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For their work’s unprecedented social impact, this structure makes a tonne of sense. What’s so hard about it? A pure profit motive driving decision making is th

For their work’s unprecedented social impact, this structure makes a tonne of sense. What’s so hard about it? A pure profit motive driving decision making is the whack job positioning here. A non profit with income producing subsidiaries is a well established structure used by plenty of organisations globally. This work needs a ethical steward, not a mega payout for those who well postponed to make some fast money. Seems we’ve just seen a hard turn attempting to avoid an otherwise inevitable profit driven enshitification of Open AI’s work.

DebtDeflation 3y ago
It started out as a pure non profit in 2015. They changed the structure to the current one in 2019. What you're saying probably made sense at the time, have a small non profit sub that generates some income to further the non profit arm. But now that small for profit sub has received billions in investment and is generating a billion in annual revenue with a fast growth curve. Meanwhile, the non profit is not much closer to their mission of developing AGI than they were in 2015. It makes sense for them to be two separate companies now.
earnesti 3y ago
What's wrong with mega payout. These guys created tons of value, they deserve their payout. Using this stupid structure they just fucked an entirely good operation. LLM's and other modern AI algorithms are out of the box now, other companies will happily take over if they stop innovating.
- polygamous_bat 3y ago
  > What's wrong with mega payout. These guys created tons of value, they deserve their payout I imagine there are two factions in OpenAI, one group (let’s call them the Ilya faction) are only motivated by AGI, while the other group (maybe Sam faction?) is interested in reaping the short term profits. So why is it wrong for Ilya to complain if he thinks Sam only wants short term profits and is hoodwinking the rest of the folks into believing he is also interested in AGI? Short term profit is not what he signed up for.
esafak 3y ago
If you can't turn a profit, that is when the real trouble ensues.

DebtDeflation 3y ago

It started out as a pure non profit in 2015. They changed the structure to the current one in 2019. What you're saying probably made sense at the time, have a small non profit sub that generates some income to further the non profit arm. But now that small for profit sub has received billions in investment and is generating a billion in annual revenue with a fast growth curve. Meanwhile, the non profit is not much closer to their mission of developing AGI than they were in 2015. It makes sense for them to be two separate companies now.

earnesti 3y ago

What's wrong with mega payout. These guys created tons of value, they deserve their payout. Using this stupid structure they just fucked an entirely good operation. LLM's and other modern AI algorithms are out of the box now, other companies will happily take over if they stop innovating.

polygamous_bat 3y ago
> What's wrong with mega payout. These guys created tons of value, they deserve their payout I imagine there are two factions in OpenAI, one group (let’s call them the Ilya faction) are only motivated by AGI, while the other group (maybe Sam faction?) is interested in reaping the short term profits. So why is it wrong for Ilya to complain if he thinks Sam only wants short term profits and is hoodwinking the rest of the folks into believing he is also interested in AGI? Short term profit is not what he signed up for.

esafak 3y ago

If you can't turn a profit, that is when the real trouble ensues.