 8y ago
Why not make OpenAI LP a B-Corp?
bibyte 8y ago
OpenAI is slowly but surely turning into another for profit AI company. They are slowly killing all the original ideals that made OpenAI unique over the hundreds of AI startups. They should just rebrand it. And they are unironically talking about creating AGI. AGI is awesome of course but maybe that is a tiny little bit overconfident ?
thewarrior 8y ago
So first they withhold the model they built and now this. I’m not implying anything but this looks fishy
marvin 8y ago
Could some random regular person, who is an accredited investor after US rules (e.g. a non-US person) invest, say, $10,000 in this venture as a minor investor/contributor? Or is OpenAI LP only interested in much larger investment amounts?
roenxi 8y ago
There are a couple of comments on the theme that this is taking a non-profit into a for-profit company, and that that is a bad thing. I'd like to offer up an alternate opinion: non-profits operating models are generally ineffective compared to for-profit operating models. There are many examples. * Bill Gates is easy; make squillions being a merciless capitalist, then turn that into a very productive program of disease elimination and apparently energy security nowadays. * Open source is another good one in my opinion - even when they literally give the software away, many of the projects leading their fields (eg, Google Chrome, Android, PostgreSQL, Linux Kernel) draw heavily on sponsorship by for-profit companies using them for furthering their profits - even if the steering committee is nominally non-profit. * I have examples outside software, but they are all a bit complicated to type up. Things like China's rise. It isn't that there isn't a place for researchers who are personally motivated to do things, there is a just a high correlation between something making a profit and it getting done to a high standard.
mkolodny 8y ago
I admire the attempt to create a sustainable project that's primarily about creating a positive impact! For those (including myself) who wonder whether a 100x cap will really change an organization from being profit-driven to being positive-impact-driven: How could we improve on this? One idea is to not allow investors on the board. Investors are profit-driven. If they're on the board, you'll likely get pressure to do things that optimize for profit rather than for positive impact. Another idea is to make monetary compensation based on some measure of positive impact. That's one explicit way to optimize for positive impact rather than money.
leot 8y ago
One object lesson in how this can go wrong: REI This "cooperative" ostensibly elects its board. In reality, nomination by existing members of the REI board is the only way to stand for election by the REI membership, and when you vote you only by marking "For" the nominated candidates (there's no information on how to vote against, though at another time they indicated that the alternative was "Withold vote"). While the board members don't earn much, there is a nice path from board member to REI executive ... which can pay as much as $2M/year for the CEO position.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
wilde 8y ago
Without an obviously stated business model to satisfy the investor returns, it’s hard to take the values platitudes seriously. Do you plan to make your pitch deck public? That’d help.
jamessemaj 8y ago
Hey Greg, Since you seem to be answering questions in this thread, here's one: How does OpenAI LP's structure differ from that of a L3C (Low-profit Limited Liability company)?
greenburg 8y ago
To OpenAI team, that is not right but it's very well played. You guys raised free money in forms of grants, acquired the best talent in the name of a non-profit that has a purpose of saving humanity, and always had publicity stunts that is actually hurting science and the AI community, and talking the first steps against reproducibility by not releasing gpt2 so you can further commercialize your future models. Also, you guys claim that the non-profit board retains full control, but seems like the same 7 white men on that board are also on the board of your profit company and have a strong influence there. Call it what you want, but I think this was planned out from day one. Now, you guy won the game. It's just a matter of time to dominate the AI game, keep manipulating us, and appear on the Forbes list. Also, I expect that you guys will dislike that comment instead of having an actual dialogue and discussion.
darepublic 8y ago
I don't think we can guarantee AGI will benefit all humanity, open-sourcing it may help but not necessarily. My heart actually sinks when I read that mission statement on this page, it's like in the movies where the guy has a gun to someone's head and gets them to give up the information they know before blowing their brains out.
paraschopra 8y ago
Mission oriented for-profit companies is an oxymoron. Profit comes from competing in markets and markets determine what you end up doing. That’s why I’m always skeptical of Don’t Be Evil types of missions because when you’re starting you can’t even imagine what market pressure will end up making you do. Between the market pressures from investors, employees, competitors, to what extent can a company really stay true to its business and deny potential profit that conflicts with it. Also, it’s hard to root for specific for profit companies (although I’m rooting for capitalism per se).

OpenAI LP

269 points by gdb 8y ago

lawrenceyan 8y ago

Sam Altman here to shake things up it seems!

gdb 8y ago
We've been working on this new structure together for the past two years!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- lawrenceyan 8y ago
  Oh that’s pretty cool. Do you by chance have any articles or posts going through your initial thought process and/or eventual realization for why you ultimately thought this transition was necessary for OpenAI? Was it a particular event, a conversation, perhaps just an incremental ideation without any actual epiphany needed, etc?

estsauver 8y ago

Really neat corporate structure! We'd looked into becoming a B-Corp, but the advice that we'd gotten was that it was an almost strictly inferior vehicle both for achieving impact and for potentially achieving commercial success for us. I'm obviously not a lawyer, but it's great to see Open AI contributing to the new interesting structures to solve hard global scale problems. I wonder if the profit cap multiple is going to end up being a significant signalling risk for them. A down-round is such a negative event in the valley, I can imagine a "increasing profit multiple" would have to be treated the same way. One other question for the folks at OpenAI: How would equity grants work here? You get X fraction of an LP that gets capped at Y dollar profits? Are the fractional partnerships/transferable if earned into? Would you folks think about publishing your docs?

gdb 8y ago
Yes, we're planning to release a third-party usable reference version of our docs (creating this structure was a lot of work, probably about 6-9 months of implementation). We've made the equity grants feel very similar to startup equity — you are granted a certain number of "units" which vest over time, and more units will be issued as other join employees in the future. Incidentally, these end up being taxed more favorably than options, so we think this model may be useful for startups for that reason too.
- eanzenberg 8y ago
  >>Incidentally, these end up being taxed more favorably than options, so we think this model may be useful for startups for that reason too. Is this due to long term capital gains? Do you allow for early exercising for employees? Long term cap gains for options require holding 2 years since you were granted the options and 1 year since you exercised.
floatrock 8y ago
I'm also interested in how this corporate structure relates to a b-corp (or technically, a PBC) > OpenAI LP’s primary fiduciary obligation is to advance the aims of the OpenAI Charter, and the company is controlled by OpenAI Nonprofit’s board. All investors and employees sign agreements that OpenAI LP’s obligation to the Charter always comes first, even at the expense of some or all of their financial stake. One of the key reasons to incorporate as a PBC is to allow "maximizing shareholder value" to be defined in non-monetary terms (eg impact to community, environment, or workers). How is this structure different from a PBC, or why didn't you go for a PBC?
- gdb 8y ago
  We needed to custom-write rules like: - Fiduciary duty to the charter - Capped returns - Full control to OpenAI Nonprofit LP's have much more flexibility to write these in an enforceable way.
  - 8y ago

formalsystem 8y ago

Genuine question: Is this restructure for the purpose of taking government military contracts? I don't see how investors would be getting 100x returns otherwise and my understanding was that salaries for employees was competitive with big tech companies. Curious where Open AI feels like there's money to be made.

gdb 8y ago
No.

ckugblenu 8y ago

Is it just me or there are not many african americans working in AI research and industry. I don't have stats to back me up but that's my personal observation. People in the field, what are your thoughts on it.

BucketSort 8y ago
This twitter may be of interest to you, they aggregate information on this topic. https://twitter.com/black_in_ai https://twitter.com/black_in_ai. I don't know why race is relevant to this article though. Must we make everything a race issue?
- josourcing 8y ago
  Thank you for this!!!
  - BucketSort 8y ago
    You're welcome!!!
nickparker 8y ago
I don't have any statistics for you, but Google at least is looking to improve on this a bit. A good friend of mine from their NYC Brain office moved to Accra, Ghana just last week to help build out their new office there.
- perennate 8y ago
  I don't think an office in Ghana would be employing very many African Americans (or, for that matter, very many Americans of any background).
- duado 8y ago
  A Ghana office would be presumably to recruit Africans, not African Americans. There is a difference :)
8y ago

option 8y ago

And Khosla Ventures is one of their key investors. Let's not forget that Khosla himself does not exactly care about public interest or existing laws https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/technology/california-beach-access-khosla.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/tech...

LeanderK 8y ago
the article is probably the most selfish thing I've read in a while. It's not evil or exploitative, it's just very selfish. But I think it's not so morally wrong that OpenAI should not do business with him since they have the security mechanisms and limit his power. He just an grumpy old guy who does not want to share his beach.
- uptown 8y ago
  "He just an grumpy old guy who does not want to share his beach." Not his beach. That's the point.
  - LeanderK 8y ago
    it wasn't meant in a literal sense, maybe some quotation marks around his would have helped.
mises 8y ago
Non-AMP link: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/technology/california-beach-access-khosla.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/technology/california-bea... I just read the article, and am not sure I see the issue. Quote from his lawyer: “No owner of private business should be forced to obtain a permit from the government before deciding who it wants to invite onto its property" Where's the issue here? They guy basically bought the property all around the beach, and decided to close down access. I wouldn't say it's a nice thing to do, but it's legal. If I buy a piece of property, my rights as the owner should trump the rights of a bunch of surfers who want to get to a beach. The state probably should have been smart enough not to sell all the land. Failing that, just seize a small portion via eminent domain: a 15-foot-wide strip on the edge of the property would likely come at a reasonable cost, and ought to provide an amicable resolution for all.

fuddle 8y ago

Investor returns are capped at 100x, thats quite a high cap for a non-profit.

estsauver 8y ago
Interesting way to think about it: This is equivalent to saying: "If you put 10m$ into us for 20% of the post-money business, anything beyond a 5B$ valuation you don't see any additional profits from" which seems like a high but not implausible cap. I suspect they're also raising more money on better terms which would make the cap further off.
- MattRix 8y ago
  Yeah but they've already said they need to raise billions not millions. It's a completely implausible cap.

thoughtstheseus 8y ago

So are they looking for capital or they have it?

dmix 8y ago
Looking at their team it's basically both. They'll get whatever they want if they haven't already.
orky56 8y ago
"Our investors include Reid Hoffman’s charitable foundation and Khosla Ventures, among others." I'm assuming these investors have already provided capital.

elefanten 8y ago

Very cool idea. Like some others here, I really appreciate attempts to create new structures for bringing ideas to the world. Since I'm not a lawyer, can you help understand the theoretical limits of the LP's "lock in" to the Charter? In a cynical scenario, what would it take to completely capture OpenAI's work for profit? If the Nonprofit's board was 60% people who want to break the Charter, would they be capable of voting to do so?

m_ke 8y ago

> ... Sam Altman (CEO) ... Was this announced before or is this the first time they've mentioned it?

eitally 8y ago
It was tangentially implied in the "YC Updates" thread from a few days ago, where it mentioned Sam "stepping away" to "focus on open.ai".
- bredren 8y ago
  I did not think this was implied by the previous statement. But I have not been following org structure of openai at all.
mikeyouse 8y ago
Nope, it was mentioned last Friday in a blog post (that he was stepping down from YC): https://blog.ycombinator.com/updates-from-yc/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/updates-from-yc/ And TechCrunch had a source last Friday as well that said Altman intended to become CEO of OpenAI: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/09/did-sam-altman-make-yc-better-or-worse/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/09/did-sam-altman-make-yc-bet...

ktta 8y ago

Reactions on Reddit seem different from here - https://redd.it/azvbmn https://redd.it/azvbmn

stevievee 8y ago

They were able to attract talent and PR in the name of altruism and here they are now trying to flip the switch as quietly as possible. If the partner gets a vote/profit then a "charter" or "mission" won't change anything. You will never be able to explicitly prove that a vote had a "for profit" motive. Elon was irritated that he was behind in the AI intellectual property race and this narrative created a perfect opportunity. Not surprised in the end. Tesla effectively did the same thing - "come help me save the planet" with overpriced cars. [Edit: Apparently Elon has left OpenAI but I don't believe for a second that he will not participate in this LP]

jackpirate 8y ago
That seems to be the general consensus of /r/MachineLearning as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/azvbmn/n_openai_lp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/azvbmn/n_o...
dcsilver 8y ago
No, Elon parted ways with OpenAI some time ago due to differences in opinion over their direction. Looks like we’re starting to learn the details.
- stevievee 8y ago
  Didn't know this - thanks for clarifying. I will update my comment if it is picked on further
  - gliptic 8y ago
    So for some reason you're sure he will participate in OpenAI LP when OpenAI say he's not involved in OpenAI LP? Are they lying?
    - stevievee 8y ago
      As an investor. What is not clear about that?

dannykwells 8y ago

Yes or no: will you remain a registered non-profit organization (401/501-type orgs or similar), or were you ever? It's fine to call your self non-profit but if you don't have to abide by the rules of them then you aren't, period. I think all of us here are tired of "altruistic" tech companies which are really profit mongers in disguise. The burden is on you all to prove this is not the case (and this doesn't really help your case).

geofft 8y ago
The article says that OpenAI the registered non-profit now owns OpenAI LP. This isn't unprecedented: for instance, the Mozilla Foundation owns the Mozilla Corporation, and IKEA is owned by a non-profit. (I mention these two examples precisely because it's common to find Mozilla's corporate structure reasonable and IKEA's corporate structure unreasonable.)
sonnyblarney 8y ago
'Do no evil' 'We're connecting everyone' I admire the will to want to do things differently, but the lack of self awareness of some drinking the koolaid bothers me - I don't know the word for it exactly. A 100x cap on returns is simply not a non-profit, point blank. Any investor, with any risk profile, in any industry, at any stage - would be super happy with a 100x return. I also don't doubt the 'market reality' of needing to have such a situation in order to attract investment, I mean, it'd be very hard to bring in money without providing some return .... ... but this is called 'capitalism'. i.e. the reality of the market, risks etc. are forcing their hand into a fairly normative company profile, with some structural differences which facilitate mostly PR spin. Companies are not 'for profit' because they are inherently greedy, it's just a happy equilibrium for most scenarios: you need investors? Well, they want risk-adjusted returns. Also implicit in the 100x capped returns is the implication that the company gets to keep the money! The money goes into more staff, capex, higher prices to suppliers, or lower prices to consumers. But within that framework is just massive payouts to employees as well, in a very cynical take. I love the motivation, but I wish we would be more objective in terms of 'what things really are' these days. Photos of 'families with babies' don't make a company 'better'. We all have families that we love, workmates we like (or not sometimes).

buboard 8y ago

OTOH, it is exciting to see people who are not google/facebook/uber going in the race for-profit. Perhaps they 'll feel some competition over real products now. (but the "100x cap" thing is just childish)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

syntaxing 8y ago

Interesting, I'm super tempted to apply to that Mechanical Engineer opening. How exactly does OpenAI make money though? It is sponsored or is there external investment (Can you invest in a non-profit?)?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

aerovistae 8y ago

I was buying it until he said that profit is “capped” at 100x of initial investment. So someone who invests $10 million has their investment “capped” at $1 billion. Lol. Basically unlimited unless the company grew to a FAANG-scale market value.

gdb 8y ago
We believe that if we do create AGI, we'll create orders of magnitude more value than any existing company.
- nharada 8y ago
  Is there some legal structure in place to prevent you from raising the cap as partners being to approach the 100x ROI?
  - gdb 8y ago
    The nonprofit board retains full control, and can only take actions that will further our mission. As described in our Charter (https://openai.com/charter/ https://openai.com/charter/): that mission is to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity.
    - tapppi 8y ago
      So that is a no then? If the board decides that for AGI to benefit humanity they need more investors, they can just as well remove the cap for a future investor or raise it to 200x.
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      There's no mention of the governing legal framework, I presume it's a US state? Also, what are the consequences for failing to meet the goals. "We commit to" could really have no legal basis depending on the prevailing legal environment. Reading pessimistically I see the "we'll assist other efforts" as a way in which the spirit the charter is apparently offered in could be subverted -- you assist a private company and that company doesn't have anything like the charter and instead uses the technology and assistance to create private wealth/IP. Being super pessimistic, when the Charter organisation gets close a parallel business can be started, which would automatically be "within 2 years" and so effort could then -- within the wording of the charter -- be diverted in to that private company. A clause requiring those who wish to use any of the resources of the Charter company to also make developments available reciprocally would need to be added. Rather like share-alike or other GPL-style license that require patent licensing to the upstream creators.

csomar 8y ago

They are looking to raise billions and cap returns at x100? That means the returns will be capped at the "trillions"? So if they raise $5bn, they need to generate $500bn for the money to start pumping to the non-profit organization. More like: If we make enough money to own the whole world, we'll give you some food not to starve.

Mizza 8y ago

Is there something about the mystical nature of AGI that attracts sketchiness and flim-flammery? I remember the "Singularity Institute for Artificial General Intelligence" trying to pull similar scams a decade ago.

i7rgf98o7fk 8y ago

Why the Limited Partnership at all? What can the nonprofit "Inc" do through the for-profit "LP" shell that it could not do in its own right?

hhw3h 8y ago

Will investing be open to all accredited investors or just a handpicked selection? Opening a crowdsourced investment opportunity would be in line with your vision to democratize the use of AI. The more people that have a non-operational ownership stake in Open AI the better.

mark_l_watson 8y ago
Great question, and how OpenAI LP handles accepting investments will say a lot.

czr 8y ago

Is there any indication of what avenues OpenAI will be (or would consider) using to generate revenue? A lot of the most financially lucrative opportunities for AI (surveillance/tracking, military) are morally ambiguous at best.

komali2 8y ago
If they actually make a strong, general artificial intelligence, sci fi has a couple answers. In one (I can't find the title), MIT students make an SGAI and somehow manage to keep it contained (away from the internet). They feed it animated Disney movies and it cranks out the best animated movies ever made. They make billions. Eventually they make "live-action" movies that are indistinguishable from the real thing. Then they make music, books, etc, and create an unstoppable media force. They could leverage the AI to discover hyper-efficient supply chain methods. They could sequence genomes and run experiments, and sell the data. Possibly exciting things around weather prediction. Very exciting things around any research.
- czr 8y ago
  Certainly if they make a strong AGI, money is no longer an issue. I'm curious what they will do in the, ah, interim, on the off-chance that inventing SAGI turns out to be a difficult problem.

danielcampos93 8y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if OpenAI had some crazy aquisition in its future by one of the tech giants. Press release says 'We believe the best way to develop AGI is by joining forces with X and are excited to use it to seel you better ads. We also have turned the profits we would have payed taxes on to a non profit that pays us salaries for researching the quality of sand in the Bahamas'

zestyping 8y ago

OpenAI's mission statement is to ensure that AGI "benefits all of humanity", and its charter rephrases this as "used for the benefit of all". But without a more concrete and specific definition, "benefit of all" is meaningless. For most projects, one can construct a claim that it has the potential to benefit most or all of a large group of people at some point. So, what does that commitment mean? If an application benefits some people and harms others, is it unacceptable? What if it harms some people now in exchange for the promise of a larger benefit at some point in the future? Must it benefit everyone it touches and harm no one? What if it harms no one but the vast majority of its benefits accrue to only the top 1% of humanity? What is the line?

projectileboy 8y ago

I was very much behind the mission; now I’m not so sure. If it was this easy for OpenAI to start down this path, think of what Amazon or Facebook will do - people with no moral compass whatsoever. It’s probably not too early to start thinking about government regulation.

bilater 8y ago

First not publishing the GPT-2 model, now this...hopefully I am wrong but it looks like they are heading towards being a closed-off proprietary AI money making machine. This further incentivizes them to be less transparent and not open source their research. :(

lifeisstillgood 8y ago

They say they have started this new form of company because there's is no "pre-existing legal structure" suitable. But there are precedents for investing billions of dollars into blue sky technologies and still being able to spread the wealth and knowledge gathered - it's called government investment in science - it has built silicon chips and battery technologies and ... well quite a lot. Is this company planning on "fundamental" research (anti-adversarial, "explainable" outcomes?) - and why do we think government investment is not good enough? Or, worryingly, are the major tech leaders now so rich that they can honestly taken on previous government roles (with only the barest of nods to accountability and legal obligation to return value to the commons) I am a bit scared that it's the latter - and even then this is too expensive for any one firm alone.

Cacti 8y ago
These people have spent their entire life in the Valley, they don't know any better.

rsp1984 8y ago

Ok, so when OpenAI was still a straight non-profit the Charter made sense in the context and there wasn't much need to specify it any further. Now with OpenAI leaving the non-profit path the Charter content, fuzzy as it is, is 100% up for interpretation. It does not specify what "benefit of all" or "undue concentration of power" means concretely. It's all up for interpretation. So at this point the trust that I can put into this Charter is about the same that I can put into Google's "Don't be evil"...

gdb 8y ago
The Nonprofit has full control, in a legally binding way: https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/#themissioncomesfirst https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/#themissioncomesfirst

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

Clearly deep learning has solved the heardest AI problem of them all: that of funding.

chaseadam17 8y ago

Presumably OpenAI created a lot of IP with donor dollars under the original nonprofit entity. Who owns that IP now? I imagine it got appraised and sold by the original nonprofit to the new OpenAI LP. That seems like a difficult process, given no one really knows what this type of IP is worth. If this is what happened, who did that appraisal and how was it done? If no IP was sold to the new OpenAI LP because some or all of the IP created under the original nonprofit OpenAI was open sourced, will the new OpenAI LP continue that practice?

gdb 8y ago
(I work at OpenAI.) See my tweet about this: https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1105173883378851846 https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1105173883378851846
- david2016 8y ago
  > We had the fair market value of anything transferred from the nonprofit to the LP determined by an outside firm. Greg, would you please elaborate more on this part of your tweet? Also, can the OpenAI LP commercialize work/research produced by OpenAI non-profit? Can you use grants that were raised by the non-profit into recruiting for the LP? Thanks for talking questions and engaging in conversations to make things clear for our community.

codekilla 8y ago

> We are traveling a hard and uncertain path, but we have designed our structure to help us positively affect the world should we succeed in creating AGI—which we think will have as broad impact as the computer itself and improve healthcare Grammar--would change to: as broad an impact

zestyping 8y ago

To "ensure it is used for the benefit of all" requires limiting how AGI is used. How will OpenAI do that?

SandersAK 8y ago

OpenAI's nonprofit board, who are largely responsible for deciding whether or not OpenAI achieves the mission of "benefits all of humanity," is compromised in majority by white millionaire men. There are two women, one of which is a person of color. There are no black or latinx voices on OpenAI's board.

jpdus 8y ago

Wow. Screw non-profit, we want to get rich. Sorry guys, but before you were probably able to get talent which is not (primarily) motivated by money. Now you are just another AI startup. If the cap would be 2x, it could still make sense. But 100x times? That's laughable! And the split board, made up of friends and closely connected people smells like "greenwashing" as well. Don't get me wrong, it's totally ok to be an AI startup. You just shouldn't pretend to be a non-profit then...

Judgmentality 8y ago
I agree, this sounds disappointing to me as well. My issue is how they're positioning themselves, which is basically a hyper-growth startup where you can get rich (but only 100x richer, because we're not greedy like other startups) but we're also a non-profit here to benefit humanity so don't tax us like those evil corporations. What really bothers me though is I don't know if they honestly believe what they're saying or if it's just a marketing ploy, because honestly it's so much worse if they're deluding themselves.
- gdb 8y ago
  Any returns from OpenAI LP are subject to taxes!
  - Judgmentality 8y ago
    First of all, thank you for taking the time to respond to people criticizing this announcement. I just feel like you're trying to have the best of both worlds. You want the hypergrowth startup that attracts talent and investors, but you also want the mission statement for people that aren't motivated by money. I suspect trying to maintain this middle ground will be an incredibly damaging factor moving forward, as the people who are purely profit driven will look elsewhere and the people who are truly mission driven will also look elsewhere. I fully appreciate how challenging these things can be and that making these decisions aren't trivial and obviously you're trying to do something different...but I really think you're taking the wrong step here. But because you will see short term gains from all the extra initial investment you won't realize it for years until it's too late and the culture has permanently shifted. That said, while my trust has somewhat eroded (also because you wouldn't release details of your model recently), I still wish you luck in your mission.

tschwimmer 8y ago

Greg, you seem to be answering questions here so I have one for you: This change seems to be about ease of raising money and retaining talent. My question is: are you having difficulty doing those things today, and do you project having difficulty doing that in the foreseeable future? I'll admit I'm skeptical of these changes. Creating a 100x profit cap significantly (I might even say categorically) changes the mission and value of what you folks are doing. Basically, this seems like a pretty drastic change and I'm wondering if the situation is dire enough to warrant it. There's no question it will be helpful in raising money and retaining talent, I'm just wondering if it's worth it.

gdb 8y ago
Our mission is articulated here and does not change: https://openai.com/charter/ https://openai.com/charter/. As we say in the Charter, our primary means of accomplishing the mission is to build safe AGI ourselves. That means raising billions of dollars, without which the Nonprofit will fail at its mission. That's a huge amount of money and not something we could raise without changing structure. Regardless of structure, it's worth humanity making this kind of investment because building safe AGI can return orders of magnitude more value than any company has to date. See one possible AGI application in this post: https://blog.gregbrockman.com/the-openai-mission#the-impact-of-agi_1 https://blog.gregbrockman.com/the-openai-mission#the-impact-...
- m_ke 8y ago
  How much progress do you think you've made in the past 3 years towards that goal and what makes you think that you'll get there within the next few decades? Also what makes you believe that Open AI will get there way ahead of thousands of other research labs?

estill01 8y ago

Why not make OpenAI LP a B-Corp?

bibyte 8y ago

OpenAI is slowly but surely turning into another for profit AI company. They are slowly killing all the original ideals that made OpenAI unique over the hundreds of AI startups. They should just rebrand it. And they are unironically talking about creating AGI. AGI is awesome of course but maybe that is a tiny little bit overconfident ?

thewarrior 8y ago

So first they withhold the model they built and now this. I’m not implying anything but this looks fishy

marvin 8y ago

Could some random regular person, who is an accredited investor after US rules (e.g. a non-US person) invest, say, $10,000 in this venture as a minor investor/contributor? Or is OpenAI LP only interested in much larger investment amounts?

roenxi 8y ago

There are a couple of comments on the theme that this is taking a non-profit into a for-profit company, and that that is a bad thing. I'd like to offer up an alternate opinion: non-profits operating models are generally ineffective compared to for-profit operating models. There are many examples. * Bill Gates is easy; make squillions being a merciless capitalist, then turn that into a very productive program of disease elimination and apparently energy security nowadays. * Open source is another good one in my opinion - even when they literally give the software away, many of the projects leading their fields (eg, Google Chrome, Android, PostgreSQL, Linux Kernel) draw heavily on sponsorship by for-profit companies using them for furthering their profits - even if the steering committee is nominally non-profit. * I have examples outside software, but they are all a bit complicated to type up. Things like China's rise. It isn't that there isn't a place for researchers who are personally motivated to do things, there is a just a high correlation between something making a profit and it getting done to a high standard.

mkolodny 8y ago

I admire the attempt to create a sustainable project that's primarily about creating a positive impact! For those (including myself) who wonder whether a 100x cap will really change an organization from being profit-driven to being positive-impact-driven: How could we improve on this? One idea is to not allow investors on the board. Investors are profit-driven. If they're on the board, you'll likely get pressure to do things that optimize for profit rather than for positive impact. Another idea is to make monetary compensation based on some measure of positive impact. That's one explicit way to optimize for positive impact rather than money.

leot 8y ago

One object lesson in how this can go wrong: REI This "cooperative" ostensibly elects its board. In reality, nomination by existing members of the REI board is the only way to stand for election by the REI membership, and when you vote you only by marking "For" the nominated candidates (there's no information on how to vote against, though at another time they indicated that the alternative was "Withold vote"). While the board members don't earn much, there is a nice path from board member to REI executive ... which can pay as much as $2M/year for the CEO position.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

wilde 8y ago

Without an obviously stated business model to satisfy the investor returns, it’s hard to take the values platitudes seriously. Do you plan to make your pitch deck public? That’d help.

jamessemaj 8y ago

Hey Greg, Since you seem to be answering questions in this thread, here's one: How does OpenAI LP's structure differ from that of a L3C (Low-profit Limited Liability company)?

greenburg 8y ago

To OpenAI team, that is not right but it's very well played. You guys raised free money in forms of grants, acquired the best talent in the name of a non-profit that has a purpose of saving humanity, and always had publicity stunts that is actually hurting science and the AI community, and talking the first steps against reproducibility by not releasing gpt2 so you can further commercialize your future models. Also, you guys claim that the non-profit board retains full control, but seems like the same 7 white men on that board are also on the board of your profit company and have a strong influence there. Call it what you want, but I think this was planned out from day one. Now, you guy won the game. It's just a matter of time to dominate the AI game, keep manipulating us, and appear on the Forbes list. Also, I expect that you guys will dislike that comment instead of having an actual dialogue and discussion.

darepublic 8y ago

I don't think we can guarantee AGI will benefit all humanity, open-sourcing it may help but not necessarily. My heart actually sinks when I read that mission statement on this page, it's like in the movies where the guy has a gun to someone's head and gets them to give up the information they know before blowing their brains out.

paraschopra 8y ago

Mission oriented for-profit companies is an oxymoron. Profit comes from competing in markets and markets determine what you end up doing. That’s why I’m always skeptical of Don’t Be Evil types of missions because when you’re starting you can’t even imagine what market pressure will end up making you do. Between the market pressures from investors, employees, competitors, to what extent can a company really stay true to its business and deny potential profit that conflicts with it. Also, it’s hard to root for specific for profit companies (although I’m rooting for capitalism per se).