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.
https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-note-more-...
List of crawlers for those who now want to block: https://platform.openai.com/docs/bots
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?
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.
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.
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
>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"
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.
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.
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/opena...
Is this the beginning of the end for OpenAI?
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.
Hint: it won’t.
That seems like fraud to me.
Safe AI, altruistic AI, human-centric AI, are all dead. There is only money-generating AI. Fuck.
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.
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....?
so much for sam "i have no equity" altman
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?".
OpenAI is Microsoft's AI R&D spin-off and Microsoft means business.
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
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)
The stinking peasants will never realize what's happening until it's too late to stop!
"openai is nothing without its people." well, the key people left. soon, it will just be sam and his sycophants.
but still, you'd think some of them would have finally had enough and have enough opportunities elsewhere that they can leave.
What happened to all the people making fun of Helen Toner for attempting to fire Sama? She and Ilya were right.
Sam Altman is a poison pill.
"Do I shock you? This is capitalism."
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. :)
Reputationally... the net winner is Zuck. Way to go Meta (never thought I'd think this).
"OpenAI to remove non-profit control and give Sam Altman equity"
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/o...
> 57. OpenAI to Become For-Profit Company (wsj.com) 204 points by jspann 4 hours ago | flag | hide | 110 comments
/s
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.
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_n...