10 ms·
OpenAI sold its soul for $1B (2021)
- yieldcrv 4y agowould GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 exist right now if they didn't? I'm not one to hold up progress just so people can collect paychecks for a couple more months.
- madamelic 4y agohttps://archive.is/qGvyr https://archive.is/qGvyr
- JohnFen 4y agoExactly this. This is when I stopped thinking of Open AI as a potentially positive force.
- rvz 4y agoThey have just become another Silicon Valley VC scam, when they bait and switched to a for-profit and pretends to care about 'AI safety' whilst simultaneously creating excuses to close the AI model with competition fear-mongering without building in detectors or watermarks. Thanks to Microsoft, they are no better than DeepMind. 'AI ethics' at Microsoft was recently eliminated, telling you their real intentions with AI. Henceforth: >> What are OpenAI's real intentions now? Are they tied to Microsoft's interests so much that they’ve forgotten their original purpose for “the betterment of humanity?” Not just forgotten, but an abandonment and a classic motte-and-bailey retreat for 'Open' AI's original mission. At this point, they need to be disrupted with 'Open AI' alternatives that are open-source and surpasses OpenAI's offerings, rendering them obsolete.
- elforce002 4y agoNo lies were told. It'll be difficult to trust any other platform like that anymore. Microsoft is really despicable cornering the dev market (github, killed atom in favor of vscode, etc...). I'm glad I switched to apple after +20 years using windows products. OpenAI, on the other hand, will basically destroy any openness from companies. Now, it'll be every company for itself.
- fancyfredbot 4y agoIt's not true that there is no longer anyone working on AI ethics at Microsoft as I understand it. Rather, Microsoft had more than one team working on AI safety and dismantled one of them. There is still a large "Office of Responsible AI". It seems like internal reorganization but was reported as an abandonment of AI safety.
- jsnk 4y agoI had forgotten that OpenAI started as a non-profit. Elon Musk gave $100 million for a non-profit cause, and even he doesn't know how OpenAI became a for-profit company. I am not sure about the legality, but this transition seems like a unethical rug pull against the early contributors. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1636047019893481474 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1636047019893481474
- gumby 4y ago> I am not sure about the legality non-profits can own for-profit businesses. They generally invest their endowments in...the stock market, and owning a whole company is just that at a larger scale. A well known example is Usenix taking its networking sideline and turned it into the company UUnet which let Rick Adams become a billionaire (for a while). I actually considered this scandalous and still do, but it was all legally above board. It ended up ensnarled in the Worldcom fraud, which felt like poetic justice to me.
- quadcore 4y agoAdmitedly, this is somewhat an hilarious tweet.
- indymike 4y agoNot-for-profits can also vote to sell themselves if their bylaws don't prohibit it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dekhn 4y agoHe fundamentally misunderstands what it means to be "non-profit" (or is being intentionally disingenous; it's hard to tell with him). It doesn't mean you can't make a profit.
- evo_9 4y agoTerrible, right? Don’t use it! Me: goes right back to using it (cause it’s priced right and I personally think they deserve every penny they earn)z
- Jensson 4y agoIt is good to recognize that they are as evil as every other big corp. I still use Windows, Google, buy from Amazon etc, but I recognize that those companies maybe aren't a force for good. OpenAI said they would be different but turned out that they weren't, and to inform people that they changed we need articles like this.
- ratg13 4y agoThe author seems to be of the opinion that AI should not be given to the general public and be kept in some sort of walled garden with tightly controlled supervised access. I can't help but wonder how much time he thinks can realistically be bought with these type of restrictions .. and also wonder if he's changed his mind at all since this was written.
- ActionHank 4y agoFunnily enough OpenAI also believes the same.
- HervalFreire 4y agoMakes sense. I'd sell my soul for much less, as would most of you. If they didn't sell their soul, that would be more of a surprise.
- mr90210 4y agoOr probably they wouldn’t have survived given how much resource they need to operate. If they were not called OpenAI probably such blog posts would be written. Given how much ahead they are, they can safely rename the company if they wish to do so.
- bitcoin_anon 4y agoSathoshi Nakamoto's soul remains intact.
- no_wizard 4y agoone day those coins will be sold, I think, and we'll see if bitcoin can go beyond Sathoshi
- HervalFreire 4y agoHe probably died. That's the most likely explanation.
- LanceH 4y agoAnother explanation is that he has a lot more bitcoin outside the large stack and moving the big stack would crash the market as a whole.
- HappySweeney 4y agoHow many anonymous whales are there?
- LanceH 4y agoHow much is a whale? Not everyone needs to be a billionaire. He could have a couple million anonymously, and a nice full time job, and be under the radar. I want to believe this, rather than he lost the key or that it's that other guy who has chosen not to be anonymous.
- IYasha 4y agoThey had soul??
- aj7 4y ago“However, not long after, they decided to share the model after finding “no strong evidence of misuse.” What about mal-use?
- dang 4y agoDiscussed at the time: OpenAI Sold its Soul for $1B - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28416997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28416997 - Sept 2021 (86 comments)
- _fat_santa 4y ago> To summarize: The company “in charge” of protecting us from harmful AIs decided to let people use a system capable of engaging in disinformation and dangerous biases so they could pay for their costly maintenance. It doesn’t sound very “value-for-everyone” to me. Ever since the AI hype started this year, one thing that's always really bugged me is talk about "safety" around AI. Everyone is so worried about AI's ability to write fake news and how "dangerous" that can be while forgetting that I can go on fiver, pay someone in India, China, etc. to pump me out article after article of fake news for pennies on the dollar. Also I hate the talk of "oh wow look how harmful the AI is, it made a naughty joke". I think of harm as being mugged, being beaten up, being shot. Harm is not some AI program telling a joke that could potentially offend someone. All you end up with is an AI that is so kneecapped that it's barely useful outside of a select number of use cases. Can't write an article because it might be fake news, can't write an essay because it might be an assignment, can't solve that homework assignment because you might be cheating, I can't ask it to tell me a joke because the joke might be offensive.
- pixl97 4y agoEh, there is far more at stake then you're giving it credit for. Yea, you can go to India and get someone to write some bullshit, that is far different than having a OAI/Microsoft service telling some kid to neck themselves. So ya, you're focusing on the low hanging fruit of 'wokeness bot' when the issue of trustworthy and safe model output is an absolutely huge problem that could affect everyone and we have no really good solutions on solving it at this point.
- _fat_santa 4y ago> that is far different than having a OAI/Microsoft service telling some kid to neck themselves Ok I see what you are saying. I feel like with AI/GPT, we would almost have to change the concept of a "company being responsible for it's software". Up until now, most software has an X number of inputs and a Y number of outputs (click "get new mail" in Gmail, new messages arrive for example). But what happens when the software you design can accept and return billions of possible parameters? There is simply no way of determining what the output is or could be and that's fundamental to the software. The example I think of in my head is a user opening MS Word, typing out "F* YOU" and then sending a screenshot to Microsoft telling them "How could your software offend me like this?". Now obviously this is different than GPT but it follows the same rough rule of "billions of possible inputs, billions of possible outputs"
- flangola7 4y agoOpen source AI development is possibly the worst idea in history. Yes, let's just put a demon summoning circle in every household.
- squarefoot 4y agoThat might be still a bit less evil than letting a single private company control it.
- flangola7 4y agoPart of the reason we're still here is because nukes are only controlled by a small number of powerful but mostly rational actors. If you give everyone nukes then Terrorist Timmy and Dumbass David will push the button 30 seconds after they get a hold of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA1sNLL6yg4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA1sNLL6yg4
- squarefoot 4y agoThat's a valid point, but the assumption should be that Timmy and David can't afford today the tools and facilities to build nukes as much as they won't have enough power to do anything harmful with an AI. At least for a while, hopefully.
- flangola7 4y ago"A while" might be 12 months given the pace we are at. LLaMA is already going to be rather dangerous once malignant interests interests fine tune it for social engineering, offensive security missions, and astroturfing, and general emotional manipulation. That by itself will be enough to reshape the internet and remote interaction as we know it.
- squarefoot 4y agoI agree on principle, but we already know for sure it will be used as it is in advertising, politics, news reporting, and pretty much every field in which there is constant need of new tools of mass manipulation. It's probably too late.
- mrcwinn 4y ago> Oren Etzioni, director of the Allen Institute for AI, also received the news with skepticism. “I disagree with the notion that a nonprofit can’t compete. […] If bigger and better funded was always better, then IBM would still be number one.” So, fine, I accept this story is as old as dirt: well-funded startup wants money and power; plays in a zero-sum game against other well-funded companies; sells product with lovely, benevolent marketing copy. Still I find this comparison unconvincing. IBM is not number one because they lost to better-capitalized (on the right product) competitors. So, precisely which non-profit unseated IBM? Which non-profit is a disruptive tech leader with a global workforce? I really want it to be true, but it needs to actually be demonstrably true.
- whatshisface 4y agoThere are so few (almost no) attempts at starting nonprofits to do the kinds of things that compete with IBM, that they could have a greater success rate than startups and we still wouldn't have any evidence one way or the other.
- mrcwinn 4y agoThat’s a fair point, and obviously the funding model doesn’t incentivize the creation of those types of organizations. I guess I remain skeptical (cynical?) that it could be successful. As perhaps one counter example, I’m currently decked out in Patagonia gear. Not a tech company, of course. And so maybe the bigger question is - does the audience (customer) care about how its product is funded and built? I argue they should, but do they? I see little evidence that’s the case. (See an extreme case: Meta.)
- pharmakom 4y ago> If bigger and better funded was always better, then IBM would still be number one Weak reasoning. Maybe being bigger and better funded is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success.
- ccorda 4y agoA few comments have noted that it's common for non-profits own for-profits (Mozilla Foundation, college endowments, etc). What seems different here is that rather than funneling profits up to the non-profit, the intent seems to be to make payouts to fellow board members and employees: > Only a minority of board members are allowed to hold financial stakes in the partnership at one time. Furthermore, only board members without such stakes can vote on decisions where the interests of limited partners and OpenAI Nonprofit’s mission may conflict—including any decisions about making payouts to investors and employees. [1] IANAL, but has anyone seen this sort of arrangement before? [1] https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lacker 4y agoEvery for-profit pays its employees, right? I don't think the fact that they make these payments is unusual, they're just making it clear that partners with a stake in the for-profit recuse themselves when the nonprofit is approving these payouts. It's similar to a company CEO not voting when the board approves their own pay package, even though they're a board member.
- ccorda 4y agoI agree that payments on their own (e.g. salary, bonuses) don't seem counter to the non-profit's interest. But what if we're talking about 100B of equity -- equity that otherwise would have gone to the parent non-profit?
- khana 4y ago[dead]
- standardly 4y agoA rebrand to AiCorp sounds pretty dystopian
- lacker 4y agoThe name "OpenAI" still really bugs me. But it seems likely that turning into a for-profit corporation was critical to OpenAI's subsequent success. It let them raise enough money to pay for top-tier infrastructure. It also gave them access to stock options, to pay for recruiting a top-tier research and engineering team. I don't think we would have GPT-4 and the OpenAI API if they hadn't turned into a for-profit company. And honestly, compare what OpenAI has done for AI research to the impact of any nonprofit. What nonprofit has done the most for AI research? Stanford? MIT? I'm not sure what the top AI achievement from any nonprofit is, in the modern era. It's like nonprofits can do a good job of kickstarting a field (AlexNet, early PyTorch), but once enough money and attention goes into it, they have to hand the baton to for-profit companies.
- pmarreck 4y agoIt's not a "for-profit" (at least strictly, unless you are intentionally muddying the waters to support your argument). It's "capped-profit": https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/openai-shifts-from-nonprofit-to-capped-profit-to-attract-capital/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/openai-shifts-from-nonprof...
- blueboo 4y agoI wonder: What’s the cap, and how does it imply behaviour that differs from that of a for-profit?…
- tangjurine 4y agoCapped at 100x profit from investment...
- orra 4y agoThe cap is so high as to be meaningless. It's for profit.
- josephd79 4y agoSo high you can see straight through the bs.
- clircle 4y agoWar is peace. Freedom is slavery. Open is closed
- visarga 4y agoThere are multiple ways of being open. Open as in open source, and open as in you can already play with GPT-4 while Google keeps people waiting for PaLM. There's also open like the LLaMA "release". If the model is not excellent (see BLOOM) it doesn't really matter it is open. You can be sure that the API-only access to GPT3 had a major impact on AI in the last 2 years - what projects people worked on, what studies were being made. Even dataset construction for other models. GPT-3 is an excellent data labeller.
- selfhoster11 4y ago"Open" has a clear meaning in tech. To me, being "open as in actually open" is a non-negotiable criterion for deserving to bear the name of "Open" whatever.
- anon9219 4y agoSo any company which has released a product ever should be called "open"?
- visarga 4y agoTheir excuse is that scaling AI required scaling the money. And they realised this long ago. So they had to go commercial or give up the top spot.
- praveen9920 4y agoIt is interesting to see news about Docker ( opensource fuelling the for-profit company ) and openai ( non-profit research converted to for-profile company ) together on HN. One of them has failed to capitalize on the user adoption to generate revenues and struggling, while the other one was touted as a "selling their soul" for making a lot of money to fuel their research ( and profits too ) The longevity of a company definitely depends on the money that is poured into it. Doing it in a sustainable way, without relying on regular "donations" ( remember Wikipedia's campaigns ) or "raising series of capital" ( from VCs) is very important. There must be a better business model for balancing between these without getting "corrupted" or "evil"
- JohnFen 4y ago> the other one was touted as a "selling their soul" for making a lot of money to fuel their research ( and profits too ) I don't think that's a correct characterization of the criticism about Open AI. The criticism is more about it doing a bait-and-switch.
- praveen9920 4y agoEnd of the day, it’s about survival.
- credit_guy 4y agoI would too. I'd sell my soul even for a mere $100 million. Where I firmly draw the line is $10 million. Just try and test me and you'll see.
- fatjokes 4y ago"It's not about money. It's about a whole shit load of money."
- cyanydeez 4y agoLooking at the founders, you're assuming it had a soul.
- lee101 4y ago[dead]