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This is why, when you claim to be running a non-profit to "benefit humankind," you shouldn't put all your resources into a for-profit subsidiary. Eventually, th

• pkaye 3y ago
  Doesn't Mozilla run the same way with for-profit under a non-profit?
  • tsunamifury 3y ago
    How’d that work out for them?
    • cthalupa 3y ago
      They still exist and put out a product used by quite a few people, so quite well? You can't judge a non-profit by the same success metrics as a for-profit.
      • tsunamifury 3y ago
        They have been a consistent downward spiral into irrelevance. So I’d say … not fine.
        • sudosysgen 3y ago
          They are the last survivor offering an alternative to Blink and seem to be indefinitely sustainable for their core product. Other companies tried competing against Chrome, and so far Mozilla is the most successful, as everyone else gave up and ship Chrome skins people basically only use by subterfuge or coercion. I'd say that's pretty good.
    • Herring 3y ago
      Looks fine to me, man. I asked chatGPT to summarize this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation) in the context of your question Mozilla Corporation's Experience *Challenges and Adaptation:* Mozilla Corporation has faced financial challenges, leading to restructuring and strategic shifts. This includes layoffs, closing offices, and diversifying into new ventures, such as acquiring Fakespot in 2023 *Dependence on Key Partnerships:* Its heavy reliance on partnerships like the one with Google for revenue has been both a strength and a vulnerability, necessitating adaptations to changing market conditions and partner strategies *Evolution and Resilience:* Despite challenges, Mozilla Corporation has shown resilience, adapting to market changes and evolving its strategies to sustain its mission, demonstrating the effectiveness of its governance model within the context of its organizational goals and the broader technology ecosystem In conclusion, while both OpenAI and Mozilla Corporation have navigated unique paths within the tech sector, their distinct governance structures illustrate different approaches to balancing mission-driven goals with operational sustainability and market responsiveness.
    • barneygale 3y ago
      Really well - they make the best web browser around!
• dnissley 3y ago
  Interestingly it was the other way around this time, at least to start...
  • jasonhansel 3y ago
    This was pretty clearly an attempt by the board to reassert control, which was slowly slipping away as the company became more enmeshed with Microsoft.
    • rvnx 3y ago
      Does that mean that the move of the board was actually good for openness of AI ?
      • pests 3y ago
        Is AI/AGI safety the same as openness?
        • rvnx 3y ago
          According to OpenAI investment paperwork: It would be wise to view any investment in OpenAI Global, LLC in the spirit of a donation. The Company exists to advance OpenAl, Inc.'s mission of ensuring that safe artificial general intelligence is developed and benefits all of humanity. The Company's duty to this mission and the principles advanced in the OpenAI, Inc. Charter take precedence over any obligation to generate a profit. The Company may never make a profit, and the Company is under no obligation to do so. The Company is free to re-invest any or all of the Company's cash flow into research and development activities and/or related expenses without any obligation to the Members. I guess safe artificial general intelligence is developed and benefits all of humanity, means an open AI (hence the name) and safe AI.
        • _heimdall 3y ago
          No, though I think OpenAI at least wants to achieve both. Whether we can actually safely develop AI or AGI is a much tougher question than whether that's the intent, unfortunately.
• Davidzheng 3y ago
  Worst part is their own employees don't care about the non profits value
  • belter 3y ago
    Because they were promised shares for a future IPO?
    • Davidzheng 3y ago
      I thought they are given shares to the private owned for profit branch--not that it will ever IPO?
  • yeck 3y ago
    I suspect some do and some don't. Hard to know what the ratio is.
• nostrademons 3y ago
  The most logical outcome would be for Microsoft to buy the for-profit OpenAI entity off its non-profit parent for $50B or some other exorbitant sum. They have the money, this would give the non-profit researchers enough play money that they can keep chasing AGI indefinitely, all the employees who joined the for-profit entity chasing a big exit could see their payday, and the new corporate parent could do what they want with the tech, including deeply integrate it within their systems without fear of competing usages. Extra points if Google were to sweep in and buy OpenAI. I think Sundar is probably too sleepy to manage it, but this would be a coup of epic proportions. They could replace their own lackluster GenAI efforts, lock out Microsoft and Bing from ChatGPT (or if contractually unable to, enshittify the product until nobody cares), and ensure their continued AI dominance. The time to do it is now, when the OpenAI board is down to 4 people, the current leader of whom has prior Google ties, and their interest is to play with AI as an academic curiosity, which a fat warchest would accomplish. Plus if the current board wants to slow down AI progress, one sure way to accomplish that would be to sell it to Google.
  • rvnx 3y ago
    The new investors entered at a ~90B USD valuation for info. Microsoft I don't think they need it: Assuming they have the whole 90B USD to spend: it doesn't really make sense; they have full access to the source-code of OpenAI and datasets (because the whole training and runtime runs on their servers already). They could poach employees and make them better offers, and get away with a much more efficient cost-basis, + increase employee retention (whereas OpenAI employees may just become so rich after a buy-out that they could be tempted to leave). They can replicate the tech internally without any doubt and without OpenAI. Google is in deep trouble for now, perhaps they will recover with Gemini. In theory they could buy OpenAI but it seems out-of-character for them. They have strong internal political conflicts within Google, and technically it would be a nightmare to merge the infrastructure+code within their /google3 codebase and other Google-only dependencies soup.
    • timeon 3y ago
      > They can replicate the tech internally without any doubt and without OpenAI. Would they be also able to keep up with development?
• phpisthebest 3y ago
  See Mozilla for proof of this statement
• chubot 3y ago
  Yeah, but also remember that Altman and Musk started the non-profit to begin with (back when both their reputations were much different). They were explicitly concerned about Google's dominance in AI. It was always competitive, and always about power. Wikipedia gives these names: In December 2015, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Infosys, and YC Research announced[15] the formation of OpenAI and pledged over $1 billion to the venture Do any of those people sound like their day job was running non-profits? Had any of them EVER worked at a non-profit? --- So a pretty straightforward reading is that the business/profit-minded guys started the non-profit to lure the idealistic researchers in. The non-profit thing was a feel-good ruse, a recruiting tool. Sutskever could have had any job he wanted at that point, after his breakthroughs in the field. He also didn't have to work, after his 3-person company was acquired by Google for $40M+. I'm sure it's more nuanced than that, but it's silly to say that there was an idealistic and pure non-profit, and some business guys came in and ruined it. The motive was there all along. Not to say I wouldn't have been fooled (I mean certainly employees got many benefits, which made it worth their time). But in retrospect it's naive to accept their help with funding and connections (e.g. OpenAI's first office was Stripe's office), and not think they wouldn't get paid back later. VCs are very good at understanding the long game. Peter Thiel knows that most of the profits come after 10-15 years. Altman can take no equity in OpenAI, because he's playing the long game. He knows it's just "physics" that he will get paid back later (and that seems to have already happened) --- Anybody who's worked at a startup that became a successful company has seen this split. The early employees create a ton of value, but that value is only fully captured 10+ years down the road. And when there are tens or hundreds of billions of dollars of value created, the hawks will circle. It definitely happened at say Google. Early employees didn't capture the value they generated, while later employees rode the wave of the early success. (I was a middle-ish employee, neither early nor late) So basically the early OpenAI employees created a ton of value, but they have no mechanism to capture the value, or perhaps control it in order to "benefit humanity". From here on out, it's politics and money -- you can see that with the support of Microsoft's CEO, OpenAI investors, many peer CEOs from YC, weird laudatory tweets by Eric Schmidt, etc. The awkward, poorly executed firing of the CEO seems like an obvious symptom of that. It's a last-ditch effort for control, when it's become obvious that the game is unfolding according to the normal rules of capitalism. (Note: I'm not against making a profit, or non-profits. Just saying that the whole organizational structure was fishy/dishonest to begin with, and in retrospect it shouldn't be surprising it turned out this way.)
• hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  The problem, though, is without the huge commercial and societal success of ChatGPT, the AI Safety camp had no real leverage over the direction of AI advancement worldwide. I mean, there are tons of think tanks, advocacy organizations, etc. that write lots of AI safety papers that nobody reads. I'm kind of piqued at the OpenAI board not because I think they had the wrong intentions, but because they failed to see that the "perfect is the enemy of the good." That is, the board should have realistically known that there will be a huge arms race for AI dominance. Some would say that's capitalism - I say that's just human nature. So the board of OpenAI was in a unique position to help guide AI advancement in as safe a manner as possible because they had the most advanced AI system. They may have thought Altman was pushing too hard on the commercial side, but there are a million better ways they could have fought for AI safety without causing the ruckus they did. Now I fear that the "pure AI researchers" on the side of AI Safety within OpenAI (as that is what was being widely reported) will be even more diminished/sidelined. It really feels like this was a colossally sad own goal.
  • keerthiko 3y ago
    I agree. I think a significantly better approach would have been to vote for the elaboration of a "checks and balances" structure to OpenAI as it grew in capabilities and influence. Internal to the entire OpenAI org, sounds like all we had was just the for-profit arm <-> board of directors. Externally, you can add investors and public opinion (basically defaults to siding with the for-profit arm). I wish they worked towards something closer to a functional democracy (so not the US or UK), with a judicial system (presumably the board), a congress (non-existent), and something like a triumvirate (presumably the for-profit C-suite). Given their original mission, it would be important to keep the incentives for all 3 separate, except for "safe AI that benefits humanity". The truly hard to solve (read: impossible?) part is keeping the investors (external) from having an outsize say over any specific branch. If a third internal branch could exist that was designed to offset the influence of investors, that might have resulted in closer to the right balance.
    • junofan 3y ago
      Why would any employee put up with that? Why not go work somewhere else that better aligns with what you want?
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• zitterbewegung 3y ago
  Don’t be evil.
• silenced_trope 3y ago
  > This is why, when you claim to be running a non-profit to "benefit humankind," you shouldn't put all your resources into a for-profit subsidiary. To be frank, they need to really spell out what "benefitting mankind" is. How is it measured? Or is it measured? Or is it just "the board says this isn't doing that so it's not doing that"? It's honestly a silly slogan.
  • insanitybit 3y ago
    > "the board says this isn't doing that so it's not doing that"? I believe that is indeed the case, it is the responsibility of the board to make that call.
  • zug_zug 3y ago
    They should define it, sure. Here's what I'd expect this means: - Not limiting access to a universally profitable technology by making it only accessible to highest bidder (e.g. hire our virtual assistants for 30k a year). - Making models with a mind to all threats (existential, job replacement, scam uses) - Potentially open-sourcing models that are deemed safe So far I genuinely believe they are doing the first two and leaving billions on the table they could get by jacking their price 10x or more.
    • mlyle 3y ago
      If they jack the prices, they leave too wide a door for other entrants. Right now, OpenAI mostly has a big cost advantage; fully exploiting that requires lower pricing and high volume.
      • robrenaud 3y ago
        From my time working on search related problems at Google, this might be a bit of a winner take most market. If you have the users, your system can more effectively learn how to do a better job for the users. The interaction data generated is excludable gold, merely knowing how 100s of millions use chat bots is incredibly powerful, and if the company keeps being the clear and well known best, it's easy to stay the best, because the learning system has more high quality things to learn from. While google did do a good job milking knowledge and improving from its queries and interaction data, openai surely knows how to get information from high quality textual data even better. Openai made an interface where you can just speak your natural language, it didn't make you learn it's own pool of keyword jargon bastardized quasi command language. It's way more natural.
• m3kw9 3y ago
  They quickly realize without money you really can’t do as much.
• s1artibartfast 3y ago
  It is also why dont bring on board members you cant trust. I doubt getting ousted was what Sam, Greg, and Elon had in mind when they picked it.
  • himaraya 3y ago
    Elon at least backs Ilya. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1726376406785925566?s=61&t=5gx5cBUDe6kyoMOeEBqBIw https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1726376406785925566?s=61...
    • silenced_trope 3y ago
      > Ilya has a good moral compass and does not seek power. At this point that coming from Elon may not be the endorsement you think it is. Also maybe Elon sees that Ilya is going to be ousted and wants to extend a hand to him before others do.
      • himaraya 3y ago
        Regardless, Elon appears to back the board contrary to the suggestion above.
        • s1artibartfast 3y ago
          My point was actually a little different, that a board of Elon Sam and Greg wouldn't have pick this and board control is important.
• yterdy 3y ago
  I've yet to hear what, exactly, underlies the sneering smugness over the notion that the board is going to get their asses handed to them. AFAICT, you have a non-profit with the power to do what they want, in this case, and "corporate titans" doing the "cornered cat" thing.