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OpenAI to become for-profit company
- throwaway918299 2y agoHuh? I thought they already had for-profit and non-profit entities? Is the non-profit entity just going away (paywall)? gross.
- Slava_Propanei 2y ago[dead]
- squarefoot 2y agohttps://archive.ph/jUJVU https://archive.ph/jUJVU
- dang 2y agoThat points to https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-chief-technology-officer-resigns-7a8b4639 https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-chief-technology-officer-..., which was the submitted URL (thanks!), but we've changed to the Reuters article now, which seems to still have the most reporting on this story.
- davesmylie 2y agoAhh. What a surprise - no-one could have predicted this
- freitasm 2y agoSeeing so much money rolling in, hard to not want a slice of the pie.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y agoOnly hard if you're that kind of person. Not everyone is like that. And those kind of people have difficulty believing this.
- mattmaroon 2y agoEveryone is like that when the number is potentially in the trillions. There are just people who are like that and people who think they aren’t because they’ve never been within a digit grouping of it.
- phito 2y agoThere definitely are people who aren't like that. Not a lot for sure, but they exist.
- mandmandam 2y agoThere are many examples through history proving you wrong. * Frederick Banting sold the patent for insulin to the University of Toronto for just $1. * Tim Berners-Lee decided not to patent the web, making it free for public use. * Jonas Salk refused to patent the polio vaccine - "can you patent the sun?" * Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds could have easily sold humanity out for untold billions. * Chuck Feeny silently gave away $8bn, keeping only a few million. ... And in any case, this is an extreme situation. AI is an existential threat/opportunity. Allowing it to be sidestepped into the hands of Sam "sell me your retinal scans for $50" Altman is fucking insane, and that's putting it lightly.
- arlcode 2y agoI'm very happy that the EU got into the game early and started regulating AI. It's way easier to adapt an existing framework one way or the other if the political part is already done. I don't trust the AI industry to be a good stewart even less then the tech industry in general and when the area where I live has a chance at avoiding the worst outcome (even if at a price) in this technological transition I'm taking it.
- Clubber 2y agoAlso, most of the robber barons of the early Industrial Revolution gave away all or most their wealth. https://factmyth.com/factoids/the-robber-barons-gave-most-of-their-fortunes-to-charity https://factmyth.com/factoids/the-robber-barons-gave-most-of... https://www.carnegie.org/about/our-history/gospelofwealth/ https://www.carnegie.org/about/our-history/gospelofwealth/
- vrighter 2y agoWhat money? Aren't most (all?) AI companies are operating at a loss?
- jsheard 2y agoThe ones selling the shovels are doing well, but otherwise yeah nobody is making any money. For the true believers that's just a temporary setback on the way to becoming trillionaires though.
- alan-hn 2y agoI think the people getting salaries are doing just fine
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- opdahl 2y agoWell they are spending billions to make shovels that they are selling for millions (roughly).
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- jsheard 2y agoThe shovel salesmen in this case are the likes of Nvidia, Huggingface and Runpod who are on the receiving end of the billions that AI model salesmen are spending to make millions in revenue. HF are one of the vanishingly few AI-centric startups who claim to already be profitable, because they're positioned as a money sink for the other AI-centric startups who are bleeding cash.
- gklitz 2y ago5 billions in losses on 3.7 billions in revenue. So yes OpenAI is losing money, but they are looking at a valuation of 150 billion, so they could easily get investors to fund the losses, but of cause the case for investors has to be “invest and you can make a profit” which can be a tough sell if the mission isn’t aligned with making a profit for the company.
- coffeebeqn 2y agoWill they finally rename the company?
- ognyankulev 2y agoRenaming to "TheAI" would match their ambition for AGI.
- tokai 2y agoClopenAI
- lioeters 2y agoI hope some journalist popularizes "clopen" as a neologism to describe organizations that claim to be open and transparent but in practice are closed and opaque. Or "clopen-source software", projects that claim to be open-source but vital pieces are proprietary.
- beepbooptheory 2y agoProbably most people here don't know this (and probably not totally universal), but a "clopen" is what you call it when you have to work a morning shift the day after having worked an evening shift.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- srvmshr 2y agoIt seemed only a matter of time, so it isn't very surprising. Capped profit company running expensive resources on Internet scale, and headed by Altman wasn't going to last forever in that state. That, or getting gobbled by Microsoft. Interesting timing of the news since Murati left today, gdb is 'inactive' and Sutskevar has left to start his own company. Also seeing few OpenAI folks announcing their future plans today on X/Twitter
- mellosouls 2y agoa couple of other discussions going on including this one with non-paywall op: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Flex247A 2y agoThe jokes write themselves!
- code51 2y agoAre the previous investments counting as "donations" still? Elon must have something to say...
- Maledictus 2y agoAnd the tax office! If this works, many companies will be founded as non-profit first in the future.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y agoThe most surprising thing to me in this is that the non-profit will still exist. Not sure what the point of it is anymore. Taken as a whole, OpenAI is now just a for-profit entity beholden to investors and Sam Altman as a shareholder. The non-profit is really just vestigial. I guess technically it's supposed to play some role in making sure OpenAI "benefits humanity". But as we've seen multiple times, whenever that goal clashes with the interests of investors, the latter wins out.
- bayindirh 2y ago> The most surprising thing to me in this is that the non-profit will still exist. That entity will scrape the internet and train the models and claim that "it's just research" to be able to claim that all is fair-use. At this point it's not even funny anymore.
- lioeters 2y agoScraping the entire internet for training data without regard for copyright or attribution - specifically to use for generative AI to produce similar content for profit. How this is being allowed to happen legally is baffling. It does suit the modus operandi of a number of American companies that start out as literally illegal/criminal operations until they get big and rich enough to pay a fine for their youthful misdeeds. By the time some of them get huge, they're in bed with the government to dominate the market.
- FragrantRiver 2y agoWhat is the crime?
- brayhite 2y agoA tale as told as time.
- johnwheeler 2y agoTo me this is a no brainer. If it’s a choice between having AI and not,
- seydor 2y agoan AGI is showering us with irony
- sandwichmonger 2y agoThen why keep the name OpenAI?
- zmgsabst 2y agoMicrosoft needs to lie due to pervasive ill-will from their previous abuses.
- high_na_euv 2y agoSome people will always manage to blame MSFT, even for someones else shadiness, lol. Consider adding some EEE
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoThis would have been the perfect time to change it, but maybe soon if not at same time as any official announcement. It's hard to say if there is much brand value left with "OpenAI" - lots of history, but lots of toxicity too. At the end of the day they'll do as well as they are able to differentiate and sell their increasingly commoditized products, in a competitive landscape where they've got Meta able to give it away for free.
- Mistletoe 2y ago"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them". -1984
- charles_f 2y agoIt's a widely known brand, even by people outside of the industry. Why would they change it? Their AI was never really open to begin with, so nothing really change on that front
- throwaway918299 2y agoOpen(YourWallet)AI
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- zmgsabst 2y agoSo if I contributed IP to ChatGPT on the basis that OpenAI was a non-profit and they relicense can they sell my IP? That seems like fraud to me.
- boppo1 2y agoDidn't altman say 'pwease wet us ignowe copywhite waw! we can't be pwofitabwe if we don't...' in some legal forum recently?
- phito 2y agoI know nothing about companies (esp. in the US), but I find it weird that a company can go from non-profit to for-profit? Surely this would be taken advantage of. Can someone explain me how this work?
- kupopuffs 2y agoTime to go open source
- csomar 2y agoI am not a tax specialist but from my understanding a non-profit is a for-profit that doesn't pay dividends. Why would the government care?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jprete 2y agoThat's not correct, they also have tax advantages and a requirement to fulfill their charter.
- freedomben 2y agoNo, a non-profit is one in which there are no shareholders. The non-profit entity can own a lot and be extremely successful and wealthy, but it cannot give that money to any shareholders. It can pay out large salaries, but those salaries are scrutinized. It doesn't prevent abuse, and it certainly doesn't prevent some unscrupulous person from becoming extremely wealthy with a non-profit, but it is a little more complicated and limiting than you would think. Also, you get audited with routine regularity and if you are found in violation you lose your tax-exempt status, but you still are not a for-profit.
- bbor 2y agoYes: non-profits usually have members, not shareholders. And, most importantly: non-profit charities (not the only kind of nonprofit, but presumably what OpenAI was) are legally obligated to operate “for the public good”. That’s why they’re tax exempt: the government is basically donating to them, with the understanding that they’re benefiting the public indirectly by doing so, not just making a few people rich. In my understanding, this is just blatant outright fraud that any sane society would forbid. If you want to start a for-profit that’s fine, but you’d have to give away the nonprofit and its assets, not just roll it over to your own pocketbook. God I hope Merrick Garland isn’t asleep at the wheel. They’ve been trust busting like mad during this administration, so hopefully they’re taking aim at this windmill, too.
- unnouinceput 2y agoThat's a lot of words for Micro$oft to say they just love money. Who knew!
- Prkasd 2y agoThat could be the first step towards a complete takeover by Microsoft, possibly followed by more CEO shuffles. I wonder though whether Microsoft is still interested. The free Bing Copilot barely gets any resources and gives very bad answers now. If the above theory is correct (big if!), perhaps Microsoft wants to pivot to the military space. That would be in line with idealist employees leaving or being fired.
- baq 2y ago> CEO shuffles Yes, I too can see how sama could end up as Microsoft’s CEO as a result of this
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoI don't see the point of anyone acquiring OpenAI - especially not Microsoft, Google, Meta, Anthropic, X.ai, all of which have developed the same tech themselves. The real assets are the people, who are leaving ship and potentially hireable. With this much turmoil, its hard to imagine we've seen the last of the high level exits.
- int_19h 2y agoOf the companies you've listed, Microsoft's AI products that are actually useful are all based on GPT-4, and the rest of them don't have any models that are truly on par with it.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoo1 seems to be a step ahead for certain applications, but before that it seems that Claude Sonnet 3.5 was widely seen as the best model, and no doubt we'll be seeing next models from Anthropic shortly. For corporate use cost/benefit is a big factor, not necessarily what narrow benchmarks your expensive top model can eke out a win on.
- int_19h 2y agoClaude was not the best model for reasoning even vs 4o, and it's quite visible once you start giving it more complex logical puzzles. People seem to like it more mostly because the way it speaks is less forced and robotic, and it's better at creative writing usually, but if you need actual _intelligence_, GPT is still quite a bit ahead of everybody else. Now I don't think that it's because OpenAI has some kind of secret sauce. It rather seems that it's mostly due to their first mover advantage and access to immense hardware resources thanks to their Microsoft partnership. Nevertheless, whatever the reason their models are superior, that superiority is quantifiable in money.
- DebtDeflation 2y agoWouldn't surprise me if this was the actual cause of the revolt that led to Altman's short-lived ouster, they just couldn't publicly admit to it so made up a bunch of other nonsensical explanations.
- gklitz 2y agoYou have cause and effect flipped. The non-profit didn’t try to oust Sam because he was getting the non-profit to disengage from OpenAIs capped profit entity, that makes no sense and he can’t do that, he can’t stear the hand of the non-profit board. What is happening is that he’s detangling the non-profit from what will be the for-profit in order to not have people trying to throw him overboard. It was obviously going to happen the second the non-profit board thought they could just fire him and take control.
- HeralFacker 2y agoConverting to a for-profit changes the tax status of donations. It also voids plausibility for Fair Use exemptions. I can see large copyright holders lining up with takedowns demanding they revise their originating datasets since there will now be a clear-cut commercial use without license.
- zmgsabst 2y agoI hope I can join in, as a consumer, because there’s a difference between using the IP I contribute to conversations for a non-profit and a commercial enterprise.
- codewench 2y agoI suspect that if you have ever posted copyrightable material online, you will have valid cause to sue them, as they very obviously have incorporated your work for commercial gain. That said, I unfortunately put your chances of winning in court very low.
- zelphirkalt 2y agoAnd why is it, that winning chances are low? Why do the courts let big tech trample on our rights, but the small man goes to jail or has to pay fines for much much less? And how can this situation be improved? Hopefully at least in the EU someone will wake up and make better laws or even start applying them to the current situation.
- account42 2y ago> And how can this situation be improved? https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/576cb32f05aae_louisette.jpg https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/...
- shakna 2y agoA non-profit entity will continue to exist. Likely for the reasons you stated.
- refurb 2y agoThe restructuring is designed in part to make OpenAI more attractive to investors I'm not surprised in the least. Who is going to give billions to a non-profit with a bizarre structure where you don't actually own a part of it but have some "claim" with a capped profit? Can you imagine bringing that to Delaware courts if there was disagreement over the terms? Investors can risk it if it's a few million, but good luck convincing institutional investors to commit billions with that structure. At that point you might as well just go with a standard for-profit model where ownership is clear, terms are standard and enforceable in court and people don't have to keep saying "explain how it works again?".
- stonethrowaway 2y agoI’m waiting for pg and others to excuse this all by posting another apologetic penance which reminds us that founders are unicorns and everyone else is a pleb.
- brap 2y agopg is sama’s biggest DR-er (interpret this as you will). They have that Michael Scott & Ryan energy.
- imdsm 2y agoLot of people unhappy about this yet not at all unhappy (or even caring) about the 1,000s of others who started out for profit. And while we're all here hacking away (we're hackers, right?) many of us with startups, what is it we're chasing? Profit, money, time, control. Are we different except in scale? Food for thought.
- bayindirh 2y agoIt's not what they're doing (trying to earn money), but it's how they're doing it (in a very unethical and damaging way), while trying to whitewash themselves.
- neprune 2y agoI see your point but I think it's fine to be angry and disappointed that an outfit that appeared to be trying to do it differently has abandoned the effort.
- imdsm 2y agoPerhaps it's the only way to survive? And what comes first, the mission, or being able to tell people you did your best but failed to build the thing you set out to build? Perhaps most of us are more interested in fairness than progress, and that's fine.
- quonn 2y agoHow is this food for thought? OpenAI had an unfair advantage by starting out as a non-profit.
- retskrad 2y agoAltman and OpenAI deserve their success. They’ve been key to the LLM revolution and the push toward AGI. Without their vision to make a product out of an LLM that hundreds of millions of people now use and have greatly enriched their lives, companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Meta wouldn’t have invested so heavily in AI. While we’ve heard about the questionable ethics of people like Jobs, Musk, and Altman, their work speaks for itself. If they’re advancing humanity, do their personal flaws really matter?
- idle_zealot 2y ago> If they’re advancing humanity, do their personal flaws really matter? Well, yeah, they're positioning themselves as some of the most powerful and influential individuals on earth. I'd say any personality flaws are pretty important.
- cebu_blue 2y agoElon Musk isn't "advancing humanity".
- cbeach 2y agoI'm sure there were people that claimed Nikola Tesla or Henry Ford weren't "advancing humanity" at the time. There will always be people who disagree with the politics/opinions/alleigances of a successful person and who wish to downplay their success for selfish reasons.
- squidsoup 2y agoPlease don't besmirch Tesla's good name by comparing him to Musk.
- PierceJoy 2y ago> There will always be people who disagree with the politics/opinions/alleigances of a successful person and who wish to downplay their success for selfish reasons. And conversely, there will always be people who agree with the politics/opinions/alleigances of a successful person and who wish to overstate the reasons behind their success for selfish reasons.
- upwardbound 2y agoRelatedly, dalant979 found this fascinating bit of history: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/cszwpgq/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the... Yishan Wong describes a series of actions by Yishan and Sam Altman as a "con", and Sam jumps in to brag that it was "child's play for me" with a smiley face. :)
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- benterix 2y agoThe board drama part and key people leaving seem oddly familiar.
- latexr 2y ago> and Sam jumps in to brag I never read that as a brag, but as a sarcastic dismissal. That’s why it started with “cool story bro” and “except I could never have predicted”. I see the tone as “this story is convoluted” not as “I’ll admit to my plan now that you can’t do anything about it”. That’s not to say Sam isn’t a scammer. He is. It just doesn’t seem like that particular post is proof of it. But Worldcoin is. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldcoin-crypto-eyeball-scanning-orb-problems https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldcoin-... https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoin-cryptocurrency-biometrics-web3/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi...
- upwardbound 2y agoIf I understand the history correctly, Yishan (the former Reddit CEO) is talking about himself when he talks about a CEO in this story, and so Yishan's post is a brag, with a thin denial tacked on at the end. That's why I believe that Sam (Yishan's friend) is also engaging in thinly-veiled bragging about these events. Here is Yishan's comment with his name spelled out for clarity instead of just saying "CEO": In 2006, reddit was sold to Conde Nast. It was soon obvious to many that the sale had been premature, the site was unmanaged and under-resourced under the old-media giant who simply didn't understand it and could never realize its full potential, so the founders and their allies in Y-Combinator (where reddit had been born) hatched an audacious plan to re-extract reddit from the clutches of the 100-year-old media conglomerate. Together with Sam Altman, they recruited a young up-and-coming technology manager [named Yishan Wong] with social media credentials. Alexis, who was on the interview panel for the new reddit CEO, would reject all other candidates except this one. The manager was to insist as a condition of taking the job that Conde Nast would have to give up significant ownership of the company, first to employees by justifying the need for equity to be able to hire top talent, bringing in Silicon Valley insiders to help run the company. After continuing to grow the company, [Yishan Wong] would then further dilute Conde Nast's ownership by raising money from a syndicate of Silicon Valley investors led by Sam Altman, now the President of Y-Combinator itself, who in the process would take a seat on the board. Once this was done, [Yishan Wong] and his team would manufacture a series of otherwise-improbable leadership crises, forcing the new board to scramble to find a new CEO, allowing Altman to use his position on the board to advocate for the re-introduction of the old founders, installing them on the board and as CEO, thus returning the company to their control and relegating Conde Nast to a position as minority shareholder. JUST KIDDING. There's no way that could happen. -- yishanwong My understanding of what Sam meant by "I could never have predicted the part where you resigned on the spot" was that he was conveying respect for Yishan essentially out-playing Sam at the end (the two of them are friends) by distancing himself (Yishan) from the situation and any potential liability in order to leave Sam "holding the bag" of possible liability.
- allie1 2y ago"Shocking!" It's a shame that one of the biggest advancements of our time has come about in as sleazy a way as it has. Reputationally... the net winner is Zuck. Way to go Meta (never thought I'd think this).
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- addedlovely 2y agoIn that case, where can I apply for my licensing fee for my content they have scraped and trained on. List of crawlers for those who now want to block: https://platform.openai.com/docs/bots https://platform.openai.com/docs/bots
- nikcub 2y agomight as well do the full list: https://github.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.txt/blob/main/robots.txt https://github.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.txt/blob/main/rob... cloudflare have a button for this: https://blog.cloudflare.com/declaring-your-aindependence-block-ai-bots-scrapers-and-crawlers-with-a-single-click/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/declaring-your-aindependence-blo...
- username223 2y agoDon't stop at robots.txt blocking. Look through your access logs, and you'll likely find a few IPs generating a huge amount of traffic. Look them up via "whois," then block the entire IP range if it seems like a bot host. There's no reason for cloud providers to browse my personal site, so if they host crawlers, they get blocked.
- 7373737373 2y agoThank you very much for mentioning these! These parasites deserve to burn in hell for their greed and violation of consent
- cdchn 2y agoI wonder how the AI/copyright arguments will play out in court. "If I read your book and I have a photographic memory and can recall any paragraph do I need to pay you a licensing fee?" "If I go through your library and count all the times that 'the' is adjacent to 'end' do I need to get your permission to then tell that number to other people?"
- zelphirkalt 2y agoCases where we see the absurdity of copyright in its current form. But either we have it for everyone, including OpenAI, or for no one. Or are perhaps some more equal than others before the law?
- uxhacker 2y agoHere is the story without a paywall https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-remove-non-profit-control-give-sam-altman-equity-sources-say-2024-09-25/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/o...
- neilv 2y agoThe incremental transformation from non-profit to for-profit... does anyone have legal standing to sue? Early hires, who were lured there by the mission? Donors? People who were supposed to be served by the non-profit (everyone)? Some government regulator?
- bbor 2y agoThis is the most important question, IMO! ChatGPT says that employees and donors would have to show that they were defrauded (lied to), which IMO wouldn’t exactly be hard given the founding documents. But the real power falls to the government, both state (Delaware presumably…?) and federal. It mentions the IRS, but AFAIU the DoJ itself could easily bring litigation based on defrauding the government. Hell, maybe throw the SEC in there! In a normal situation, the primary people with standing to prevent such a move would be the board members of the non-profit, which makes sense. Luckily for Sam, the employees helped kick out all the dissenters a long time ago.
- jjulius 2y agoGenuinely curious because I have no idea how any of this works... Would the founding documents actually count as proof of a lie? I feel like the defense could easily make the argument that the documents accurately represented their intent at the time, but as time went on they found that it made more sense to change. It seems like, if the founding documents were to be proof of a lie, you'd have to have corresponding proof that the documents were intentionally written to mislead people.
- bbor 2y agoGreat point, and based on my amateur understanding you’re absolutely correct. I was mostly speaking so confidently because these founding documents in particular define the company as being founded to prevent exactly this. You’re right that Altman is/will sell it as an unexpected but necessary adaptation to external circumstances, but that’s a hard sell. Potentially not to a court, sadly, but definitely in the public eye. For example: We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions… We are committed to providing public goods that help society navigate the path to AGI. From 2018: https://web.archive.org/web/20230714043611/https://openai.com/charter https://web.archive.org/web/20230714043611/https://openai.co... And this is the very first paragraph of their founding blog post, from 2015: OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. Since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact. https://openai.com/index/introducing-openai/ https://openai.com/index/introducing-openai/
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoAnd more high level exits ... not only Mira Murati, but also Bob McGrew , and Barret Zoph https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-note-more-staff-exits-barret-bob-2024-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-note-more-...
- nikcub 2y agoDifficult to see how these two stories aren't related. OpenAI has been one of the most insane business stories in years. I can't wait to read a full book about it that isn't written by either Walter Isaacson or Michael Lewis.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoI've only read Michael Lewis's "Liars Poker" which I enjoyed, but perhaps that sort of treatment of OpenAI would make it into more of a drama (which also seems to be somewhat true) and gloss over what the key players were really thinking which is what would really be interesting.
- edm0nd 2y agoI want Chuck Palahniuk to write the book. It would be dark and amazing.
- nikcub 2y agolove chuck because the third act would be sam eating his own head while realising AGI was created to delete itself and taking away everything that is his
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- drmindle12358 2y agoDo you have appetite for a poem? @sama made it on my list of Silicon Valley villains [1] long time ago: "Villain staging the show / open, close / you can count on the con man to wow you / even though, the only trick he knows / is the “law” of scale / but let's just hope / The con man doesn't turn into evil / when the thing he has is real and powerful" [1] https://www.drmindle.com/ai-is-not-dangerous/#villains-in-the-veil https://www.drmindle.com/ai-is-not-dangerous/#villains-in-th...
- fxbois 2y agoCan anyone trust the next "non-profit" startup ? So easy to attract appeal with a lie and turn around as soon as you are in a dominant position.
- bbor 2y agoYes, you should still trust cooperatives and syndicates. I am surprised they’re attempting such a brazenly disrespectful move, but in general, the people who started this company were self-avowed capitalists through-and-through; the fact that they eventually reverted to seeking personal gain isn’t surprising in itself. That’s basically their world view: whatever I can do to enrich myself is moral because Ethical Egoism/Free Market/etc.
- int_19h 2y agoThe trust problem here isn't with non-profits in general, it's specifically with Sam Altman. So no, you probably shouldn't trust the next non-profit he is involved with. But also, people have warned about Altman in advance.
- RivieraKid 2y agoGood, I would do the same because it's a reasonable thing to do. It's easier to succeed as a for-profit.
- j_maffe 2y agoSucceed off of lies and deceit to gain goodwill from workers and governments.
- wg0 2y agoFor profit it will be when it will be profitable.
- roody15 2y agoWait.. Sam Altman also owns (or did own) ycombinator?
- mrkramer 2y agoI called this 9 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38560352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38560352 OpenAI is Microsoft's AI R&D spin-off and Microsoft means business.
- georgeplusplus 2y agoI never understood why people take non profit companies as more altruistic than for profit companies. The non profit doesnt mean no profits at all they still have to be profitable. It's just boils down to how the profits are distributed. There are plenty of sleezy institutions that are non profit like the NCAA. Foundations and charitable organizations that pubically get their funding are a different story but I'm talking about non profit companies. I even had one fellow say that the green bay packers were less corrupt than the other for profit nfl teams , which sounds ridiculous.
- hedora 2y agoRegarding the Packers: At least (unlike literally every other NFL team), they’re not using city tax revenue to build a franchise that can move across the country at the drop of a hat. The NFL’s non-profit status is a farce though. Similarly, their misuse of copyright (“you cannot discuss this broadcast”) and the trademark “Super Bowl” (“cannot be used in factual statements regarding the actual Super Bowl”) should have their ownership of that ip revoked, if only because it causes massive confusion about the underlying law with a big chunk of the US population.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- limit499karma 2y agoReuters had the exclusive yesterday but somehow it never surfaced for long here: "OpenAI to remove non-profit control and give Sam Altman equity" https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-remove-non-profit-control-give-sam-altman-equity-sources-say-2024-09-25/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/o...
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoIt appeared but was buried on the second page and never made it to the front page, for some weird reason. Some in the discussion speculated that it was due to a flame war detection algorithm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548
- CatWChainsaw 2y ago"for some weird reason" when Altman was an important player at YC and PG still sings his praises.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- widerporst 2y agoThe fact that this has just disappeared from the front page for me, just like the previous post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548), somehow leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
- mattcollins 2y agoI noticed that, too. It does seem 'odd'.
- majke 2y agohttps://hnrankings.info/41655954/ https://hnrankings.info/41655954/ Looks like it was flagged, before being brought back by an admin. This happens quite often.
- lolinder 2y agoThe previous post never entered the front page at all: https://hnrankings.info/41651548/ https://hnrankings.info/41651548/ It somehow got enough attention to get to 300+ votes while being entirely suppressed from the front page. This one looks like it triggered a flag before being fixed: https://hnrankings.info/41655954/ https://hnrankings.info/41655954/
- jjulius 2y agoI found this on the front page an hour after you made this comment.
- sumeno 2y agoYou can't post content critical of some HN darlings without being flagged by their fans
- jjulius 2y agoHow do you explain all of the constant unflagged criticism of OpenAI and Sam Altman throughout nearly every OpenAI thread? I mean, look around at all of the comments here...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- neilv 2y agoThis post somehow fell off the front page before California wakes up (9:07 ET), but not buried deep like buried posts usually are: > 57. OpenAI to Become For-Profit Company (wsj.com) 204 points by jspann 4 hours ago | flag | hide | 110 comments
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- upwardbound 2y agoThank you dalant979 for finding a previous pattern of behavior also by Sam with a similar structure to what we have seen unfolding on the board of OpenAI. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41657001#41657014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41657001#41657014
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Mistletoe 2y agoFeels like when Napoleon declared himself emperor, and other countless times when humans succumbed to power and greed when they were finally in the position to make that decision. I guess I’m stupid for holding on hope that Sam would be different. >Beethoven's reaction to Napoleon Bonaparte's declaration of himself as Emperor of France in May 1804 was to violently tear Napoleon's name out of the title page of his symphony, Bonaparte, and rename it Sinfonia Eroica >Beethoven was furious and exclaimed that Napoleon was "a common mortal" who would "become a tyrant"
- qwertox 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- whywhywhywhy 2y agoThis is for the best really, I can't even think of a non-profit in tech where over time it hasn't just become a system for non-productives to leech from a successful bit of technology while providing nothing and at times even stunting it's potential and burning money on farcical things.
- dev1ycan 2y agoSam altman is just trying to cash out before the crash comes, the new model was nothing more than a glorified recursive gpt 4
- causal 2y agoConsidering all the high level departures, this makes the most sense to me. Their valuation largely rests on this mystique they've built that says they alone are destined to unlock AGI. But there's just no reason to believe they have a secret sauce nobody else can reproduce. Seems more likely that OpenAI's biggest secret is that they have no secrets, and they are desperately trying to come up with a second act as tech companies with more robust product portfolios begin to catch up.
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoNot the only one questioning. Going for-Profit, and several top exec leaving at same time? Before getting the money? """Question: why would key people leave an organization right before it was just about to develop AGI?" asked xAI developer Benjamin De Kraker in a post on X just after Murati's announcement. "This is kind of like quitting NASA months before the moon landing," he wrote in a reply. "Wouldn't you wanna stick around and be part of it?""" https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/openais-murati-shocks-with-sudden-departure-announcement/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/opena... Is this the beginning of the end for OpenAI?
- gklitz 2y agoThe point is that OpenAI (the for protists) won’t die from not having invested AGI, they have an extremely profitable opportunity from “just” selling api calls and consultant hours. But that just brings them a successful shovel seller, not the societal transformation that the non-profit is aiming at, so it makes sense to detangle the non-profit and for profit. Also because you know… the non-profit tried to strangle the for profit to take over control when they tried to oust Sam, so there’s that.
- Sunscratch 2y agoShould be renamed to NonOpenAI,or MoneyMattersAI
- lenerdenator 2y agoAre you meaning to tell me that the whole nonprofit thing was just a shtick to get people to think that this generation of SV "founders" was going to save the world, for real this time guys? I'm shocked. Shocked! I better stock up on ways of disrupting computational machinery and communications from a distance. They'll build SkyNet if it means more value for shareholders.
- baradhiren07 2y agoValue vs Morality. Only time will tell who wins.
- lenerdenator 2y agoIn many SV denizens' heads, they're one in the same. Which is why we need to reopen more asylums and bring back involuntary commitment.
- charles_f 2y agoI'm wondering what this will change. This is probably naive from me because I'm relatively uneducated on the topic, but it feels like open-ai has never really worked like your typical non profit (eg keeping their stuff mostly closed sourced and seeking a profit)
- humansareok1 2y agoGiven what Sam has done by clearing out every single person who went against him in the initial coup and completely gutting every safety related team the entire world should be on notice. If you believe what Sam Altman himself and many other researchers are saying, that AGI and ASI may well be within reach inside this decade, then every possible alarm bell should be blaring. Sam cannot be allowed to be in control of the most important technology ever devised.
- lolinder 2y agoI don't know why anyone would believe anything this guy is saying, though, especially now that we know he's going to receive a 7% stake in the now-for-profit company. There are two main interpretations of what he's saying: 1) He sincerely believes that AGI is around the corner. 2) He sees that his research team is hitting a plateau of what is possible and is prepping for a very successful exit before the rest of the world notices the plateau. Given his track record of honesty and the financial incentives involved, I know which interpretation I lean towards.
- mirekrusin 2y ago...or he's just Palpatine who wants shitload of money regardless of future speculations, end of story.
- cowpig 2y agoThis is a false dichotomy. Clearly getting money and control are the main objectives here, and we're all operating over a distribution of possible outcomes.
- lolinder 2y agoI don't think so. If Altman is prepping for an exit (which I think he is), I'm having a very hard time imagining a world in which he also sincerely believes his company is about to achieve AGI. An exit only makes sense if OpenAI is currently at approximately its peak valuation, not if it is truly likely to be the first to AGI (which, if achieved, would give it a nearly infinite value).
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548
- lolinder 2y agoThat one never made it to the front page because reasons. All that discussion was people reading the story elsewhere and going looking for the HN thread.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agonever made it? That's the thread. The discussion is there. Long before this one. Lots of people saw it, commented on it. It's a dupe. Stop splitting the discussion up.
- lolinder 2y agoIt was never above page 4 (position 90): https://hnrankings.info/41651548/ https://hnrankings.info/41651548/ This version of the thread is the first to have had any traction on the front page. When the algorithm artificially stops a topic from surfacing to the front page, the article that finally makes it past the algorithm's suppression is not a duplicate, it's the canonical copy.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoSo what if it didn't make the front page. That doesn't mean ppl didn't see it. Doesn't mean ppl aren't commenting on it. Maybe it's just not that interesting. There was also a lot of other big news at the same time with Meta etc taking attention. And followed by the other OpenAI news with Mira. Again, the discussion is there.
- lolinder 2y agoYou're seriously going to argue that OpenAI changing to a for profit wasn't interesting enough to rise above page 4 of Hacker News? Doesn't the existence of this second thread disprove that claim pretty thoroughly? I'm pretty sure that what happened is that the Murati thread was id'd by the algorithm as the canonical OpenAI discussion, artificially suppressing the more interesting topic of the complete restructuring of the most important company in existence today.
- skadamat 2y agoNow the real question is - will they finally drop the "Open" part?
- kweingar 2y agoCan anybody explain how this actually works? What happens to all of the non-profit's assets? They can't just give it away for investors to own. The non-profit could maybe sell its assets to investors, but then what would it do with the money? I'm sure OpenAI has an explanation, but I really want to hear more details. In the most simple analysis of "non-profit becomes for-profit", there's really no way to square it other than non-profit assets (generated through donations) just being handed to somebody for private ownership.
- tomp 2y agoexactly. If that's how it works, why wouldn't you start every startup as a non-profit? Investment is tax deductible, no tax on profits... Then turn it into a for-profit if/when it becomes successful!
- jameshart 2y agoDonations are not investments. They don’t result in ownership.
- n2d4 2y agoAfter the non-profit sells its assets, it would either donate the proceeds in a way that would be aligned with the original mission, or continue to exist as a bag of cash, basically.
- kweingar 2y agoIt seems incredibly convenient that a non-profit's leaders can say "I want equity in a for-profit company, so we will sell our assets to investors (who will hire me) and pass off the proceeds to some other non-profit org run by some other schmuck. This is in the public interest."
- n2d4 2y agoState regulators have to sign off on the deal; it's not sufficient for the non-profit board to agree to it.
- aoeusnth1 2y agoThe IRS should get involved. This is a cut and dry case of embezzlement of 501c3 resources.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hakcermani 2y agoCan they at least change the name to from OpenAI to something else, and leave gutted OpenAI as the non-profit shell..
- anon291 2y agoWonder what happens to the employee's equity.
- Traubenfuchs 2y agoWhy were they a non-profit in the first case?
- throw_m239339 2y agoI imagine for tax reasons? Why the h are they called "openAI" too? nothing is open for them but your own wallet.
- fourseventy 2y agoSo are they going to give elon equity? He donated millions to the non profit and now they are going to turn around and turn the company into a for-profit based on the work done with that capital.
- LeafItAlone 2y agoGiven that Musk was already worried about this and has a legal team the size of a small army, one would expect that any conditions he wanted applied to the donation would have been made at the time.
- wmf 2y agoElon has allegedly refused equity in OpenAI. He seems to want it to go back to its original mission (which isn't going to happen) or die (which isn't going to happen).
- throwaway314155 2y agoSam Altman also allegedly had no interest in equity.
- uhtred 2y agoFund your startup by masquerading as a non profit for a few years and collecting donations, genius! The stinking peasants will never realize what's happening until it's too late to stop!
- bjornsing 2y agoThe OpenAI saga is a fine illustration of how “AI safety” will work in practice. Hint: it won’t.
- typon 2y agoAI Safety is a science fiction created by large corporations and useful idiots to distract from working on boring, real AI safety concerns like bias, misinformation, deepfakes, etc.
- yapyap 2y agoBecome? lol
- bossyTeacher 2y agoThere is an post with 500 comments that was posted before this one. Why didn't that post make it to the top? I know Y Combinator used to have Sama has a president but you can't censor this type of big news in this time and age
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- thesurlydev 2y agoI can't help but wonder if things would be different if Sam Altman wasn't allowed to come back to OpenAI. Instead, the safeguards are gone, challengers have left the company, and the bottom line is now the new priority. All in opposition to ushering in AI advancement with the caution and respect it deserves.
- elAhmo 2y agoSimilar example can be seen with the demise of Twitter under the new owner, which has no safeguards or guardrails - anyone who opposed him is gone and we can see in what state it is now.
- MaxHoppersGhost 2y agoNow Twitter has both left and right propaganda instead of just left wing propaganda. Bummer.
- senorrib 2y agoWith the small difference that Twitter is a for-profit company, unlike OpenAI.
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- imranhou 2y agoBased on what I've read it is allowed for a non profit to own a for profit asset. So I'm assuming the game plan here is to adjust the charter of the non profit to basically say we are going to still keep doing "Open AI" (we all know what that means), but through the proceeds it gets by selling chunks of this for-profit entity, so the essence could be the non-profit parent isn't fulfilling its mission by controlling what openai does but how it puts the money to use it gets from openai. And in this process, Sam gets a chunk (as a payment for growing the assets of the non-profit, like a salary/bonus) and the rest as well....?
- SkyPuncher 2y agoI went through something similar with a prior startup. Though, it wasn't anything nefarious, like this. Basically, the plan was to create a new for-profit entity then have the not-for-profit license the existing IP to the for-profit. There were a lot of technicalities to it, but most of that was handled by lawyers drawing up the chartering paperwork.
- breck 2y agoThis is great. Sam tried the non-profit thing, it turned out not be a good fit for the world, and he's adapting. We all get to benefit from seeing how non-profits are just not the best idea. There are better ways to improve the world than having non-profits (for example, we need to abolish copyright and patent law; that alone would eliminate the need for perhaps the majority of non-profits that exist today, which are all working to combat things that are downstream of the the toxic information environment created by those laws).
- garbanz0 2y agoYes, Altman not having 7% of the company was not a good fit for the world.
- PeterCorless 2y ago[flagged]
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- kidsil 2y agoAnd the enshittification process begins.
- hooverd 2y agoWill they be rebranding to ClosedAI?
- throwup238 2y agoI’m confused by this news story and the response here. No one seems to understand OpenAI’s corporate structure or non profits at all. My understanding: OpenAI follows the same model Mozilla does. The nonprofit has owned a for-profit corporation called OpenAI Global, LLC that pays taxes on any revenue that isn’t directly in service of their mission (in a very narrow sense based on judicial precedent) since 2019 [1]. In Mozilla’s case that’s the revenue they make from making Google the default search engine and in OpenAI’s case that’s all their ChatGPT and API revenue. The vast majority (all?) engineers work for the for-profit and always have. The vast majority (all?) revenue goes through the for-profit which pays taxes on that revenue minus the usual business deductions. The only money that goes to the nonprofit tax-free are donations. Everything else is taxed at least once at the for-profit corporation. Almost every nonprofit that raises revenue outside of donations has to be structured more or less this way to pay taxes. They don’t get to just take any taxable revenue stream and declare it tax free. All OpenAI is doing here is decoupling ownership of the for-profit entity from the nonprofit. They’re allowing the for profit to create more shares and distribute them to entities other than the non-profit. Or am I completely misinformed? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#2019:_Transition_from_non-profit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#2019:_Transition_from_n...
- seizethecheese 2y ago“Decoupling” is such a strange euphemism for removing an asset worth north of $100b from a nonprofit.
- throwup238 2y agoOpenAI Global LLC is the $100b asset. It’s not being removed, the nonprofit will still own all the shares it owns now until it decides to sell.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sangnoir 2y agoThe shares will be diluted - the LLC used to be 100% owned by the non-profit; and now there's no bottom.
- lucasyvas 2y agoBoo this man, booo.
- Kim_Bruning 2y agoI guess this vindicates the (original) OpenAI Board, when they tried to fire Sam Altman.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hyggetrold 2y agoReminds me of what my first-year econ professor in college once stated after disabusing myself and some other undergrads of our romantic notions about how life should work. "Do I shock you? This is capitalism."
- djohnston 2y agoWhen a company makes such a transition are they liable for any sort of backdated taxes/expenses they avoided as a non-profit?
- 1024core 2y agoNow we know why people like Ilya, Brockman, Murati, etc. left the company.
- throwaway314155 2y agoAny reporting on the impact this is having on lower level employees? My understanding is they are all sticking around for their shares to vest (or RSU's I guess). but still, you'd think some of them would have finally had enough and have enough opportunities elsewhere that they can leave.
- haliskerbas 2y agoWoah, the pompous eccentric billionaire(?) is actually not altruistic, never heard this story before! /s
- zombiwoof 2y agoShocking
- croes 2y agoAnd suddenly Altman's firing no longer seems so crazy
- crystal_revenge 2y ago"suddenly"? I was under the impression that most people saw this coming years ago. The second "Open"AI refused to release the weights for GPT-2 for our "safety" (we can see in hind sight how obviously untrue this was, but most of us saw it then too) it was clear that they were headed towards profitability.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- KoolKat23 2y agoI do wonder if this is why Mira left, as one of the non-profit board members.
- keepamovin 2y agoMonday to come after Sunday, in revised push for transparency
- sergiotapia 2y agohttps://x.com/yacineMTB/status/1839039293961961543 https://x.com/yacineMTB/status/1839039293961961543 so much for sam "i have no equity" altman
- piyuv 2y agoI hope they rename the company soon, it’s a disgrace to call it “open”
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- adversaryIdiot 2y agoAhh the American way
- redbell 2y agoIt's really hard to stick to your original goals after you achieve unexpected success. It's like a politician making promises before the elections but finding it difficult to keep them once elected. On March 1st, 2023, a warning was already sounding: OpenAI Is Now Everything It Promised Not to Be: Corporate, Closed-Source, and For-Profit (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34979981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34979981)
- msie 2y agoQuelle surprise.
- jwr 2y agoCan we all agree that the next time a company announces itself (or a product) as "open", we'll just laugh out loud? I can't think of a single product or company that used the "open" word for something that was actually open in any meaningful way.
- dmitrygr 2y agoMost of us laughed out loud this time too, for this very same reason. But it is fun to watch the rest of y'all learn :)
- rqtwteye 2y agoWhen will they start adding ads to the AI output? Seems that's the next logical step.
- hello_computer 2y agoanother mozilla. it’s time for guillotines. past time.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- unstruktured 2y agoI wish they would at least rename the company to "ClosedAI" because that's exactly what it is at this point.
- stoperaticless 2y agoThat would be a nice thing they could do.
- amelius 2y agoUnfortunately, that's not how trademarks work. You can name your company "ThisProductWillCureYouFromCancer" and the FDA cannot do a thing about it if you put it on a bottle of herbal pills.
- pieix 2y agoIs this true? If so it seems like an underexploited loophole.
- Ifkaluva 2y agoIt might be technically true, but I don't think it would be true in practice. The difference is that: - Technically true means you will probably win any lawsuit they bring - In practice means that they will in fact bring a lot of lawsuits, making it very expensive for you and difficult for you to operate. They will probably find excuses to harass you over every little thing, they will harass you over lots of details that are technically required but rarely enforced in practice. You'll constantly be getting inspected and audited, they will bring lawsuits for other, apparently unrelated things.
- EcommerceFlow 2y agoOn what planet would Elon not get a piece of this new for-profit company?
- volleygman180 2y agoEarth
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agoWorks where archive.ph is blocked: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/openai-to-become-for-profit-company/ar-AA1rcDWH https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/openai-to-become-for-p... Text-only: https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1rcDWH https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1rcDWH
- game_the0ry 2y agoOpenAI founded as non-profit. Sam Altman goes on Joe Rogan Podcast and says he does not really care about money. Sam gets caught driving around Napa in a $4M exotic car. OpenAI turns into for-profit. 3/4 of founding team dips out. Sketchy. This whole silicon valley attitude of fake effective altruism, "I do it for the good of humanity, not for the money (but I actually want a lot of money)" fake bullshit is so transparent and off-putting. @sama, for the record - I am not saying making is a bad thing. Labor and talent markets should be efficient. But when you pretend to be altruistic when you are obviously not, then you come off hypocritical instead of altruistic. Sell out.
- peanuty1 2y agoRegarding the 4 million dollar car, Sam already made a ton of money from Reddit and being President of YC.
- game_the0ry 2y agoLiking and buying expensive cars is not wrong. But buying a $4M car while saying you do not car about money is a mis-alignment between words and actions, which comes off untrustworthy.
- MaxHoppersGhost 2y agoMaybe he meant he doesn’t care about it so he wastes it on super expensive things. Simple definitional misunderstanding
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gklitz 2y agoHe never said he didn’t care about money, he said he didn’t care about making a lot more money at a point when he had tons of money. Like you might say “I don’t really need another car we already have 8 at home between the two of us driving so why would I need a 9th?”
- 2y ago
- ForHackernews 2y agoThe good thing is, we need to worry about AGI because we already know what it's like in a world populated by soulless inhuman entities pursuing their own selfish aims at the expense of mankind.
- reducesuffering 2y agoOpenAI couldn't even align their Sam Altman and their people to their non-profit mission. Why should you ever believe they will align AGI to the well being of humanity? What happened to all the people making fun of Helen Toner for attempting to fire Sama? She and Ilya were right.
- germandiago 2y agoWhat a surprise!!!! I would have never said so...
- xyst 2y agoProbably one of the many decisions that Mira and other original founders were against. Sam Altman is a poison pill.
- versteegen 2y agoMira joined in 2018. OpenAI was founded in 2015.
- Jatwood 2y agoshocked. shocked! well not that shocked.
- geodel 2y agoGood. Now it is just a matter of profit-making company.
- alexowner1988 2y ago[dead]
- TheRealNGenius 2y ago[dead]
- thih9 2y agoI’d guess it would be legally not possible to turn a non-profit into a for-profit company, no matter how confusing the company structure gets. And even (or rather, especially) if the project disrupts the economy on a global level. I’m not surprised that this is happening, but how we got here - I don’t know.
- ayakang31415 2y agoAbout a year ago (I believe), Sam Altman touted his mission to promote safe AI with claims that he has no equity in OpenAI and was never interested in getting any. Look where we are now, well played Sam.
- upwardbound 2y agoDoes that amount to making a false forward-looking financial statement? (Specifically his claim that he wasn’t interested in getting equity in the future.) This claim he made was likely helpful in ensuring the OpenAI team’s willingness to bring him back after he was temporarily ousted by the board last year for alleged governance issues. (Basically: “don’t worry about me guys, I’m in this for the mission, not personal enrichment”) Since his claim likely helped him get re-hired, he can’t claim it was immaterial. I really hope someone from the SEC scrutinizes him someday. The Singularity is too important to let it be run by someone with questionable ethics.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jacobsimon 2y agoMy unprofessional take: The SEC is concerned primarily with protecting investors. If anything, changing to a normal for-profit structure and removing the cap on returns would be viewed as more investor/market-friendly than their current structure, which is partly to blame for what unfolded last year.
- theGnuMe 2y agoIt’s not a public company? Not sure why the sec would get involved.
- throwawaymaths 2y agoThis. Though the secretary of state wherever it's domiciled might get involved.
- 2y ago
- johanneskanybal 2y agoI'm willing to pair up with fundamentalist christians to derail this with the argument that he/this is satan/the end of the world.
- kopirgan 2y agoGuess what they mean is for loss company
- e-clinton 2y agoSo many red flags about Saltman. I have to imagine some of the investors are having second thoughts.
- kranke155 2y agoSome number must be people who only care about winning like Sam. Plus they're getting huge returns. I get strong "next Mark Zuckerberg" vibes from Sam. Build a zombie product that approaches worthlessness after a few years, but made himself hugely rich in the process, and buys off tech and people as needed to maintain some kind of relevance.
- ein0p 2y agoEthics aside, I think there’s a silver lining to all this: at least they believe this can be profitable
- southernplaces7 2y agoIt's hilarious that this should surprise anyone at all, or that Sam Altman is anything but a mendacious, self-serving, compulsive liar of the worst tech world kind. For example, Elon Musk gets lots fo hate for all kinds of things. Some of it is very valid, but much of it also goes to the point of there being derangement syndrome around him, partly (I suspect) because of his openly stated zeitgeist-contrary political beliefs, yet i'd pick his sometimes crude, bullying but fundamental openness about who he is any day over the shiny paint job of platitudes and false correctness found in someone like Altman. Not to mention that the overall value of Musk's companies trumps anything I've seen done by Altman's sludge-pumping AI technology so far. This last is of course not a moral judgement but a practical one.
- replwoacause 2y agoObjectively, they’re both no good.
- seanvelasco 2y agothe openai team, including the tech community, should've sided with the board, not sam. the fact that ilya had a hand in it should've given it weight and backing. "openai is nothing without its people." well, the key people left. soon, it will just be sam and his sycophants.
- worik 2y agoLiars
- scubadude 2y agoStop believing that these companies and people are benevolent.
- conqrr 2y agoI remember a time when promises meant something. Lots of epics in human time (Greek, Hindu), people would stick to their word and commitment was respected. Written word was much more powerful than spoken. People appreciated depth. Wish we could teach and learn from those times.
- yieldcrv 2y agoThis nation’s largest institutions were founded on deceit from the colonies to the founding fathers. Aaron Burr raised capital for a fake water company and applied for a banking charter for what is now JP Morgan Chase some people are playing by a more effective set of rules and others are being lied to from a young age
- troad 2y agoProto-Indo-European culture seems to have placed a great deal of importance on the sanctity of contracts and the notion of reciprocal hospitality, reflected in many descendant myths and etymologies surviving from Ireland through India. If the Indo-Europeans did indeed come from the Ukrainian steppes, as seems likely, this may be a reflection of their high mobility (on horseback) causing lots of contact with potential for friction, and the fact that important personal property (for a steppe society, mainly herd animals) was moveable and vulnerable to cattle rustling. There's some great books on Indo-European society if you're interested.
- mr_toad 2y agoWith no centralised justice system people had to rely on people keeping their word. If people had lied and cheated all the time their society would have collapsed. An oath breaker didn’t just harm an individual, they did harm to the whole community, and the whole community viewed them negatively.
- troad 2y agoYes, though that could apply to any pre-modern society, whereas the Indo-Europeans were especially caught up on contracts and hospitality, even compared to similar societies. It's all quite fascinating, and in the context of them going on take over a vast swathe of Eurasia, one wonders whether this kind of ritualised deal-making was a significant competitive advantage that their neighbours lacked at the time.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoIt's worth noting that of OpenAI's 13 original founders, 10 have now left the company and 1 more is on leave, leaving only Sam and Wojciech. Safe AI, altruistic AI, human-centric AI, are all dead. There is only money-generating AI. Fuck.
- zingerlio 2y agoWe are booing Altman because his bait and switch feels unethical, but many of us saw it coming from a mile away, how does he make this transition to take advantage of the financial system so smoothly? Is there no legal guard for such maneuver, or is he just an insanely good player to circumvent all of them in plain view?
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- hackernewds 2y agoIt has been running on an honor code, that someone pulling off something so slimy as to funnel money meant for non-profits would just get shunned by society and business. Yet here we are. Ironically the one person with resources fighting it in a tangible way, even if for spite, is Elon Musk.
- joe_the_user 2y agoJust cobbling together articles I've read... Once the board failed to fire Altman, this transition was a done-deal, it was just a matter of when. Before the board fired Altman, he had been engaging in a more covert effort to take control - putting together personal attacks on various board members intended to drive them out and hiring people with a similar attitude to and loyalty to himself. When the board fired him, they didn't give any clear reasons and that's most mysterious part of the situation. Apparently they were all concerned about his campaign to take control of the board but they each had slightly different reasons for agreeing. I'd further speculate that the board thought in lawyer-advice terms - say as little as possible to avoid a retaliatory lawsuit. But the board's lack of communication apparently allowed Altman to demonstrate he was more important to the organization than the formal/legal structure, 90% signed intents to quit and the board backed down. It seemed that Altman simply represented the attitude of the many Silicon Valley tech-people - once you have a chance of money, don't hold back, do everything you can to make it.
- ocodo 2y agoOh! You don't say.
- AI_beffr 2y agoi remember years ago i saw a video of sam altman interviewing elon musk. it was filmed inside the spacex factory. maybe you know the one? i didnt know who sam was at the time. i remember being very, very put off by the way sam was behaving. he had this bizarre, almost unbelievable expression on his face, almost like he was pantomiming as a child looking up at his parents, adoring them. this weird, fake shy-smile. and i remember immediately having an intense disliking of him. this person seemed extremely fake, manipulative and narcissistic. it was such low-level behavior that i thought it must be some intern or someone way out of their depth. this interview is some kind of fluke. its so unbelievably insane to me that this person, who i disliked so much that i remembered him even without knowing his name or who he was, is now at the helm of one of the most important developments in human history. and the subject of todays headline is no surprise at all... i think everyone should think very carefully about the fact that sam altman will at some point, probably, be the very first person in the world to sit down in front of a console and hold the reigns directly and without supervision to a super-intelligent system that does not bear any of the regulatory or moral restrictions that would stop it from taking over the world. this evil narcissist, liar, money hungry, power grabbing A* hole will hold the most power that any human has ever held. do you really want that?
- surfingdino 2y agoLet me guess, the talent will be getting screwed on options?
- gklitz 2y agoPart of the reason is exactly so the talent gets easier liquidity on their stakes. Sucks to have been part of building the success that OpenAI is only to not be able to get anything significant out of it just because the company is a capped-profit under a non-profit, they’ll instead just end up owning shares in a traditional for profit on the market, with the ability to sell shares to pay of their mortgage or buy a new car etc.
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- enslavedrobot 2y agoSounds like a liquidity even to me. Time to pay taxes on 150B in equity.