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This is a very "funny" post: - OpenAI can easily not become anything of significance in the future, even if the OP's prediction of the future becomes reality.

This is a very "funny" post: - OpenAI can easily not become anything of significance in the future, even if the OP's prediction of the future becomes reality. I'd argue that being bought by a government and controlled within the ethical confines of that government would be a great way for OpenAI to quickly fall behind its peers who aren't subject to such regulations (which is the entire point of this post in the first place). - Norway may be a great country ran by a great government, but that doesn't mean they would be a great leader of some AI revolution. Not only is the bar for being a competent government not particularly high on the world scale, but the skills of a competent government don't necessarily translate to the skills of an AI revolution Sherpa. I don't see why the OP feels Norway wouldn't use an advanced AI to simply enrich itself while leaving other countries to fend for themselves. It's not like Norway's fund is designed to serve the rest of the world as it is, nor is it the case that Norwegians would allow their government to serve other countries at the cost of their own well being. - Those at OpenAI would either (a) never entertain this offer or (b) would sell to Norway if this exact thesis wasn't true (i.e., they'd be happy to sell if they thought OpenAI was going to become worthless anyway). Using the logic that the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global can just buy OpenAI because it has more money than a given valuation for OpenAI is embarrassing. It lacks any understanding of how businesses and investments work, let alone how investments in these specific businesses work. I mean, the OP starts this post off explaining how they think OpenAI can effectively rule the world once their expectations for their technology is realized. Why would they sell their ticket to unlimited wealth for a relatively small offer?

esafak 2mo ago
> I'd argue that being bought by a government and controlled within the ethical confines of that government would be a great way for OpenAI to quickly fall behind its peers who aren't subject to such regulations (which is the entire point of this post in the first place). Behind in what? You write as if it is a univariate concern. I haven't read the post but why couldn't Norway force OpenAI to be more alignment-conscious? Then it would be ahead in safety, especially if competitors don't pay attention to that.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- wrs 2mo ago
  “Behind” = less capable, less used, less resourced. Safety and alignment don’t necessarily correlate with market dominance. If they did, no safety regulations would be needed.
  - esafak 2mo ago
    We have to stop pretending that the market automatically arrives at socially optimal solutions. We don't say car safety regulations need to be weakened to compete with China, but when it comes to AI, safety magically goes out the window.
b112 2mo ago
Haven't read the blog, but I can think of a good reason to sell. HQ moves to Norway, no more direct US government interference. (they can still interfere, just not anywhere near the same scope) You may think "but government ownership means more interference", and yes, but not radicalized, crazy assed, mercurial, emotional interference.
- paulcole 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - throwaway894345 2mo ago
    You didn't even make it to the parent's third sentence "bro".
    - paulcole 2mo ago
      > they can still interfere, just not anywhere near the same scope This sentence is fundamentally wrong. If the US government really wants to put Norwegian-owned OpenAI out of business they will do so. OpenAI needs the support of the US to exist regardless of where they are headquartered.
- cactusplant7374 2mo ago
  The US government would never allow a sale. Frontier intelligence given away? It is the ASML story all over again. I would hope we have learned our lesson.
- raincole 2mo ago
  Yeah, move to EU to avoid government interference. Who wouldn't have thought that?
  - throwaway894345 2mo ago
    On the other hand, move to the EU and market to customers who don't want to worry about trade wars disrupting their business or the US government subpoena-ing data. Probably not a big enough market to justify that move yet, but it's not obvious to this American that my government is going to reverse its current self-destructive course.
pinkmuffinere 2mo ago
> Not only is the bar for being a competent government not particularly high on the world scale This is such a ridiculous, preposterously self-confident claim. Claims like this give HN (and engineers in general) a bad reputation. Edit: relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/
- applfanboysbgon 2mo ago
  What about this sentiment is specific to HN or engineers, that non-HN-types would so vigorously disagree with? How many countries in the world would have the average respondent in a survey describe their government as competent?
  - whimsicalism 2mo ago
    I don't disagree with the sentiment but I think obviously negativity bias would be a significant cofounder.
- stuaxo 2mo ago
  It fits into such a stereotype for HN types, TBH it's the kind of thing that keeps visiting this place amusing.
- nomel 2mo ago
  [dead]
- mirmor23 2mo ago
  > This is such a ridiculous, preposterously self-confident claim. Claims like this give HN (and engineers in general) a bad reputation. all you've done is use some fancy words to discredit OP's claim. what makes you think people who have built all the extremely complex and robust technical infrastructure are unable to comprehend of this amazingly complex government that you seem to be putting on a pedestal, let alone design a better one? how about even a simpler question: why are almost all governments inefficient (except may be few like tax department) and are full of red-carpet paper pushers?
HPsquared 2mo ago
Especially government of a small, homogenous country with massive oil wealth in a peaceful part of the world. It's very much "easy mode" as far as governments go.
- throwaway894345 2mo ago
  Ah yes, massive oil wealth, that famously strong predictor of good governance.
  - throwaway27448 2mo ago
    What are the counterexamples? Maybe Nigeria? EDIT: yes, also Iraq and Venezuela
    - cyberax 2mo ago
      Honestly, pretty much every other resource-rich country: Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, ... Norway is an outlier.
      - throwaway27448 2mo ago
        Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran seem to be doing just fine.
        detourdog 2mo ago
        My first job was at a design firm that worked for Samarec Riyadh Refinery. We were design an interactive exhibit based on the refining process. Our principal was Jewish and we needed special permission for him to enter the country for presentations. During one of the presentations one of our team took a photo of a fountain and it initially ended up in our presentation to be used to set the tone. While previewing our slideshow to our handlers we were told to remove the slide of the fountain. The fountain belonged to the king and could not be photographed without permission from the king. Admittedly there was no violence but we were warned that it was very bad. This was the early 1990’s so I’m sure this are much looser now.
alightsoul 2mo ago
The only way to have agi or any ai is to throw away all ethics then. So why are ai companies shredding books instead of using Anna's archive? Depending on your stance, one is more ethical than the other, but not both. And not neither of them.
- noosphr 2mo ago
  Anna's archive is missing books and papers.
  - alightsoul 2mo ago
    I want to believe most of what they're missing is material held in national and public university libraries and is material specific to the country the books or papers come from. Most of their collections are not digitized and that's what I keep seeing, and then some books that are profession-specific. They're basically rebuilding Google books, and keeping it private. That's privatizing all of humanity's knowledge. Then from what I see some other missing books are just rephrasings of other books, which can already be done with synthetic data using another LLM to generate it. I would assume a lot of those books are school text books as well, which are almost never digitized and are rephrasings of university text books. Maybe they are not able to generate synthetic data of sufficient quality and are resorting to human books that rephrase information instead
    - dgently7 2mo ago
      there is an amazing subplot in the book "service model" that describes a set of robot librarians doing exactly this kind of thing, plus sorting every bit.
    - alightsoul 2mo ago
      i would also assume, most of the cheap books are donated books from all over the world. that are imported into the us for resale as book lots. it would be similar to how donated clothes are packaged into lots and then resold to third world countries, which then sell them in fashion or clothes outlets. then, they really would be importing books from all over the world into the us for scanning and shredding for ai.
stuaxo 2mo ago
Ah, good old "ethical confines" the thing that holds all sorts of things back.. back from what ? Mostly back from exploiting the easily exploited and not paying for externalities. I think Norway would have too much sense to entertain buying this, of course it would be fun because you'd hope they would remove Sam Altman and you might have an AI company not run by someone who spouts the absolute rubbish that current AI leaders do, they are all completely cringeworthy.
- nsonha 2mo ago
  > holds all sorts of things back.. back from what ? Folding proteins and cure cancer? Deciphering animal languages? Revolutionizing accessibility technology?
AtNightWeCode 2mo ago
It is like a running joke that Norway can buy anything. The oil fund makes more money than the oil for the state btw. So don't underestimate their financial skills.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
vintermann 2mo ago
I agree, except for the second point. An owner isn't a leader. An owner isn't a Sherpa. An owner just owns. Many businesses can do perfectly fine without an active owner, and the owners that do make a difference for their ownee, often make things worse for their ownee, for society at large, or both.
- nater5000 2mo ago
  Then I suppose the whole blog post is moot, eh? I don't disagree with what you're saying. But the premise of this blog post is that Norway's government would be a good owner of OpenAI because they'd influence the company to operate in a "good" way for society. My comment assumes this is the case for the sake of argument.
nater5000 2mo ago
Just to be clear to those replying to me about the ethical considerations: the point I'm trying to make isn't that these companies shouldn't be ethical; it's that if they actually behaved ethically (at least in the way this blog post describes), they'd be at an extreme disadvantage compared to these other companies who aren't behaving ethically. Norway will have invested in a company just to run it into the ground by enforcing stricter ethical constraints on it compared to its peers. This dynamic is definitely not limited to AI companies and it's pretty obvious to anyone who has ever contemplated the ethics of capitalism as a whole. And if it matters, I don't think these companies behave particularly unethically compared to other large companies. You can take issue with where the baseline of ethics has been set of these kinds of companies, but at the end of the day ethics is a constraint that limits the success of a company in terms of our capitalistic system. Inducing a stronger version of this constraint in a single company, regardless of how preposterous the scenario is, will necessarily lead to that company doing worse than it would have otherwise. The OP doesn't address this dynamic in their post, but it's also a fundamental dynamic of the premise of their post.

esafak 2mo ago

> I'd argue that being bought by a government and controlled within the ethical confines of that government would be a great way for OpenAI to quickly fall behind its peers who aren't subject to such regulations (which is the entire point of this post in the first place). Behind in what? You write as if it is a univariate concern. I haven't read the post but why couldn't Norway force OpenAI to be more alignment-conscious? Then it would be ahead in safety, especially if competitors don't pay attention to that.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
wrs 2mo ago
“Behind” = less capable, less used, less resourced. Safety and alignment don’t necessarily correlate with market dominance. If they did, no safety regulations would be needed.
- esafak 2mo ago
  We have to stop pretending that the market automatically arrives at socially optimal solutions. We don't say car safety regulations need to be weakened to compete with China, but when it comes to AI, safety magically goes out the window.

b112 2mo ago

Haven't read the blog, but I can think of a good reason to sell. HQ moves to Norway, no more direct US government interference. (they can still interfere, just not anywhere near the same scope) You may think "but government ownership means more interference", and yes, but not radicalized, crazy assed, mercurial, emotional interference.

paulcole 2mo ago
[flagged]
- throwaway894345 2mo ago
  You didn't even make it to the parent's third sentence "bro".
  - paulcole 2mo ago
    > they can still interfere, just not anywhere near the same scope This sentence is fundamentally wrong. If the US government really wants to put Norwegian-owned OpenAI out of business they will do so. OpenAI needs the support of the US to exist regardless of where they are headquartered.
cactusplant7374 2mo ago
The US government would never allow a sale. Frontier intelligence given away? It is the ASML story all over again. I would hope we have learned our lesson.
raincole 2mo ago
Yeah, move to EU to avoid government interference. Who wouldn't have thought that?
- throwaway894345 2mo ago
  On the other hand, move to the EU and market to customers who don't want to worry about trade wars disrupting their business or the US government subpoena-ing data. Probably not a big enough market to justify that move yet, but it's not obvious to this American that my government is going to reverse its current self-destructive course.

pinkmuffinere 2mo ago

> Not only is the bar for being a competent government not particularly high on the world scale This is such a ridiculous, preposterously self-confident claim. Claims like this give HN (and engineers in general) a bad reputation. Edit: relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/

applfanboysbgon 2mo ago
What about this sentiment is specific to HN or engineers, that non-HN-types would so vigorously disagree with? How many countries in the world would have the average respondent in a survey describe their government as competent?
- whimsicalism 2mo ago
  I don't disagree with the sentiment but I think obviously negativity bias would be a significant cofounder.
stuaxo 2mo ago
It fits into such a stereotype for HN types, TBH it's the kind of thing that keeps visiting this place amusing.
nomel 2mo ago
[dead]
mirmor23 2mo ago
> This is such a ridiculous, preposterously self-confident claim. Claims like this give HN (and engineers in general) a bad reputation. all you've done is use some fancy words to discredit OP's claim. what makes you think people who have built all the extremely complex and robust technical infrastructure are unable to comprehend of this amazingly complex government that you seem to be putting on a pedestal, let alone design a better one? how about even a simpler question: why are almost all governments inefficient (except may be few like tax department) and are full of red-carpet paper pushers?

HPsquared 2mo ago

Especially government of a small, homogenous country with massive oil wealth in a peaceful part of the world. It's very much "easy mode" as far as governments go.

throwaway894345 2mo ago
Ah yes, massive oil wealth, that famously strong predictor of good governance.
- throwaway27448 2mo ago
  What are the counterexamples? Maybe Nigeria? EDIT: yes, also Iraq and Venezuela
  - cyberax 2mo ago
    Honestly, pretty much every other resource-rich country: Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, ... Norway is an outlier.
    - throwaway27448 2mo ago
      Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran seem to be doing just fine.
      - detourdog 2mo ago
        My first job was at a design firm that worked for Samarec Riyadh Refinery. We were design an interactive exhibit based on the refining process. Our principal was Jewish and we needed special permission for him to enter the country for presentations. During one of the presentations one of our team took a photo of a fountain and it initially ended up in our presentation to be used to set the tone. While previewing our slideshow to our handlers we were told to remove the slide of the fountain. The fountain belonged to the king and could not be photographed without permission from the king. Admittedly there was no violence but we were warned that it was very bad. This was the early 1990’s so I’m sure this are much looser now.

alightsoul 2mo ago

The only way to have agi or any ai is to throw away all ethics then. So why are ai companies shredding books instead of using Anna's archive? Depending on your stance, one is more ethical than the other, but not both. And not neither of them.

noosphr 2mo ago
Anna's archive is missing books and papers.
- alightsoul 2mo ago
  I want to believe most of what they're missing is material held in national and public university libraries and is material specific to the country the books or papers come from. Most of their collections are not digitized and that's what I keep seeing, and then some books that are profession-specific. They're basically rebuilding Google books, and keeping it private. That's privatizing all of humanity's knowledge. Then from what I see some other missing books are just rephrasings of other books, which can already be done with synthetic data using another LLM to generate it. I would assume a lot of those books are school text books as well, which are almost never digitized and are rephrasings of university text books. Maybe they are not able to generate synthetic data of sufficient quality and are resorting to human books that rephrase information instead
  - dgently7 2mo ago
    there is an amazing subplot in the book "service model" that describes a set of robot librarians doing exactly this kind of thing, plus sorting every bit.
  - alightsoul 2mo ago
    i would also assume, most of the cheap books are donated books from all over the world. that are imported into the us for resale as book lots. it would be similar to how donated clothes are packaged into lots and then resold to third world countries, which then sell them in fashion or clothes outlets. then, they really would be importing books from all over the world into the us for scanning and shredding for ai.

stuaxo 2mo ago

Ah, good old "ethical confines" the thing that holds all sorts of things back.. back from what ? Mostly back from exploiting the easily exploited and not paying for externalities. I think Norway would have too much sense to entertain buying this, of course it would be fun because you'd hope they would remove Sam Altman and you might have an AI company not run by someone who spouts the absolute rubbish that current AI leaders do, they are all completely cringeworthy.

nsonha 2mo ago
> holds all sorts of things back.. back from what ? Folding proteins and cure cancer? Deciphering animal languages? Revolutionizing accessibility technology?

AtNightWeCode 2mo ago

It is like a running joke that Norway can buy anything. The oil fund makes more money than the oil for the state btw. So don't underestimate their financial skills.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

vintermann 2mo ago

I agree, except for the second point. An owner isn't a leader. An owner isn't a Sherpa. An owner just owns. Many businesses can do perfectly fine without an active owner, and the owners that do make a difference for their ownee, often make things worse for their ownee, for society at large, or both.

nater5000 2mo ago
Then I suppose the whole blog post is moot, eh? I don't disagree with what you're saying. But the premise of this blog post is that Norway's government would be a good owner of OpenAI because they'd influence the company to operate in a "good" way for society. My comment assumes this is the case for the sake of argument.

nater5000 2mo ago

Just to be clear to those replying to me about the ethical considerations: the point I'm trying to make isn't that these companies shouldn't be ethical; it's that if they actually behaved ethically (at least in the way this blog post describes), they'd be at an extreme disadvantage compared to these other companies who aren't behaving ethically. Norway will have invested in a company just to run it into the ground by enforcing stricter ethical constraints on it compared to its peers. This dynamic is definitely not limited to AI companies and it's pretty obvious to anyone who has ever contemplated the ethics of capitalism as a whole. And if it matters, I don't think these companies behave particularly unethically compared to other large companies. You can take issue with where the baseline of ethics has been set of these kinds of companies, but at the end of the day ethics is a constraint that limits the success of a company in terms of our capitalistic system. Inducing a stronger version of this constraint in a single company, regardless of how preposterous the scenario is, will necessarily lead to that company doing worse than it would have otherwise. The OP doesn't address this dynamic in their post, but it's also a fundamental dynamic of the premise of their post.