I hope OpenAI is going to serve as a radicalizing example to all the engineers, who fell for the "ethical guy/company" rhetoric, that the minority-controlled corporate structures they're used to cannot withstand the push for profit. I hope this will make more of them choose majority-controlled structures for their startups and demand unions in existing corpos.
The fact that Silicon Valley interests effortlessly shrugged off the non-profit board's attempt to hit the kill switch last year, and now are preparing to take the company commercial despite the deliberate design otherwise, becomes much more interesting when you consider the theory that corporations are a form of artificial superintelligence.
If the AI idealists can't stand up to basic forces of capitalism, how do they expect to control an actually dangerous AGI?
... To the surprise of <checks notes> absolutely nobody
Actually I have a question and I admit knowing nothing of the legal framework here but...
Isn't it absolutely ridiculous that a not-for-profit entity can exists solely for the purpose of developing a closed-source piece of software, demand to train it for free off copyrighted material, just to switch to a for-profit entity??
Sound 100% like tax avoidance. Like me registering a charity so I can throw a mega concert/party privately, secure preferencial treatment on supplies, get discounts on artists or even free performance and then switch to for profit as I start selling tickets
Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity. We anticipate needing to marshal substantial resources to fulfill our mission, but will always diligently act to minimize conflicts of interest among our employees and stakeholders that could compromise broad benefit.
Just want to point out that it absolutely is possible to train an AI that will keep track of its sources for inspiration and can attribute those when it makes a response.
Meaning creators could be compensated for their parts of AI generated stuff, if anyone wanted to.
Surely they will be sued into oblivion if they tried right? Them being non profit was the main pillar holding up their defense for scraping the web into datasets.
How is this going to work while OpenAI currently burns through an absolute ocean of cash to keep improving its services? Alongside this, a good software engineer or applied scientist can make close to $1m a year. While I do think professionals should earn what their value is to an employer, OpenAI still loses a ton of money.
As someone that works in AI, I think most of us know it's full of people trying to make a quick buck while investors will stupidly throw money at it. OpenAI is ultimately the figurehead of this market though, because at least the big companies can prop their AI offerings with the money they make from shopping, cloud, ads, etc. The second OpenAI looks weak and needs money, the vultures will slice off a piece and we'll see the AI market reduce to a wimper - just enough for tech to focus on the next grift.