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Evolving OpenAI's Structure
- ru552 1y agoI wonder if this meets the requirements set by the recent round of outside investors?
- anxman 1y agoNot according to Microsoft: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-satya-nadella-rift-307cb7f5 https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-satya-nadella-rift-30...
- babelfish 1y agoI don't see any comments about the PBC in that article (archive link: https://archive.is/cPLWd https://archive.is/cPLWd)
- CooCooCaCha 1y agoI'm getting really tired of hearing about OpenAI "evolving".
- dang 1y agoOk, but can you please not post unsubstantive comments to HN? We're looking for curious conversation here, and this is not that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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- CooCooCaCha 1y agoIt seems like there are other comments that have the same amount of substance as mine, yet it looks like mine was the only one that was flagged.
- dang 1y agoQuite possibly! Consistency in moderation is impossible [1]. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, and the explanation for most of these things is randomness (or the absence of time travel - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43823271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43823271) If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. At the same time, though, we need you (<-- I don't mean you personally, but all commenters) to follow HN's rules regardless of what other commenters are doing. Think of it like speeding tickets [2]. There are always lots of other drivers speeding just as bad (nay, worse) than you were, and yet it's always you who gets pulled over, right? Or at least it always feels that way. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20moderation%20consisten&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20speeding%20ticket&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
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- everybodyknows 1y ago> transition to a Public Benefit Corporation Can some business person give us a summary on PBCs vs. alternative registrations?
- fheisler 1y agoA PBC is just a for-profit company that has _some_ sort of specific mandate to benefit the "public good" - however it chooses to define that. It's generally meant to provide some balance toward societal good over the more common, strictly shareholder profit-maximizing alternative. (IANAL but run a PBC that uses this charter[1] and have written about it here[2] as part of our biennial reporting process.) [1] https://github.com/OpenCoreVentures/ocv-public-benefit-company/blob/main/ocv-public-benefit-company-charter.md https://github.com/OpenCoreVentures/ocv-public-benefit-compa... [2] https://goauthentik.io/blog/2024-09-25-our-biennial-pbc-report/ https://goauthentik.io/blog/2024-09-25-our-biennial-pbc-repo...
- imkevinxu 1y agoyou could've just asked this to chatgpt....
- cs702 1y agoThe charter of a public-benefit corporation gives the company's board and management a bit of legal cover for making decisions that don't serve to maximize, or may even limit, financial returns to shareholders, when those decisions are made for the benefit of the public.
- croemer 1y agoBut the reverse isn't true, right? It doesn't prevent the board from maximizing financial returns even when doing so would harm the "public".
- anticensor 1y agoDepends on the specific charter.
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- _false 1y agoHere's a critical summary: Key Structure Changes: - Abandoning the "capped profit" model (which limited investor returns) in favor of traditional equity structure - Converting for-profit LLC to Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) - Nonprofit remains in control but also becomes a major shareholder Reading Between the Lines: 1. Power Play: The "nonprofit control" messaging appears to be damage control following previous governance crises. Heavy emphasis on regulator involvement (CA/DE AGs) suggests this was likely not entirely voluntary. 2. Capital Structure Reality: They need "hundreds of billions to trillions" for compute. The capped-profit structure was clearly limiting their ability to raise capital at scale. This move enables unlimited upside for investors while maintaining the PR benefit of nonprofit oversight. 3. Governance Complexity: The "nonprofit controls PBC but is also major shareholder" structure creates interesting conflicts. Who controls the nonprofit? Who appoints its board? These details are conspicuously absent. 4. Competition Positioning: Multiple references to "democratic AI" vs "authoritarian AI" and "many great AGI companies" signal they're positioning against perceived centralized control (likely aimed at competitors). Red Flags: - Vague details about actual control mechanisms - No specifics on nonprofit board composition or appointment process - Heavy reliance on buzzwords ("democratic AI") without concrete governance details - Unclear what specific powers the nonprofit retains besides shareholding This reads like a classic Silicon Valley power consolidation dressed up in altruistic language - enabling massive capital raising while maintaining insider control through a nonprofit structure whose own governance remains opaque.
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- JumpCrisscross 1y agoWas this AI generated?
- atlasunshrugged 1y agoI think this is one of the most interesting lines as it basically directly implies that leadership thinks this won't be a winner take all market: > Instead of our current complex capped-profit structure—which made sense when it looked like there might be one dominant AGI effort but doesn’t in a world of many great AGI companies—we are moving to a normal capital structure where everyone has stock. This is not a sale, but a change of structure to something simpler.
- sz4kerto 1y agoOr they consider themselves to have low(er) chance of winning. They could think either, but they obviously can't say the latter.
- bhouston 1y agoOpenAI is winning in a similar way that Apple is winning in smartphones. OpenAI is capturing most of the value in the space (generic LLM models), even though they have competitors who are beating them on price or capabilities. I think OpenAI may be able to maintain this position at least for the medium term because of their name recognition/prominence and they are still a fast mover. I also think the US is going to ban all non-US LLM providers from the US market soon for "security reasons."
- screamingninja 1y ago> ban all non-US LLM providers What do you consider an "LLM provider"? Is it a website where you interact with a language model by uploading text or images? That definition might become too broad too quickly. Hard to ban.
- slt2021 1y agothe bulk of money comes from enterprise users. Just need to call 500 CEOs from the S&P500 list, and enforce via "cyber data safety" enforcement via SEC or something like that. everyone will roll over if all large public companies roll over (and they will)
- sampton 1y agoOpenAI is busy rearranging the chairs while their competitors surpass them.
- datadrivenangel 1y ago"Instead of our current complex capped-profit structure—which made sense when it looked like there might be one dominant AGI effort but doesn’t in a world of many great AGI companies—we are moving to a normal capital structure where everyone has stock. This is not a sale, but a change of structure to something simpler." OpenAI admitting that they're not going to win?
- modeless 1y agoHuh, so Elon's lawsuit worked? The nonprofit will retain control? Or is this just spin on a plan that will eventually still sideline the nonprofit?
- j_maffe 1y agoIt more sounds like the district attorneys won
- blagie 1y agoTo be specific: The nonprofit currently retains control. It will stop once more dilution sets in.
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- saretup 1y agoThe whole article feels like justifying a bunch of legal nonsense to get to the end result of removing the capped structure.
- az226 1y agoYes and no. It sounds like the capped profit PPU holders will get to have their units convert 1:1 with unlimited profit equity shares, which are obviously way more valuable. So the nonprofit loses insanely in this move and all current investors and employees make a huge amount.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago> Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. Then why is it paywalled? Why are you making/have made people across the world sift through the worst material on offer by the wide uncensored Internet to train your LLMs? Why do you have a for-profit LLC operating under a non-profit, or for that matter, a "Public Benefit Corporation" that has to answer to shareholders at all? Related to that: > or the needs for hundreds of billions of dollars of compute to train models and serve users. How does that serve humanity? Redirecting billions of dollars to fancy autocomplete who's power demands strain already struggling electrical grids and offset the gains of green energy worldwide? > A lot of people around OpenAI in the early days thought AI should only be in the hands of a few trusted people who could “handle it”. No, we thought your plagiarism machine was a disgusting abuse of the public square, and to be clear, this criticism would've been easily handled by simply requesting people opt-in to have their material used for AI training. But we all know why you didn't do that, don't we Sam. > It will of course not be all used for good, but we trust humanity and think the good will outweigh the bad by orders of magnitude. Well so far, we've got vulnerable, lonely people being scammed on Facebook, we've got companies charging subscriptions for people to sext their chatbots, we've got various states using it to target their opposition for military intervention, and the White House may have used it to draft the dumbest basis for a trade war in human history. Oh and fake therapists too. When's the good kick in? > We believe this is the best path forward—AGI should enable all of humanity^1 to benefit each other. ^1 who subscribe to our services
- Lalabadie 1y ago> Then why is it paywalled? Why are you making/have made people across the world sift through the worst material on offer by the wide uncensored Internet to train your LLMs? Because they're concerned about AI use the same way Google is concerned about your private data.
- pants2 1y agoIt's somewhat odd to me that many companies operating in the public eye are basically stating "We are creating a digital god, an instrument more powerful than any nuclear weapon" and raising billions to do it, and nobody bats an eye...
- esafak 1y agoLots of people in academia and industry are calling for more oversight. It's the US government that's behind. Europe's AI Act bans applications with unacceptable risk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence_Act
- azinman2 1y agoUnless China handicaps the their progress as well (which they won’t, see made in China 2025), all you’re doing is handing the future to deepseek et al.
- nicce 1y agoThis thought process it not different than it was with nuclear weapons. The primary difference is the observability - with satellites we had some confidence that other nations respected treaties, or that they had enough reaction time for mutual destruction, but with this AI development we lack all that.
- lukas099 1y agoYes, it was the same with nukes, each side had to build them because the other side was building them.
- bpodgursky 1y agoOnly countries with nuclear weapons had an actual seat at the table when the world banned new nuclear weapon programs.
- granzymes 1y agoFrom least to most speculative: * The nonprofit is staying the same, and will continue to control the for-profit entity OpenAI created to raise capital * The for-profit is changing from a capped-profit LLC to a PBC like Anthropic and Xai * These changes have been at least tacitly agreed to by the attorneys general of California and Delaware * The non-profit won’t be the largest shareholder in the PBC (likely Microsoft) but will retain control (super voting shares?) * OpenAI thinks there will be multiple labs that achieve AGI, although possibly on different timelines
- foobiekr 1y agoAnother possibility is that OpenAL thinks _none_ of the labs will achieve AGI in a meaningful timeframe so they are trying to cash out with whatever you want to call the current models. There will only be one or two of those before investors start looking at the incredible losses.
- r00fus 1y agoI'm fairly sure that OpenAI has never really believed in AGI - it's like with Uber and "self driving cabs" - it's a lure for the investors. It's just that this bait has a shelf life and it looks like it's going to expire soon.
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- az226 1y agoThe least speculative: PPUs will be converted from capped profit to unlimited profit equity shares at the benefit of PPU holders and at the expense of OpenAI the nonprofit. This is why they are doing it.
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- sjtgraham 1y agoThis restructuring is essentially a sophisticated maneuver toward wealth and power maximization shrouded in altruistic language.
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- theoryofx 1y ago"We made the decision for the nonprofit to retain control of OpenAI after hearing from..." [CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS IN CALIFORNIA AND DELAWARE] This indicates that they didn't actually want the nonprofit to retain control and they're only doing it because they were forced to by threats of legal action.
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- HaZeust 1y agoWhen I read that, I was actually fairly surprised about how brazen they were about who they called on for this action. They simply just said it.
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- cadamsdotcom 1y agoCommercial entities aren’t social beings. They’re asocial goal-maximizers. Threats of legal action are among the only behavioral signals it can act on while staying in its mandate. Others include regulation and the market. This is all operating as it was designed, by humans, multiple economic cycles ago.
- d--b 1y agoMmh am I the only one who has been offered to participate in a “comparison between 2 chatgpt versions”? The newer version included sponsored products in its response. I thought that was quite effed up.
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- accrual 1y agoI've gotten those messages, but the products recommended in both versions were the same, down to the model number, so I don't think it's strictly product placement. The products I was looking at were old oscilloscopes.
- lolinder 1y agoSo the non-profit retains control but we all know that Altman controls the board of the non-profit and I'd be shocked if he won't have significant stock in the new for-profit (from TFA: "we are moving to a normal capital structure where everyone has stock"). Which means that regardless of whether the non-profit has control on paper, OpenAI is now even better structured for Sam Altman's personal enrichment. No more caps on profit, a simpler structure to sell to investors, and Altman can finally get that 7% equity stake he's been eyeing. Not a bad outcome for him given the constraints apparently imposed on them by "the Attorney General of Delaware and the Attorney General of California".
- elAhmo 1y agoWe have seen how much power does the board have after the firing of Altman - none. Let's see how this plays out. PBC effectively means nothing - just take a look at Xai and its purchase of Twitter. I would love to listen reasoning explaining why this ~33 billion USD move is benefiting public.
- ignoramous 1y ago> We have seen how much power does the board have after the firing of Altman - none. Right; so, "Worker Unions" work.
- wmf 1y agoChatGPT is free. That's the public benefit.
- purpleidea 1y agoThere's really nothing "open" about this company. If they want to be, then: (1) be transparent about exactly which data was collected for the model (2) release all the source code If you want to benefit humanity, then put it under a strong copyleft license with no CLA. Simple.
- Tenoke 1y agoFor better or worse, OpenAI removing the capped structure and turning the nonprofit from AGI considerations to just philanthropy feels like the shedding of the last remnants of sanctity.
- drewbeck 1y agoI see OpenAI's original form as the last gasp of a kind of liberal tech; in a world where "doing good" was seen as very important, the non-profit approach made sense and got a lot of people on board. These days the Altmans and the pmarcas of the world are much more comfortable expressing their authoritarian, self-centered world views; the "evolving" structure of Open AI is fully in line with that. They want to be the kings they always thought of themselves as, and now they get to do so without couching it in "doing good".
- sneak 1y agoIs it reasonable to assign the descriptor “authoritarian” to anyone who simply does not subscribe to the common orthodoxy of one faction in the american culture war? That is what it seems to me is happening here, though I would love to be wrong. I have not seen anything from sama or pmarca that I would classify as “authoritarian”.
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- ramesh31 1y agoThe explosion of PBC structured corps recently has me thinking it must just be a tax loophole at this point. I can't possibly imagine there is any meaningful enforcement around any of its restrictions or guidelines.
- bloudermilk 1y agoPBCs don’t get special tax treatment. As far as I know they’re taxed exactly the same as typical C or S corps.
- ralph84 1y agoIt’s not a tax thing, it’s a power thing. PBCs transfer power from shareholders to management as long as management can say they were acting for a public benefit.
- asadotzler 1y agoNot a loophole as they pay taxes (unlike non-profits) but a fig leaf to cover commercial activity with some feel-good label. The real purpose of PBC is the legal protection it may afford to the company from shareholders unhappy with less than maximal profit generation. It gives the board some legal space to do some good if they choose to but has no mandate like real non-profits which get a tax break for creating a public good or service, a tax break that can be withdrawn if they do not annually prove that public benefit to the IRS.
- bloppe 1y agoDoes anybody outside OAI still think of them as anything other that a "normal" for-profit company?
- programjames 1y agoCarcinisation in action: free (foss) -> non-profit -> capped-profit -> public benefits corporation -> (you guessed it)
- blagie 1y agoNo, this only happens if: 1) You're successful. 2) You mess up checks-and-balances at the beginning. OpenAI did both. Personally, I think at some point, the AGs ought to take over and push it back into a non-profit format. OAI undermines the concept of a non-profit.
- MrCheeze 1y agoWith 2, the real problem is that approximately 0% of the OpenAI employees actually believed in the mission. Pretty much every single one of them signed the letter to the board demanding that if the company's existence ever comes into conflict with humanity's survival, the company's existence comes first.
- blagie 1y agoThat's the reality of every organization if it survives long enough. Checks-and-balances need to be robust enough to survive bad people. Otherwise, they're not checks-and-balances. One of the tricks is a broad range of diverse stakeholders with enforcement power. For example, if OpenAI does anything non-open, you'd like organizations FSF, CC, and similar to be represented on their board and to be able to enforce those rules in court.
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- jjani 1y agoSamA is in a hurry because he's set to lose the race. We're at peak valuation and he needs to convert something now. If the entrenched giants (Google, Microsoft and Apple) catch up - and Google 100% has, if not surpassed - they have a thousand levers to pull and OpenAI is done for. Microsoft has realized this, hence why they're breaking up with them - Google and Anthropic have shown they don't need OpenAI. Galaxy phones will get a Gemini button, Chrome will get it built into the browser. MS can either develop their own thing , use opensource models, or just ask every frontier model provider (and there's already 3-4 as we speak) how cheaply they're willing to deliver. Then chuck it right in the OS and Office first-class. Which half the white collar world spends their entire day staring at. Apple devices too will get an AI button (or gesture, given it's Apple) and just like MS they'll do it inhouse or have the providers bid against each other. The only way OpenAI David was ever going to beat the Goliaths GMA in the long run was if it were near-impossible to catch up to them, á la TSMC/ASML. But they did catch up.
- parliament32 1y agoAgreed on Google dominance. Gemini models from this year are significantly more helpful than anything from OAI.. and they're being handed out for free to anyone with a Google account.
- tedivm 1y agoEven Alibaba is releasing some amazing models these days. Qwen 3 is pretty remarkable, especially considering the variety of hardware the variants of it can run on.
- pi-err 1y agoSounds a lot like "Google+ will catch Facebook in no time". OpenAI has been on a winning streak that makes ChatGPT the default chatbot for most of the planet. Everybody else like you describe is trying to add some AI crap behind a button on a congested UI. B2B market will stay open but OpenAI has certainly not peaked yet.
- kortilla 1y agoMost of the planet doesn’t use chat bots at all.
- simonw 1y agoMatt Levine on OpenAI's weird capped return structure in November 2023: And the investors wailed and gnashed their teeth but it’s true, that is what they agreed to, and they had no legal recourse. And OpenAI’s new CEO, and its nonprofit board, cut them a check for their capped return and said “bye” and went back to running OpenAI for the benefit of humanity. It turned out that a benign, carefully governed artificial superintelligence is really good for humanity, and OpenAI quickly solved all of humanity’s problems and ushered in an age of peace and abundance in which nobody wanted for anything or needed any Microsoft products. And capitalism came to an end. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-20/who-controls-openai https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-20/who-co...
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- languagehacker 1y agoamen brother
- sho_hn 1y agoNo, it's good that you feel this. Don't give up on tech, protest. I've been feeling for some time now that we're sort of in the Vietnam War era of the tech industry. I feel a strong urge to have more "ok, so where do we go from here?" and "what does a tech industry that promotes net good actually look like?" internal discourse in the community of practice, and some sort of ethical social contract for software engineering. The open source movement has been fabulous and sometimes adjacent to or one aspect of these concerns, but really we need a movement for socially conscious and responsible software. We need a tech counter-culture. We had one once, but now we need one.
- cjpearson 1y agoNot all non-profits are doomed. It's natural that the biggest companies will be the ones who have growth and profit as their primary goal. But there are still plenty of mission-focused technology non-profits out there. Many of which have lasted decades. For example: Linux Foundation, Internet Archive, Mozilla, Wikimedia, Free Software Foundation, and Python Software Foundation. Don't get me wrong, I'm also disappointed in the direction and actions of big tech, but I don't think it's fair to dismiss the non-profit foundations. They aren't worth a trillion dollars, however they are still doing good and important work.
- etruong42 1y agoThe intro sounds awfully familiar... > Sam’s Letter to Employees. > OpenAI is not a normal company and never will be. Where did I hear something like that before... > Founders' IPO Letter > Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one. I wonder if it's intentional or perhaps some AI-assisted regurgitation prompted by "write me a successful letter to introduce a new corporate structure of a tech company".
- giik 1y agoWhen I got to that part (line 1) I stopped reading.
- photochemsyn 1y agoThe recent flap over ChatGPT's fluffery/flattery/glazing of users doesn't bode well for the direction that OpenAI is headed in. Someone at the outfit appeared to think that giving users a dopamine hit would increase time-spent-on-app or some other metric - and that smells like contempt for the intelligence of the user base and a manipulative approach designed not to improve the quality of the output, but to addict the user population to the ChatGPT experience. Your own personal yes-person to praise everything you do, how wonderful. Perfect for writing the scripts for government cabinent ministers to recite when the grand poobah-in-chief comes calling, I suppose. What it really says is that if a user wants to control the interaction and get the useful responses, direct programmatic calls to the API that control the system prompt are going to be needed. And who knows how much longer even that will be allowed? As ChatGPT reports, > "OpenAI has updated the ChatGPT UI (especially in GPT-4-turbo and ChatGPT Plus environments) to no longer expose the full system prompt or baseline prompt directly."
- martinohansen 1y agoImagine having a mission of “ensure[ing] that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity” while also believing that it can only be trusted in the hands of the few > A lot of people around OpenAI in the early days thought AI should only be in the hands of a few trusted people who could “handle it”.
- TZubiri 1y agoTo the benefit of OpenAI. I think LLMs would still exist, but we wouldn't have access to them. Whether they are a net positive or a net negative is arguable. If it's a net negative, then unleashing them to the masses was maybe the danger itself.
- joshtbradley 1y agoHe's very clearly stating that trusting AI to a few hands was an old, naiive idea that they have evolved from. Which establishes their need to keep evolving as the technology matures. There is a lot to criticize about OpenAI and Sama, but this isn't it.
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- TZubiri 1y agoI'm not gonna get caught in the details, I'm just going to assume this is legalese cognitive dissonance to avoid saying "we want this to stop being an NFP because we want the profits."
- bjacobso 1y agoI think the main issue is they accidentally created an incredible consumer brand with ChatGPT. They should sell that asset to World.
- jethronethro 1y agoEd Zitron's going to have a field day with this ...
- eximius 1y agoAgain?
- bluelightning2k 1y agoTurns out the non profit structure wasn't very profitable
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- I_am_tiberius 1y agoStill waiting for o3-Pro.
- jampekka 1y ago> We are committed to this path of democratic AI. So were do I vote? How do I became a candidate to be a representative or a delegate of voters? I assume every single human is eligible for both, as OpenAI serves the humanity?
- softwaredoug 1y agoDemocratic AI but we don’t want it regulated by any democratic process
- jampekka 1y agoI wonder if democracy is some kind of corporate speech homonym of some totally different concept I'm familiar with. Perhaps it's even an interesting linguistic case where a word is a homonym of its antonym? Edit: also apparently known as contronym.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> wonder if democracy is some kind of corporate speech It generally means broadening access to something. Finance loves democratising access to stupid things, for example. > word is a homonym of its antonym? Inflammable in common use.
- xpe 1y ago"democratize" has been often abused: https://intage.us/articles/words/democratize/ https://intage.us/articles/words/democratize/
- rchaud 1y agoDemocratic People's Republic of AI
- m3kw9 1y agoPath of, so it's getting there
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- SCAQTony 1y agoDoes anyone truly believe Musk had benevolent intentions? But before we even evaluate the substance of that claim, we must ask whether he has standing to make it. In his court filing, Musk uses the word "nonprofit" 111 times, yet fails to explain how reverting OpenAI to a nonprofit structure would save humanity, elevate the public interest, or mitigate AI’s risks. The legal brief offers no humanitarian roadmap, no governance proposal, and no evidence that Musk has the authority to dictate the trajectory of an organization he holds no equity in. It reads like a bait and switch — full of virtue-signaling, devoid of actionable virtue. And he never had a contract or an agreement for with OpenAI to keep it a non-profit. Musk claimed Fraud, but never asked for his money back in the brief. Could it be his intentions were to limit OpenAI to donations thereby sucking the oxygen out of the venture capital space to fund Xai's Grok? Musk claimed he donated $100mil, later in a CNBC interview, he said $50-mil. TechCrunch suggests it was way less. Speakingof humanitarian, how about this 600lbs Oxymoron in the room: A Boston University mathematician has now tracked an estimated 10,000 deaths linked to the Musk's destruction of USAID programs, many of which provided basic health services to vulnerable populations. He may have a death count on his reume in the coming year. Non profits has regulation than publicly traded companies. Each quarterly filings is like a colonoscopy with Sorbonne Oxley rules etc. Non profits just file a tax statement. Did you know the Chirch of Scientology is a non-profit.
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- timewizard 1y agoReplace Musk with "any billionaire." He's a symptom of a problem. He's not actually the problem.
- xpe 1y agoIf you are a materialist, the laws of physics are the problem. But to speak plainly, Musk is a complex figure, frequently problematic, and he often exacts a tool on the people around him. Part of this is attributable to his wealth, part to his particulars. When he goes into "demon mode", to use Walter Isaacson's phrase, you don't want to be in his way.
- alganet 1y agoCan you commit to a "swords into ploughshares" goal? We know it's a sword. And there's war, yadda yadda. However, let's do the cultivating thing instead. What other AI players we need to convince?
- mrandish 1y agoI agree that this is simply Altman extending his ability to control, shape and benefit from OpenAI. Yes, this is clearly (further) subverting the original intent under which the org was created - and that's unfortunate. But in terms of impact on the world, or even just AI safety, I'm not sure the governance of OpenAI matters all that much anymore. The "governance" wasn't that great after the first couple years and OpenAI hasn't been "open" since long before the board spat. More crucially, since OpenAI's founding and especially over the past 18 months, it's grown increasingly clear that AI leadership probably won't be dominated by one company, progress of "frontier models" is stalling while costs are spiraling, and 'Foom' AGI scenarios are highly unlikely anytime soon. It looks like this is going to be a much longer, slower slog than some hoped and others feared.
- m3kw9 1y agoThis sounds like a good middle ground between going full capitalism and non-profit. This way they can still raise money and also have the same mission, but a weakened one. You can't have everything.
- A_Duck 1y agoThis is the moment where we fumble the opportunity to avoid a repeat of Web 1.0's ad-driven race to the bottom Look forward to re-living that shift from life-changing community resource to scammy and user-hostile
- zharknado 1y agoI feel this. I had a very productive convo with an LLM today and realized that a huge part of the value of it was that it addressed my questions in a focused way, without trying to sell me anything or generate SEO rankings or register ad impressions. It just helped me. And that was incredibly refreshing in a digital world that generally feels adversarial. Then the thought came, when will they start showing ads here. I like to think that if we learn to pay for it directly, or the open source models get good enough, we could still enjoy that simplicity and focus for quite a while. Here’s hoping!
- danenania 1y agoThe "good" thing is this is all way too expensive to be ad-supported. Maybe there will be some ad-supported products using very small/cheap models, but the leading edge stuff is always going to be at the leading-edge of compute usage too, and someone has to pay the bill. Even with investors subsidizing a lot of the costs, it's still very expensive to use the best models heavily for real work.
- aylmao 1y agoSubscription services can sell ads too. See Hulu, or Netflix. Spotify might not play "radio ads" if you pay, but it will still advertise artists on your home screen. These models being expensive leads me to think they will look at all methods of monetization possible when seeking profitability. Rather than ads being off the table, it could feasibly make ads be on the table sooner.
- danenania 1y agoMaybe it could happen, but the revenue that can be made per user from ads is basically insignificant compared to the compute costs. They’d be pissing off their users for a very marginal benefit.
- LetsGetTechnicl 1y agoCan't wait to hear Ed Zitron's take on this
- nova22033 1y ago>current complex capped-profit structure Is OpenAI making a profit?
- smashedtoatoms 1y agoIs there a sport where the actual sport is moving goalposts?
- xpe 1y agoThere is the game of Nomic where a turn involves proposing a rule change.
- no_wizard 1y ago> Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity They already fight transparency in this space to prevent harmful bias. Why should I believe anything else they have to say if they refuse to take even small steps toward transparency and open auditing?
- dankwizard 1y agoAI actually wrote this article for them which is the craziest thing
- ronreiter 1y agoHere’s a breakdown of the *key structural changes*, and an analysis of *potential risks or concerns*: --- ## *What Has Changed* ### 1. *OpenAI’s For-Profit Arm is Becoming a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC)* * *Before:* OpenAI LP (limited partnership with a “capped-profit” model). * *After:* OpenAI LP becomes a *Public Benefit Corporation* (PBC). *Implications:* * A PBC is still a *for-profit* entity, but legally required to balance shareholder value with a declared public mission. * OpenAI’s mission (“AGI that benefits all humanity”) becomes part of the legal charter of the new PBC. --- ### 2. *The Nonprofit Remains in Control and Gains Equity* * The *original OpenAI nonprofit* will *continue to control* the new PBC and will now also *hold equity* in it. * The nonprofit will use this equity stake to fund “mission-aligned” initiatives in areas like health, education, etc. *Implications:* * This strengthens the nonprofit’s influence and potentially its resources. * But the balance between nonprofit oversight and for-profit ambition becomes more delicate as stakes rise. --- ### 3. *Elimination of the “Capped-Profit” Structure* * The old “capped-return” model (investors could only make \~100x on investments) is being dropped. * Instead, OpenAI will now have a *“normal capital structure”* where everyone holds unrestricted equity. *Implications:* * This likely makes OpenAI more attractive to investors. * However, it also increases the *incentive to prioritize commercial growth*, which could conflict with mission-first priorities. --- ## *Potential Negative Implications* ### 1. *Increased Commercial Pressure* * Moving from a capped-profit model to unrestricted equity introduces *stronger financial incentives*. * This could push the company toward *more aggressive monetization*, potentially compromising safety, openness, or alignment goals. ### 2. *Accountability Trade-offs* * While the nonprofit “controls” the PBC, actual accountability and oversight may be limited if the nonprofit and PBC leadership overlap (as has been a concern before). * Past board turmoil in late 2023 (Altman's temporary ousting) highlighted how difficult it is to hold leadership accountable under complex structures. ### 3. *Risk of “Mission Drift”* * Over time, with more funding and commercial scale, *stakeholder interests* (e.g., major investors or partners like Microsoft) might influence product and policy decisions. * Even with the mission enshrined in a PBC charter, *profit-driven pressures could subtly shape choices*—especially around safety disclosures, model releases, or regulatory lobbying. --- ## *What Remains the Same (According to the Letter)* * OpenAI’s *mission* stays unchanged. * The *nonprofit retains formal control*. * There’s a stated commitment to safety, open access, and democratic use of AI.
- TheGrognardling 1y agoThere are a lot of good points here, by multiple vantage points as far as views for the argument of how imminent, if it - metaphysically or logistically - viable at all even, AGI is. I personally think the conversation, including obviously in the post itself, has swung too far in the direction of how AGI can or will potentially affect the ethical landscape regarding AI, however. I think we really ought to concern ourselves with addressing and mitigating effects that it already HAS brought - both good and bad - rather than engaging in any excessive speculation. That's just me, though.
- marricks 1y agoThat’s an intentional misdirection, and an all too common one :(
- TheGrognardling 1y ago[dead]
- SilverSlash 1y agoabc.xyz: "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one" sam altman: "OpenAI is not a normal company and never will be." Hmmm
- mythz 1y agoLots of words to say OpenAI will remain an SABC (Sam Altman Benefit Corporation)
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- cma 1y agoIf you can move from capped profit to unlimited profit, it was never actually capped profit, just a fig leaf
- mensetmanusman 1y agoRandom question, is anyone else unable to see a ‘select all’ on their iPhone? I was trying to put all the text into gpt4 to see what it thought, but the select all function is gone. Some websites do that to protect their text IP, which would be crazy to me if that’s what they did considering how their ai is built. Ha
- lovelysoni03 1y ago[dead]
- morepedantic 1y agoI wonder which non-profit will be looted next.
- bandrami 1y agoAGI was achieved the first time a model replied "it worked when I ran it"
- mumong05 1y agohi i thik it's alsowm
- jeanlou 1y agoClosedAI
- amelius 1y ago> We did not really know how AGI was going to get built, or used (...) Altman keeps on talking about AGI as if we're already there.
- wrsh07 1y agoI don't agree with Tyler on this point (although o3 really is a thing to behold) But reasonable people could argue that we've achieved AGI (not artificial super intelligence) https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/04/o3-and-agi-is-april-16th-agi-day.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/04/o3... Fwiw, Sam Altman will have already seen the next models they're planning to release
- herculity275 1y agoThe goalposts seem to have shifted to a point where the "AGI" label will only be retroactively applied to an AI that was able to develop ASI
- ixtli 1y agohow many times must we repeat that AGI is whatever will sell the project. it means nothing. even philosophers don't have a good definition of "intelligence"
- nearbuy 1y agoAGI just refers roughly to the intelligence it would take to replace most if not all white collar workers. There is no precise definition, but it's not meaningless.
- nickpsecurity 1y agoThey still can't reliably do what humans can do across our attributes. That's what AGI was originally about. They have become quite capable, though.
- amelius 1y ago
- GPerson 1y agoEverything about AI really is fraudulent.
- jgalt212 1y agoWhat are the implications of this for Softbank's $40B?
- kraftman 1y agosounds like they need a few more Dinorwig's