I think the symbolism here matters a lot more than the financial or legal details. The articles speculates on various outcomes and explores what actually constitutes a public theft, and I...
I think the symbolism here matters a lot more than the financial or legal details. The articles speculates on various outcomes and explores what actually constitutes a public theft, and I appreciate that extensive analysis. Still, this story isn’t really about what OpenAI’s theoretical profit will be or what the legal method was. The parties with controlling interest seem to want this to happen, and power will do what power will do. I’m not sure there’s a real dispute here.
To my understanding, OpenAI arose from the 2010s community who believed artificial intelligence was our greatest threat, and that it needed to be developed for public safety. The original structure was never designed to be robust—no social construct is robust against human action—but it did show a commitment to do things a bit differently than the social media and Internet companies dominating the landscape at the time. OpenAI was built not to do profit-maximizing value extraction, but OpenAI has continued to stray further and further from that mission in recent years. This move is really just the final public resignation that they really aren’t different, and that they plan to use their dominating market share and new technology to generate value for the shareholders, regardless of the cost.
That makes me scared, but more than anything, it makes me sad. The world would be a nicer place if power did not corrupt.
That's quite the headline. Is it justified? From the article: ... This is all speculative value - what stockholders think it's worth, and they could be wrong. But still. On the other hand: ... For...
That's quite the headline. Is it justified? From the article:
the nonprofit will now only hold equity OpenAI claims is valued at approximately $130 billion [...] as opposed to its previous status of holding the bulk of the profit interests in a company valued at (when you include the nonprofit interests) well over $500 billion
...
Even if we thought the new control rights were as strong as the old, we would still be looking at a theft in excess of $250 billion, and a plausible case can be made for over $500 billion. I leave the full calculation to others.
This is all speculative value - what stockholders think it's worth, and they could be wrong. But still.
On the other hand:
the nonprofit, after the theft and excluding control rights, will have an on-paper valuation only slightly lower than the on-paper value of all of Anthropic.
...
If OpenAI can successfully go public at a $1 trillion valuation, then depending on how much of that are new shares they will be selling the nonprofit could be worth up to $260 billion.
For comparison, the Gates Foundation had about $77 billion at the beginning of the year.
So much is wasted on all this profiteering. Just the money spent on figuring the legal intricacies of using copyrighted data for training is probably enough to end world hunger. We could make all...
So much is wasted on all this profiteering. Just the money spent on figuring the legal intricacies of using copyrighted data for training is probably enough to end world hunger.
We could make all AI companies non-profit and allow them to use our collective knowledge freely for the collective good and there would only be winnners. But no, winning is not enough, it has to an absolute victory where everyone else is completely destroyed. So the top 1 % fight each other over billions while the 99 % are nothing but a commodity.
I'm currently reading the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, and I'm rooting for the aliens. Maybe they are even worse to each other, but at least it's for their common good and not to win at Cookie Clicker.
Not to defend OpenAI, but I can't figure out: what is being stolen from whom and how? It seems like the controlling interests around OpenAI changed their minds about what the non-profit retains vs...
Not to defend OpenAI, but I can't figure out: what is being stolen from whom and how? It seems like the controlling interests around OpenAI changed their minds about what the non-profit retains vs the for-profit portion of the enterprise.
If I’m understanding correctly, they’re saying that the value of OpenAI is supposed to go to the beneficiaries of the nonprofit (and by extension the public as a whole?), so the transfer of...
If I’m understanding correctly, they’re saying that the value of OpenAI is supposed to go to the beneficiaries of the nonprofit (and by extension the public as a whole?), so the transfer of ownership to the for-profit entity is theft in the same way that spending charity funds on personal luxuries would be.
I don’t know enough about the deep minutiae of OpenAI’s structure to know whether I agree in this specific case, but at least conceptually I’m a big believer in the importance of collectively held value, so it seems justified to at least be concerned about it.
A non-profit gets all sorts of beneficial treatment around e.g. tax etc. For it then to hand over the primary output of that non-profit to a for-profit, even if run by the same people, kind of...
A non-profit gets all sorts of beneficial treatment around e.g. tax etc. For it then to hand over the primary output of that non-profit to a for-profit, even if run by the same people, kind of retroactively paints this benefits as ill-gotten.
I think the symbolism here matters a lot more than the financial or legal details. The articles speculates on various outcomes and explores what actually constitutes a public theft, and I appreciate that extensive analysis. Still, this story isn’t really about what OpenAI’s theoretical profit will be or what the legal method was. The parties with controlling interest seem to want this to happen, and power will do what power will do. I’m not sure there’s a real dispute here.
To my understanding, OpenAI arose from the 2010s community who believed artificial intelligence was our greatest threat, and that it needed to be developed for public safety. The original structure was never designed to be robust—no social construct is robust against human action—but it did show a commitment to do things a bit differently than the social media and Internet companies dominating the landscape at the time. OpenAI was built not to do profit-maximizing value extraction, but OpenAI has continued to stray further and further from that mission in recent years. This move is really just the final public resignation that they really aren’t different, and that they plan to use their dominating market share and new technology to generate value for the shareholders, regardless of the cost.
That makes me scared, but more than anything, it makes me sad. The world would be a nicer place if power did not corrupt.
That's quite the headline. Is it justified? From the article:
...
This is all speculative value - what stockholders think it's worth, and they could be wrong. But still.
On the other hand:
...
For comparison, the Gates Foundation had about $77 billion at the beginning of the year.
So much is wasted on all this profiteering. Just the money spent on figuring the legal intricacies of using copyrighted data for training is probably enough to end world hunger.
We could make all AI companies non-profit and allow them to use our collective knowledge freely for the collective good and there would only be winnners. But no, winning is not enough, it has to an absolute victory where everyone else is completely destroyed. So the top 1 % fight each other over billions while the 99 % are nothing but a commodity.
I'm currently reading the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, and I'm rooting for the aliens. Maybe they are even worse to each other, but at least it's for their common good and not to win at Cookie Clicker.
Not to defend OpenAI, but I can't figure out: what is being stolen from whom and how? It seems like the controlling interests around OpenAI changed their minds about what the non-profit retains vs the for-profit portion of the enterprise.
If I’m understanding correctly, they’re saying that the value of OpenAI is supposed to go to the beneficiaries of the nonprofit (and by extension the public as a whole?), so the transfer of ownership to the for-profit entity is theft in the same way that spending charity funds on personal luxuries would be.
I don’t know enough about the deep minutiae of OpenAI’s structure to know whether I agree in this specific case, but at least conceptually I’m a big believer in the importance of collectively held value, so it seems justified to at least be concerned about it.
A non-profit gets all sorts of beneficial treatment around e.g. tax etc. For it then to hand over the primary output of that non-profit to a for-profit, even if run by the same people, kind of retroactively paints this benefits as ill-gotten.