And thus, the utter collapse of the entire pitch behind OpenAI, and with it, any chance of their being a humanity-driven force and not just another pocket-lining tech startup priming itself for...
And thus, the utter collapse of the entire pitch behind OpenAI, and with it, any chance of their being a humanity-driven force and not just another pocket-lining tech startup priming itself for aquisition by Microsoft.
Oh and the bigger news behind the headline:
The talks came as chief technology officer Mira Murati announced she was leaving the company. Bob McGrew, chief research officer, and Barret Zoph, vice-president of research, also said they were leaving.
So all of the major leadership in charge of the technology jumps ship as the one steering the ship starts pushing towards profitability? I can forgive and respect the nerds doing the grunt work that just want to to make an AGI, but it's sad that nobody with the resources is willing to build an AGI without the promise of great returns on it.
It's why philanthropy is bunk. It's PR...tossing pocket change at headline-grabbing feelgood stories while insuring that all major progress gets kept behind the castle walls of building wealth, only the end results to be metered out sparingly upon the whims of the billionaire controlling the gates.
OpenAI has a unique story. I don’t think any other nonprofit has done what they’ve done, raising money and attracting employees with similar financial incentives that a hot startup would use,...
OpenAI has a unique story. I don’t think any other nonprofit has done what they’ve done, raising money and attracting employees with similar financial incentives that a hot startup would use, except with different legal paperwork. The “capped profit” thing seems to be something they invented. It’s my impression that non-profits normally just pay their staff a salary and don’t have anything that looks like a profit-sharing agreement at all. And any money donated to them really is a donation, not an investment in disguise.
So I don’t see this story generalizing to any other non-profit and “it’s why philanthropy is bunk” doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
OpenAI was originally not a for-profit endeavor, at all. At least, not as it was pitched in 2015. The capped-profit subsidiary was a new thing they invented in 2019 specifically to get around the...
OpenAI was originally not a for-profit endeavor, at all. At least, not as it was pitched in 2015. The capped-profit subsidiary was a new thing they invented in 2019 specifically to get around the original stated mission.
I'm not saying that non-profit organizations are incapable of doing good. What I am saying is that non-profit organizations that rely primarily on the blessing of millionaires and billionaires to throw them table scraps are a fragile endeavor. Because for millionaires and billionaires, it is unconscionable that societal progress be distributed in a fashion that isn't possible to profit from.
Another good use case I point to is Bill Gates being opposed to waiving intellectual property rights for the COVID vaccine. It's more important that mRNA technology remain under a heavily patented and copy-written process than to provide cheap and free distribution of the technology and its outputs, because it's revolutionary. But throwing malaria vaccines to the world is OK, because there's no potential profit in it.
Feeding the homeless via churches and charitbale donations is better than paying the taxes needed to properly house them.
The “fragile” criticism is an odd one. I don’t know long a nonprofit should last, but some (like the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations) are quite old, and many universities are effectively...
The “fragile” criticism is an odd one. I don’t know long a nonprofit should last, but some (like the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations) are quite old, and many universities are effectively immortal. On the other hand, the Gates Foundation has plans to spend its money and shut down after Gates dies. But either way, they don’t seem very fragile, and being funded by rich people doesn’t seem to be a source of fragility, because they have endowments that mean they’ll be fine if rich people stop donating.
And how long should an organization live, anyway? Maybe nonprofits shouldn’t be perpetual and should instead be judged by what they’ve done over ther lifetime? It seems okay if things don’t last forever.
I also think you’re grasping at straws when you criticize the Gates Foundation because you don’t like some of Bill Gate’s beliefs. That’s not a good way to judge what good a foundation has done. Since they fund a lot of things, some of which have failed, judging that isn’t so easy. How risky should their bets be?
I broadly agree with your point, but the foundations and universities you mention are immortal because they have such deep pockets that they can operate entirely off the residuals from their...
I broadly agree with your point, but the foundations and universities you mention are immortal because they have such deep pockets that they can operate entirely off the residuals from their portfolios. They're not representative of most nonprofits. The fragility of a nonprofit being dependent on donations is real, and when they're dependent on the donations of a singular person all it takes is that one person changing their mind on short notice to ruin the organization. It's like running a business with only one client. If that client stops working with you, you'd better have a backup plan.
Yes, fair enough. But I think this rounds to “it all depends.” Some nonprofits have shakier finances than others. Using OpenAI, an outlier even among big, famous non-profits funded by...
Yes, fair enough. But I think this rounds to “it all depends.” Some nonprofits have shakier finances than others. Using OpenAI, an outlier even among big, famous non-profits funded by billionaires, as a typical example is weird.
This doesn't apply to many universities outside the US, so I don't think this point necessarily stands, though those are essentially perpetually funded by the government, which is imo not a great...
universities you mention are immortal because they have such deep pockets that they can operate entirely off the residuals from their portfolios
This doesn't apply to many universities outside the US, so I don't think this point necessarily stands, though those are essentially perpetually funded by the government, which is imo not a great modus operandi for most types of nonprofits in other fields either.
To my reading of skybrian's comment, he was speaking of universities like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or Princeton; where they are true financial powerhouses. It's certainly not true of universities...
To my reading of skybrian's comment, he was speaking of universities like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or Princeton; where they are true financial powerhouses. It's certainly not true of universities in general.
Hmm. Based on their investor page, they do seem to be distributing most profits to their non-profit. What have you heard about them that's misleading? Edits: It's a bit weird that a company like...
Hmm. Based on their investor page, they do seem to be distributing most profits to their non-profit. What have you heard about them that's misleading?
Edits: It's a bit weird that a company like that has investors. Looks like they IPO'ed in June and are traded on the London stock exchange. How do they decide whether to pay money to the foundation or to investors?
I found this in the prospectus:
Immediately following Admission, the Foundation will continue to have an indirect interest, through the Principal Selling Shareholder, in 49.08 per cent. of the Company’s issued Share capital, assuming no exercise of the Over-allotment Option and 46.70 per cent of the Company’s issued Share capital if the Over-allotment Option is exercised in full. As a result, the Foundation will, through the Principal Shareholder, possess sufficient voting power to have significant influence over all matters requiring shareholder approval, including the election of directors, approval of significant corporate transactions and the ability to delay, defer or prevent a change of control.
...
Furthermore, while the Foundation, through the Principal Shareholder, has a long-term objective to sell down its stake in the Company over a ten-year period, there can be no assurance how much of its stake that it will sell, or when it will do so.
Perhaps the idea is to spin off the for-profit company and diversify funding for the charity; that is, the for-profit company shares are a major investment for the charity (they own just below half the company), but really just a source of funding from now on, like the other investments in a charity's endowment?
One big difference is that OpenAI is burning cash rapidly, while Raspberry Pi seems to be profitable.
Well, most of the parts that aren’t a success are made up. One of the main conflicts between the story is Zuckerberg financial success contrasting his increasing social isolation - but that was...
Well, most of the parts that aren’t a success are made up. One of the main conflicts between the story is Zuckerberg financial success contrasting his increasing social isolation - but that was just for the movie. The relationship with Eduardo was also mostly fabricated.
If it were a documentary, it would likely be focused more on facebooks financial success vs its (often negative) effect on certain world events, like the Myanmar genocide.
It's not quite as tidy as that, but with the approval of the board of directors of the nonprofit you can strip all of the assets from the nonprofit into the existing for-profit organization and...
It's not quite as tidy as that, but with the approval of the board of directors of the nonprofit you can strip all of the assets from the nonprofit into the existing for-profit organization and abandon any pretense that your organization is explicitly attempting something in the public interest.
And thus, the utter collapse of the entire pitch behind OpenAI, and with it, any chance of their being a humanity-driven force and not just another pocket-lining tech startup priming itself for aquisition by Microsoft.
Oh and the bigger news behind the headline:
So all of the major leadership in charge of the technology jumps ship as the one steering the ship starts pushing towards profitability? I can forgive and respect the nerds doing the grunt work that just want to to make an AGI, but it's sad that nobody with the resources is willing to build an AGI without the promise of great returns on it.
It's why philanthropy is bunk. It's PR...tossing pocket change at headline-grabbing feelgood stories while insuring that all major progress gets kept behind the castle walls of building wealth, only the end results to be metered out sparingly upon the whims of the billionaire controlling the gates.
OpenAI has a unique story. I don’t think any other nonprofit has done what they’ve done, raising money and attracting employees with similar financial incentives that a hot startup would use, except with different legal paperwork. The “capped profit” thing seems to be something they invented. It’s my impression that non-profits normally just pay their staff a salary and don’t have anything that looks like a profit-sharing agreement at all. And any money donated to them really is a donation, not an investment in disguise.
So I don’t see this story generalizing to any other non-profit and “it’s why philanthropy is bunk” doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
OpenAI was originally not a for-profit endeavor, at all. At least, not as it was pitched in 2015. The capped-profit subsidiary was a new thing they invented in 2019 specifically to get around the original stated mission.
I'm not saying that non-profit organizations are incapable of doing good. What I am saying is that non-profit organizations that rely primarily on the blessing of millionaires and billionaires to throw them table scraps are a fragile endeavor. Because for millionaires and billionaires, it is unconscionable that societal progress be distributed in a fashion that isn't possible to profit from.
Another good use case I point to is Bill Gates being opposed to waiving intellectual property rights for the COVID vaccine. It's more important that mRNA technology remain under a heavily patented and copy-written process than to provide cheap and free distribution of the technology and its outputs, because it's revolutionary. But throwing malaria vaccines to the world is OK, because there's no potential profit in it.
Feeding the homeless via churches and charitbale donations is better than paying the taxes needed to properly house them.
The “fragile” criticism is an odd one. I don’t know long a nonprofit should last, but some (like the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations) are quite old, and many universities are effectively immortal. On the other hand, the Gates Foundation has plans to spend its money and shut down after Gates dies. But either way, they don’t seem very fragile, and being funded by rich people doesn’t seem to be a source of fragility, because they have endowments that mean they’ll be fine if rich people stop donating.
And how long should an organization live, anyway? Maybe nonprofits shouldn’t be perpetual and should instead be judged by what they’ve done over ther lifetime? It seems okay if things don’t last forever.
I also think you’re grasping at straws when you criticize the Gates Foundation because you don’t like some of Bill Gate’s beliefs. That’s not a good way to judge what good a foundation has done. Since they fund a lot of things, some of which have failed, judging that isn’t so easy. How risky should their bets be?
I broadly agree with your point, but the foundations and universities you mention are immortal because they have such deep pockets that they can operate entirely off the residuals from their portfolios. They're not representative of most nonprofits. The fragility of a nonprofit being dependent on donations is real, and when they're dependent on the donations of a singular person all it takes is that one person changing their mind on short notice to ruin the organization. It's like running a business with only one client. If that client stops working with you, you'd better have a backup plan.
Yes, fair enough. But I think this rounds to “it all depends.” Some nonprofits have shakier finances than others. Using OpenAI, an outlier even among big, famous non-profits funded by billionaires, as a typical example is weird.
Agreed. It's an outlier in many ways.
This doesn't apply to many universities outside the US, so I don't think this point necessarily stands, though those are essentially perpetually funded by the government, which is imo not a great modus operandi for most types of nonprofits in other fields either.
To my reading of skybrian's comment, he was speaking of universities like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or Princeton; where they are true financial powerhouses. It's certainly not true of universities in general.
I think Raspberry Pi Foundation and their for profit entity is somewhat similar in the bait and switch
Hmm. Based on their investor page, they do seem to be distributing most profits to their non-profit. What have you heard about them that's misleading?
Edits: It's a bit weird that a company like that has investors. Looks like they IPO'ed in June and are traded on the London stock exchange. How do they decide whether to pay money to the foundation or to investors?
I found this in the prospectus:
...
Perhaps the idea is to spin off the for-profit company and diversify funding for the charity; that is, the for-profit company shares are a major investment for the charity (they own just below half the company), but really just a source of funding from now on, like the other investments in a charity's endowment?
One big difference is that OpenAI is burning cash rapidly, while Raspberry Pi seems to be profitable.
It's like, did they not see The Social Network? Or did they watch it and want to do it again lol
The social network isn’t exactly a documentary. It’s a good movie, but most of the details were fabricated for dramatic purposes.
Regardless, The Social Network is aspirational for capitalists. It's essentially a story of success.
Well, most of the parts that aren’t a success are made up. One of the main conflicts between the story is Zuckerberg financial success contrasting his increasing social isolation - but that was just for the movie. The relationship with Eduardo was also mostly fabricated.
If it were a documentary, it would likely be focused more on facebooks financial success vs its (often negative) effect on certain world events, like the Myanmar genocide.
Huh, I have no idea that you can "convert" nonprofit company to forprofit.
It's not quite as tidy as that, but with the approval of the board of directors of the nonprofit you can strip all of the assets from the nonprofit into the existing for-profit organization and abandon any pretense that your organization is explicitly attempting something in the public interest.