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Notes -
OpenAI To Become a For-Profit Company
You'll notice that the link is to a hackernews thread. I did that intentionally because I think some of the points raised there get to issues deeper than "hurr durr, Elon got burnt" or whatever.
Some points to consider:
It is hard to not see this as a deliberate business-model hack. Start as a research oriented non-profit so you can more easily acquire data, perhaps investors / funders, and a more favorable public imagine. Sam Altman spent a bunch of time on Capitol Hill last year and seemed to move with greater ease because of the whole "benefit to humanity" angle. Then, once you have acquired a bunch of market share this way, flip the money switch on. Also, there are a bunch of tax incentives for non-profits that make it easier to run in the early startup phase.
I think this can be seen as a milestone for VC hype. The trope for VC investors is that they see every investment as "changing the world," but it's mostly a weird status-signaling mechanism. In reality, they're care about the money, but also care about looking like they're being altruistic or, at least, oriented towards vague concepts of "change for the better." OpenAI was literally pitched as addressing an existential question for humanity. I guess they fixed AI alignment in the past week or something and now it's time, again, to flip the money switch. How much of VC is now totally divorced from real business fundamentals and is only about weird idea trading? Sure, it's always been like that to some extent, but I feel like the whole VC ecosystem is turning into a battle of posts on the LessWrong forums.
How much of this is FTX-style nonsense, but without outright fraud. Altman gives me similar vibes as SBF with a little less bad-hygiene-autism. He probably smells nice, but is still weird as fuck. We know he was fired and rehired at OpenAI. A bunch (all?) of the cofounders have jumped shipped recently. I don't necessarily see Enron/FTX/Theranos levels of plain lying, but how much of this is a venture funding house of cards that ends with a 99% loss and a partial IP sale to Google or something.
...Fine, I'll bite. How much of this impression of Sam is uncharitable doomer dressing around something more mundane like "does not believe AI = extinction and thus has no reason to care", or even just same old "disregard ethics, acquire profit"?
I have no love for Altman (something I have to state awfully often as of late) but the chosen framing strikes me as highly overdramatic, besides giving him more competence/credit than he deserves. As a sanity check, how -pilled would you say that friend of yours is in general on the AI question? How many years before inevitable extinction are we talking here?
You are making an "argument from incredulity", i.e. the beliefs of Sam Altman are so crazy that they can’t be real. I don't think this is the case. Many powerful people in Silicon Valley have beliefs that are far outside the Overton Window.
Say what you will about Elon Musk, he is at least pro-human. This is not at all the case for many of his peers. For example, Larry Page and Elon Musk broke up as friends over Musk's "speciesist" belief that humanity should remain dominant over god-like AI's.
The idea that Sam Altman would literally want to destroy humanity to birth in a superior AI life form might sound ridiculous to you. But you don't know these people.
There's a good chance (not 100%, but not 0% either) that we're going to build superintelligence while the "adults in the room" argue about GDP numbers or whatever. If this happens it could make some people (perhaps a single person) more powerful than anyone in history. Do you want Sam Altman to be that person? Because I sure as hell don't.
Besides this being a gossip thread, your argument likewise seems to boil down to "but the beliefs might be real, you don't know". I don't know what to answer other than reiterate that they also might not, and you don't know either. No point in back-and-forth I suppose.
At least the real load-bearing assumption came out. I've given up on reassuring doomers or harping on the wisdom of Pascal's mugging, so I'll simply grunt my isolated agreement that Altman is not the guy I'd like to see in charge of... anything really. If it's any consolation I doubt OpenAI is going to get that far ahead in the foreseeable future. I already mentioned my doubts on the latest o1, and coupled with the vacuous strawberry hype and Sam's antics apparently scaring a lot of actually competent people out of the company, I don't believe Sam is gonna be our shiny metal AI overlord even if I grant the eventual existence of one.
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