It's about the narrative they tried to create. The spin. It doesn't matter much if they were technically behaving as a for-profit entity previously. What matters is that they wanted the public (and likely, their talent) to _think_ that they weren't even interested in making a profit as this would be a philosophical threat to the notion of any sort of impartial or even hopefully benevolent originator of AGI (a goal which is laid plainly in their mission statement).

As you've realized, this should have been (and was) obvious for a long time. But that doesn't make it any less hypocritical or headline worthy.

It isnt a tax thing or a money thing, its a control and governance thing.

The board of the non-profit fired Altman and then Altman (& MS) rebelled, retook control, & gutted the non-profit board. Then, they stacked the new non-profit board with Altman/MS loyalists and now they're discharging the non-profit.

It's entirely about control. The board has a legally enforceable duty to its charter. That charter is the problem Altman is solving.

The problem is that OpenAI calls itself OpenAI when it's completely sealed off, and calls itself a non-profit when, as you say, almost everything about is for profit. Basically they're whitewashing their image as an organization with noble goals when it's simply yet another profit motivated company. It's fine if that's what they are and want to be, but the lies are bothersome.

There's a now-quintessential HN post format, "Poster criticizing X don't seem to under [spray of random details about X that don't refute the criticism - just cast posts as ignorant]".

In this case, Mozilla as a non-profit owning a for-profit manages to more or less fulfill the non-profit's mission (maintaining an open, alternative browser). OpenAI has been in a hurry to abandon it's non-profit mission for a while and the complex details of its structure doesn't change this.

“Decoupling” is such a strange euphemism for removing an asset worth north of $100b from a nonprofit.

> "All OpenAI is doing here is decoupling ownership of the for-profit entity from the nonprofit."

Yes, but going from being controlled by a nonprofit to being controlled by a typical board of shareholders seems like a pretty big change to me.

> All OpenAI is doing here is decoupling ownership of the for-profit

All? As far as I know this is unprecedented.

This might be unpopular, but I don't think Mozilla's behavior is inherently good[1]. And even if it has, I don't think it should be used as a litmus test for other corporate behavior. Every company should stand on its own against scrutiny.

[1] "The Mozilla Foundation has no members" https://hacktivis.me/articles/mozilla-foundation-has-no-memb...

How is it possible to make tax free "donations" for profit making applications? You seem to imply there is nothing nefarious about the setup. Except the non-profit designation doesn't actually perform no social services, instead stand as a business structure to skirt taxation. Change my mind

Good questions!

Right now, OpenAI, Inc. (California non-profit, lets say the charity) is the sole controlling shareholder of OpenAI Global LLC (Delaware for-profit, lets say the company). So, just to start off with the big picture: the whole enterprise was ultimately under the sole control of the non-profit board, who in turn was obligated to operate in furtherance of "charitable public benefit". This is what the linked article means by "significant governance changes happening behind the scenes," which should hopefully convince you that I'm not making this part up.

To get really specific, this change would mean that they'd no longer be obligated to comply with these CA laws:

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x...

https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/media/registration-reporting...

And, a little less importantly, comply with the guidelines for "Public Charities" covered by federal code 501(c)(3) (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/501) covered by this set of articles: https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz... . The important bits are:

  The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings, monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency.
  ... The organization must not be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests, and no part of a section 501(c)(3) organization's net earnings may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.

Naturally, this makes it very hard to explain how the nonprofit could give up basically all of its control without breaking its obligations.

All the above covers "why does it feel unfair for a non-profit entity to gift its assets to a for-profit", but I'll briefly cover the more specific issue of "why does it feel unfair for OpenAI in particular to abandon their founding mission". The answer is simple: they explicitly warned us that for-profit pursuit of AGI is dangerous, potentially leading to catastrophic tragedies involving unrelated members of the global public. We're talking "mass casualty event"-level stuff here, and it's really troubling to see the exact same organization change their mind now that they're in a dominant position. Here's the relevant quotes from their founding documents:

  OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. Since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact... 
  It’s hard to fathom how much human-level AI could benefit society, and it’s equally hard to imagine how much it could damage society if built or used incorrectly. Because of AI’s surprising history, it’s hard to predict when human-level AI might come within reach. When it does, it’ll be important to have a leading research institution which can prioritize a good outcome for all over its own self-interest.

  We commit to use any influence we obtain over AGI’s deployment to ensure it is used for the benefit of all, and to avoid enabling uses of AI or AGI that harm humanity or unduly concentrate power. Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity...
  We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project. We will work out specifics in case-by-case agreements, but a typical triggering condition might be “a better-than-even chance of success in the next two years.”

Sorry for the long reply, and I appreciate the polite + well-researched question! As you can probably guess, this move makes me a little offended and very anxious. For more, look at the posts from the leaders who quit in protest yesterday, namely their CTO.

> Almost every nonprofit that raises revenue outside of donations has to be structured more or less this way to pay taxes.

I don't think that's true? A non-profit can sell products or services, it just can't pay out dividends.

What leverage does Sam Altman have to get equity now? Does he personally have control over that decision?

If the assets were sold to the for profit at a fair price I could see this being legal (even if it shouldn't be). At least in that case the value generated by the non-profit tax free would stay locked up in non-profit land.

The biggest problem with this is that there's basically no chance that the sale price of the non-profit assets is going to be $150 billion, which means that whatever the gap is between the valuation of the assets and the valuation of the company is pure profit derived from the gutting of the non-profit.

If this is allowed, every startup founded from now on should rationally do the same thing. No taxes while growing, then convert to for profit right before you exit.

exactly.

If that's how it works, why wouldn't you start every startup as a non-profit?

Investment is tax deductible, no tax on profits...

Then turn it into a for-profit if/when it becomes successful!

I've actually worked through a similar situation for a prior startup. We were initially funded by a large, hospital system (non-profit) who wanted to foster innovation and a startup mentality. After getting started, it became clear that it was effectively impossible for us to operate like a startup under a non-profit. Namely, traditional funding routes were neigh impossible and the hospital didn't want direct ownership.

It's been many years, but the plan was essentially this:

* The original, non-profit would still exist

* A new, for-profit venture would be created, with the hospital having a board seat and 5% ownership. Can't remember the exact reason behind 5%. I think it was a threshold for certain things becoming a liability for the hospital as they'd be considered "active" owners above 5%. I think this was a healthcare specific issue and unlikely to affect non-profits in other fields.

* The for-profit venture would seek, traditional VC funding. Though, the target investors were primarily in the healthcare space.

* As part of funding, the non-profit would grant exclusive, irrevocable rights of it's IP to that for-profit venture.

* Everyone working for the "startup" would need to sign a new employment contract with the for-profit.

* Viola! You've converted a non-profit into a for-profit business.

I'm fuzzy on a lot of details, but that was the high level architecture of the setup. It's one of those things where the lawyers earn a BOAT LOAD of money to make sure every technicality is accounted for, but everything is just a technicality. The practical outcome is you've converted a non-profit to a for-profit business.

Obviously, this can't happen without the non-profit's approval. From the outside, it seems that Sam has been working internally to align leadership and the board with this outcome.

-----

What will be interesting is how the employees are treated. These types of maneuvers are often an opportunity for companies to drop employees, renegotiate more favorable terms, and reset vesting schedules.

Blue Cross / Blue Shield is a good case study. This is a bit in the weeds but should get you keywords to search for: https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/research/community-invo...

After the non-profit sells its assets, it would either donate the proceeds in a way that would be aligned with the original mission, or continue to exist as a bag of cash, basically.

>Can anybody explain how this actually works?

Every answer moving forward now will contain embedded ads for Sephora, or something completely unrelated to your prompt...

That money will go into the pockets of a small group of people that claim they own shares in the company... Then the company will pull more people in who invest in it, and they'll all get profits based on continually rising monthly membership fees, for an app that stole content from social media posts and historical documents others have written without issuing credit nor compensating them.

Maybe it’s a hint that the tax rate for small and medium companies should be reduced (or other non tax laws modified based on company size), to copy the advantages of this nonprofit to profit conversion, while taxes for large companies should be increased. It would maybe help make competition more fair and make survival easier for startups.

My expertise is in NFP hospitals. Generally, when they convert for for-profit part of that deal is the creation of a foundation funded with assets that are ostensibly to advance the original not for profit mission.

The nonprofit gives all its ownership rights to the for-profit in return for equity. The nonprofit is free to hold the equity and maintain control or sell the equity and use the proceeds for actual charitable purposes.

As long as the money doesn't go into someone's pocket, it's all good (except that Sam Altman is also getting equity but I assume they found a way to justify that.)

OpenAI will eventually be forced to convert from a public charity to a private foundation and will be forced to give away a certain percentage of their assets every year so this solves that problem also.

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Difficult to see how these two stories aren't related.

OpenAI has been one of the most insane business stories in years. I can't wait to read a full book about it that isn't written by either Walter Isaacson or Michael Lewis.

might as well do the full list:

https://github.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.txt/blob/main/rob...

cloudflare have a button for this:

https://blog.cloudflare.com/declaring-your-aindependence-blo...

I wonder how the AI/copyright arguments will play out in court.

"If I read your book and I have a photographic memory and can recall any paragraph do I need to pay you a licensing fee?"

"If I go through your library and count all the times that 'the' is adjacent to 'end' do I need to get your permission to then tell that number to other people?"

Just cobbling together articles I've read... Once the board failed to fire Altman, this transition was a done-deal, it was just a matter of when. Before the board fired Altman, he had been engaging in a more covert effort to take control - putting together personal attacks on various board members intended to drive them out and hiring people with a similar attitude to and loyalty to himself. When the board fired him, they didn't give any clear reasons and that's most mysterious part of the situation. Apparently they were all concerned about his campaign to take control of the board but they each had slightly different reasons for agreeing. I'd further speculate that the board thought in lawyer-advice terms - say as little as possible to avoid a retaliatory lawsuit.

But the board's lack of communication apparently allowed Altman to demonstrate he was more important to the organization than the formal/legal structure, 90% signed intents to quit and the board backed down. It seemed that Altman simply represented the attitude of the many Silicon Valley tech-people - once you have a chance of money, don't hold back, do everything you can to make it.

It has been running on an honor code, that someone pulling off something so slimy as to funnel money meant for non-profits would just get shunned by society and business. Yet here we are.

Ironically the one person with resources fighting it in a tangible way, even if for spite, is Elon Musk.

I hope I can join in, as a consumer, because there’s a difference between using the IP I contribute to conversations for a non-profit and a commercial enterprise.

A non-profit entity will continue to exist. Likely for the reasons you stated.

> It also voids plausibility for Fair Use exemptions. I can see large copyright holders lining up with takedowns

I thought so for a moment but then again Meta, Anthropic (I just checked and they have a "for profit and public benefit" status whatever that means), Google or that Musk's thing aren't non-profits, are they ? There are lawsuits in motion for sure but with how it stands today I think ai gets off the hook.

This is the most important question, IMO! ChatGPT says that employees and donors would have to show that they were defrauded (lied to), which IMO wouldn’t exactly be hard given the founding documents. But the real power falls to the government, both state (Delaware presumably…?) and federal. It mentions the IRS, but AFAIU the DoJ itself could easily bring litigation based on defrauding the government. Hell, maybe throw the SEC in there!

In a normal situation, the primary people with standing to prevent such a move would be the board members of the non-profit, which makes sense. Luckily for Sam, the employees helped kick out all the dissenters a long time ago.

Well I heard someone named Elon did try.

Everyone has legal standing to sue at any time for anything.

Whether the case is any good is another matter.

Elon has allegedly refused equity in OpenAI. He seems to want it to go back to its original mission (which isn't going to happen) or die (which isn't going to happen).

Given that Musk was already worried about this and has a legal team the size of a small army, one would expect that any conditions he wanted applied to the donation would have been made at the time.

Musk doesn't seem to be happy about the situation:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1839121268521492975

he doesn’t need the money, for one. he missed out and didn’t control it, and now he’s jealous that it took off. oh well, world’s richest man and smallest violin.

Regarding the Packers: At least (unlike literally every other NFL team), they’re not using city tax revenue to build a franchise that can move across the country at the drop of a hat.

The NFL’s non-profit status is a farce though. Similarly, their misuse of copyright (“you cannot discuss this broadcast”) and the trademark “Super Bowl” (“cannot be used in factual statements regarding the actual Super Bowl”) should have their ownership of that ip revoked, if only because it causes massive confusion about the underlying law with a big chunk of the US population.

That points to https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-chief-technology-officer-..., which was the submitted URL (thanks!), but we've changed to the Reuters article now, which seems to still have the most reporting on this story.

Does that amount to making a false forward-looking financial statement? (Specifically his claim that he wasn’t interested in getting equity in the future.)

This claim he made was likely helpful in ensuring the OpenAI team’s willingness to bring him back after he was temporarily ousted by the board last year for alleged governance issues. (Basically: “don’t worry about me guys, I’m in this for the mission, not personal enrichment”)

Since his claim likely helped him get re-hired, he can’t claim it was immaterial.

I really hope someone from the SEC scrutinizes him someday. The Singularity is too important to let it be run by someone with questionable ethics.

> well played Sam

Is it well played if you simply decide to lie brazenly? Anyone can win at monopoly if they decide to steal from the bank.

Sam and all the others. At this point, there should be required courses in college to teach this seemingly required skill to future corporate USA.

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Sam Bullshit Altman

That was the point musk was complaining about.

In practice it’s doable though. You can just create a new legal entity and move stuff and/or do future value creating activity in the new co. IF everyone is on board with the plan on both sides of the move then that’s totally doable with enough lawyers and accountants

It's not weird, it's illegal.

There's a lot of jurisdiction around preventing this sort of abuse of the non-profit concept.

The reason why the people involved are not on trial right now is a bit of a mystery to me, but could be a combination of:

* Still too soon, all of this really took shape in the past year or two.

* Only Musk has sued them, so far, and that happened last month.

* There's some favoritism from the government to the leading AI company in the world.

* There's some favoritism from the government to a big company from YC and Sam Altman.

I do believe Musk's lawsuit will go through. The last two points are worth less and less with time as AI is being commoditized. Dismantling OpenAI is actually a business strategy for many other players now. This is not good for OpenAI.

At first, I thought, “Wow, if companies can start as nonprofits and later switch to for-profit, they’ll exploit the system.” But the more I learned about the chaos at OpenAI, the more I realized the opposite is true. Companies will steer clear of this kind of mess. The OpenAI story seems more like a warning than a blueprint. Why would any future company want to go down this path?

It is going to be taken advantage of. Musk and others have criticized this “novel” method of building a company. If it is legal then it is a puzzling loophole. But another way to look at it is it gives small and vulnerable companies a chance to survive (with different laws and taxes applying to the initial nonprofit). If you look at it as enabling competition against the big players it looks more reasonable.

I am not a tax specialist but from my understanding a non-profit is a for-profit that doesn't pay dividends. Why would the government care?

The NFL used to be a nonprofit and now for profit. OpenAI can use similar routes

Time to go open source

Similar example can be seen with the demise of Twitter under the new owner, which has no safeguards or guardrails - anyone who opposed him is gone and we can see in what state it is now.

Maybe my expectations were too high but they seem to have run out of juice. Every major announcement since the original ChatGPT release has been kind of a dud - I know there have been improvements, but it's mostly the same hallucinatory experience as it was on release day. A lot of the interesting work is now happening elsewhere. It seems like for a lot of products, the LLM part is just an API layer you can swap out if you think e.g Claude does a better job.

It was always a bit too optimistic to think we will be cautiously developing AGI, in a way it's not so bad that this happened so soon rather than later after it progressed much further. (I mean in theory we could understand to do something about it now.)

Although I guess it doesn't really matter. What if we all understood climate change earlier? wouldn't really have made a difference anyway

What else would you expect from a skeevy backstabber who got kicked out of Kenya for refusing to stop scanning people's eyes in exchange for shitcoin crypto? He was building a global surveillance database with Worldcoin.

Altman was fucking with OpenAI for long before the board left in protest, since about the time Elon Musk had to leave due to Tesla's AI posing a conflict of interest. He got more and more brazen with the whole fake-altruism shit, up to and including contradicting every point in their mission statement and promise to investors in the "charity."

Things would be different for sure. I wonder if people leaving OpenAI has something to do with the prosaic comparison of what they are getting (a salary) and what he's getting (a cool $10B at the current valuation).

The bottom line was always the priority.

You have cause and effect flipped. The non-profit didn’t try to oust Sam because he was getting the non-profit to disengage from OpenAIs capped profit entity, that makes no sense and he can’t do that, he can’t stear the hand of the non-profit board. What is happening is that he’s detangling the non-profit from what will be the for-profit in order to not have people trying to throw him overboard. It was obviously going to happen the second the non-profit board thought they could just fire him and take control.

And the tax office! If this works, many companies will be founded as non-profit first in the future.

Couldn't find the JRE clip, but here's a recent one where he says "I don't really need more money." This is how I always understood it, he's already worth billions from past ventures, what difference does a stake in OpenAI make?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PScOZzzXnDA

Regarding the 4 million dollar car, Sam already made a ton of money from Reddit and being President of YC.

I swear the reason why we have so many sociopaths is because how goddamn easy it is to fool people, it’s like stealing candy from kids. Just put on the pseudo intellectual mask and say that you care deeply about grandeur issue X, and people will just believe you at face value, despite your entire track record showing you care only about power, money and status.

> The most surprising thing to me in this is that the non-profit will still exist.

That entity will scrape the internet and train the models and claim that "it's just research" to be able to claim that all is fair-use.

At this point it's not even funny anymore.

The non-profit side is just there to attract talent and encourage them to work harder b/c it's for humanity. Obviously people sniffed out the facts, realized it was all for profit and that lead to an exodus.

> The most surprising thing to me in this is that the non-profit will still exist. Not sure what the point of it is anymore.

As a moral fig leaf. They can always point to it when the press calls -- "see it is a non-profit".

We haven't even heard about who gets voting shares, and what voting power will be like. Based on their character, I expect them to remain consistent in this regard.

The non-profit will probably freeze the value of the assets accumulated so far, with new revenue going to the for-profit, to avoid the tax impact. Otherwise that'd be a great way to start companies, as non-profit and then after growth you flip the switch.

Totally agree that it’s “vestigial”, so it’s just like the nonprofits all the other companies run: it exists for PR, along with maybe a bit of alternative fundraising (aka pursuing grants for buying your own stuff and giving it to the needy). A common example that comes to mind is fast food chains that do fundraising campaigns for children’s health causes.

This is 85% of what the Mozilla foundation and it's group of companies did. It may not be exact, but to me it rubs me the exact same way in terms of being a bait and switch, and the greater internet being 100% powerless to do anything about it.

> 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.

A tale as old as time. Some of us could see it, from afar <says while scratching gray, dusty beard>. Lack of upvotes and excitement does not mean support, but how to account for that in these times? <goes away>

It's just a tax avoidance scheme.

The whole "safety" and "benefits humanity" thing always felt like marketing anyways.

Scam Altman strikes again!

why wouldn't they keep it?

the well known scammer successfully scammed everyone twice. obviously he's keeping it around for the third (and forth...) time

Elon Musk sued over this: https://www.npr.org/2024/03/01/1235159084/elon-musk-openai-s...

The trust problem here isn't with non-profits in general, it's specifically with Sam Altman. So no, you probably shouldn't trust the next non-profit he is involved with. But also, people have warned about Altman in advance.

Yes, you should still trust cooperatives and syndicates. I am surprised they’re attempting such a brazenly disrespectful move, but in general, the people who started this company were self-avowed capitalists through-and-through; the fact that they eventually reverted to seeking personal gain isn’t surprising in itself. That’s basically their world view: whatever I can do to enrich myself is moral because Ethical Egoism/Free Market/etc.

The point is that OpenAI (the for protists) won’t die from not having invested AGI, they have an extremely profitable opportunity from “just” selling api calls and consultant hours. But that just brings them a successful shovel seller, not the societal transformation that the non-profit is aiming at, so it makes sense to detangle the non-profit and for profit.

Also because you know… the non-profit tried to strangle the for profit to take over control when they tried to oust Sam, so there’s that.

Unfortunately, that's not how trademarks work.

You can name your company "ThisProductWillCureYouFromCancer" and the FDA cannot do a thing about it if you put it on a bottle of herbal pills.

That would be a nice thing they could do.

Microsoft already effectively owns OpenAI. Their investments in OpenAI have granted them a 49% stake in the company, the right to sell any pre-AGI OpenAI products to Microsoft's customers, and access to all pre-AGI product research. Microsoft's $10 billion investment in early 2023 (after ChatGPT's launch massively increased OpenAI's operating expenses) was mainly in Azure compute credits rather than cash and delivered in tranches (as of November 2023 they'd only gotten a fraction of that money). It also gives Microsoft 75% of OpenAI's profits until they make their $10 billion back. All of these deals have effectively made OpenAI into Microsoft's generative AI R&D lab. More information: https://www.wheresyoured.at/to-serve-altman/

I don't see the point of anyone acquiring OpenAI - especially not Microsoft, Google, Meta, Anthropic, X.ai, all of which have developed the same tech themselves. The real assets are the people, who are leaving ship and potentially hireable. With this much turmoil, its hard to imagine we've seen the last of the high level exits.

> CEO shuffles

Yes, I too can see how sama could end up as Microsoft’s CEO as a result of this

Considering all the high level departures, this makes the most sense to me. Their valuation largely rests on this mystique they've built that says they alone are destined to unlock AGI. But there's just no reason to believe they have a secret sauce nobody else can reproduce.

Seems more likely that OpenAI's biggest secret is that they have no secrets, and they are desperately trying to come up with a second act as tech companies with more robust product portfolios begin to catch up.

AI Safety is a science fiction created by large corporations and useful idiots to distract from working on boring, real AI safety concerns like bias, misinformation, deepfakes, etc.

I don't know why anyone would believe anything this guy is saying, though, especially now that we know he's going to receive a 7% stake in the now-for-profit company.

There are two main interpretations of what he's saying:

1) He sincerely believes that AGI is around the corner.

2) He sees that his research team is hitting a plateau of what is possible and is prepping for a very successful exit before the rest of the world notices the plateau.

Given his track record of honesty and the financial incentives involved, I know which interpretation I lean towards.

It's interesting because one of the points Sam emphatically stresses over and over on most podcasts he's gone on in the past 4 years is how crucial it is that a single person or a single company or a collection of companies controlling ASI would be absolutely disastrous and that there needs to be public, democratic control of ASI and the policies surrounding it.

Personally I still believe he thinks that way (in contrast to what ~99% of HN believes) and that he does care deeply about potential existential (and other) risks of ASI. I would bet money/Manifoldbux that if he thought powerful AGI/ASI were anywhere near, he'd hit the brakes and initiate a massive safety overhaul.

I don't know why the promises to the safety team weren't kept (thus triggering their mass resignations), but I don't think it's something as silly as him becoming extremely power hungry or no longer believing there were risks or thinking the risks are acceptable. Perhaps he thought it wasn't the most rational and efficient use of capital at that time given current capabilities.

Didn't altman say 'pwease wet us ignowe copywhite waw! we can't be pwofitabwe if we don't...' in some legal forum recently?

Most of us laughed out loud this time too, for this very same reason. But it is fun to watch the rest of y'all learn :)

I went through something similar with a prior startup. Though, it wasn't anything nefarious, like this.

Basically, the plan was to create a new for-profit entity then have the not-for-profit license the existing IP to the for-profit. There were a lot of technicalities to it, but most of that was handled by lawyers drawing up the chartering paperwork.

This would have been the perfect time to change it, but maybe soon if not at same time as any official announcement.

It's hard to say if there is much brand value left with "OpenAI" - lots of history, but lots of toxicity too.

At the end of the day they'll do as well as they are able to differentiate and sell their increasingly commoditized products, in a competitive landscape where they've got Meta able to give it away for free.

It's a widely known brand, even by people outside of the industry. Why would they change it? Their AI was never really open to begin with, so nothing really change on that front

"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them". -1984

Open(YourWallet)AI

Microsoft needs to lie due to pervasive ill-will from their previous abuses.

Proto-Indo-European culture seems to have placed a great deal of importance on the sanctity of contracts and the notion of reciprocal hospitality, reflected in many descendant myths and etymologies surviving from Ireland through India. If the Indo-Europeans did indeed come from the Ukrainian steppes, as seems likely, this may be a reflection of their high mobility (on horseback) causing lots of contact with potential for friction, and the fact that important personal property (for a steppe society, mainly herd animals) was moveable and vulnerable to cattle rustling. There's some great books on Indo-European society if you're interested.

This nation’s largest institutions were founded on deceit from the colonies to the founding fathers.

Aaron Burr raised capital for a fake water company and applied for a banking charter for what is now JP Morgan Chase

some people are playing by a more effective set of rules and others are being lied to from a young age

That one never made it to the front page because reasons. All that discussion was people reading the story elsewhere and going looking for the HN thread.

In many SV denizens' heads, they're one in the same.

Which is why we need to reopen more asylums and bring back involuntary commitment.

Some number must be people who only care about winning like Sam. Plus they're getting huge returns.

I get strong "next Mark Zuckerberg" vibes from Sam. Build a zombie product that approaches worthlessness after a few years, but made himself hugely rich in the process, and buys off tech and people as needed to maintain some kind of relevance.

Mira joined in 2018. OpenAI was founded in 2015.

Earth

Objectively, they’re both no good.

ClosedAI or PrivateAI

Saw someone on HN call it NopenAI

Succeed off of lies and deceit to gain goodwill from workers and governments.

Part of the reason is exactly so the talent gets easier liquidity on their stakes. Sucks to have been part of building the success that OpenAI is only to not be able to get anything significant out of it just because the company is a capped-profit under a non-profit, they’ll instead just end up owning shares in a traditional for profit on the market, with the ability to sell shares to pay of their mortgage or buy a new car etc.

I imagine for tax reasons?

Why the h are they called "openAI" too? nothing is open for them but your own wallet.

> and Sam jumps in to brag

I never read that as a brag, but as a sarcastic dismissal. That’s why it started with “cool story bro” and “except I could never have predicted”. I see the tone as “this story is convoluted” not as “I’ll admit to my plan now that you can’t do anything about it”.

That’s not to say Sam isn’t a scammer. He is. It just doesn’t seem like that particular post is proof of it. But Worldcoin is.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldcoin-...

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi...

The board drama part and key people leaving seem oddly familiar.

The previous post never entered the front page at all:

https://hnrankings.info/41651548/

It somehow got enough attention to get to 300+ votes while being entirely suppressed from the front page.

This one looks like it triggered a flag before being fixed:

https://hnrankings.info/41655954/

https://hnrankings.info/41655954/

Looks like it was flagged, before being brought back by an admin. This happens quite often.

Look at the URL. It’s because the original WSJ title was “OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Resigns,” which was a dupe of yesterday’s discussions. WSJ changed the title yesterday evening.

I noticed that, too. It does seem 'odd'.

I found this on the front page an hour after you made this comment.

Yeah hope for some transparency here

You can't post content critical of some HN darlings without being flagged by their fans

Seeing so much money rolling in, hard to not want a slice of the pie.

Will they finally rename the company?

It appeared but was buried on the second page and never made it to the front page, for some weird reason. Some in the discussion speculated that it was due to a flame war detection algorithm:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548

Yes, Altman not having 7% of the company was not a good fit for the world.

"suddenly"?

I was under the impression that most people saw this coming years ago. The second "Open"AI refused to release the weights for GPT-2 for our "safety" (we can see in hind sight how obviously untrue this was, but most of us saw it then too) it was clear that they were headed towards profitability.

pg is sama’s biggest DR-er (interpret this as you will).

They have that Michael Scott & Ryan energy.

This is not how nonprofits usually work. This is blatant fraud. I cannot think of any other case besides OpenAI of this particular shenanigan being pulled.

It's not what they're doing (trying to earn money), but it's how they're doing it (in a very unethical and damaging way), while trying to whitewash themselves.

It’s criminal. Many people donated money, worked for them, gave data, etc. on the promise that OpenAI was working towards the public good. It turns out those transactions occurred under false pretenses. That’s fraud.

How is this food for thought? OpenAI had an unfair advantage by starting out as a non-profit.

> Profit, money, time, control

I feel this only scratches the surface of what to chase in life. And in respect to a potentially singular, all-knowing piece of technology, not necessarily a goal people want to embue.

In any thread about companies that have some amount of hype around them, it’s difficult to tell the difference between comments coming from people with legitimate concerns about the issues at hand vs cynical people that have found their latest excuse to glom on to outrage against hype.

Your food is undercooked

I see your point but I think it's fine to be angry and disappointed that an outfit that appeared to be trying to do it differently has abandoned the effort.

> advancing humanity Perhaps but I'd say it's more of a mixed bag. Cell phones and social media have done harm and good at very large scales. As Dan Carlin once said, it feels like we're babies crawling toward hand guns. We don't seem like we're as wise as we are technically proficient.

Oppenheimer "advanced humanity" by giving us nuclear power. Cool. I love cheap energy. Unfortunately, there were some uh... "unfortunate side-effects" which continue to plague us.

Do you really want people who have a lot of power to have serious flaws? Looking back into history it doesn't end up good usually.

> If they’re advancing humanity, do their personal flaws really matter?

What's being discussed in this thread is not the personal failings of silicon valley darlings, but whether one of them just defrauded a few thousand people and embezzled a significant amount of capital. Citing his character flaws goes along with it though.

Are you seriously arguing that people should be exempt from law for "advancing humanity"? Because I don't see any advancements whatsoever from all of the people mentioned. Altman and Musk would get a hardon for sure though, from being mentioned together with Jobs.

They matter MORE. Are you like, completely unfamiliar with Spiderman and the whole great power great responsibility line??

> If they’re advancing humanity, do their personal flaws really matter?

Well, yeah, they're positioning themselves as some of the most powerful and influential individuals on earth. I'd say any personality flaws are pretty important.

Elon Musk isn't "advancing humanity".