Hacker News Reader

Comment by mac-attack | Hacker News Reader

With all due respect, they are not doing a sleight of hand while selling widgets... they are in the process of reshaping society in a way that may have never been achieved previously. Finding out that their initial motives were a facade doesn't portend well for their morality as they continue to gain power.

View on HN

I still don’t understand why you think their initial motives were a facade. They have always been trying to get to AGI that will be useable by a large fraction of society. I am not sure this means they need to explain exactly how things work at every step along the way or to help competitors also develop AGI any more than Intel or Nvidia had to publish their tapeouts in order for people to buy their chips or for competitors to appear. If OpenAI instead built AI for the purpose of helping them solve an internal/whimsical project then that would not be “open” by any reasonable definition (and such efforts exist, possibly by ultra wealthy corporations but also by nations, including for defense purposes.)

At one time their mission statement said:

> 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.

That's obviously changed to "let's make lots of money", which should not be any "non-profit" organization's mission.

I still do not see the point that you are trying to make. Do you think that their current path is somehow constrained (instead of unconstrained) by a need to generate financial returns? I haven’t seen any evidence of a change to the core mission described in the statement.

Do you think the employees they've given PPUs to aren't expecting a financial return?

I don’t see how expecting a financial return is in conflict with the original mission statement. Of course the employees expect a financial return.

If you advertise your company as a wholesome benevolent not-for-profit and generate a lot of goodwill for your human enhancing mission and then pull a bait and switch to what looks to be a profit/power motive at all costs. It certainly makes most people who are following the organization sour on your mission and your reputation.

Typically when organizations do something like that it speaks to some considerable underlying issues at the core of the company and the people in charge of it.

It is particularly troubling when it pertains to technology that we all believe to be incredibly important.

I don’t see any changes to the core mission of OpenAI between its founding and now. Maybe some people misinterpret what a nonprofit vs for-profit company status means and confuse the former with other types of organizations like academia or charity. For example, no early founder or investor in a nonprofit can expect to make money simply out of their investment, and I haven’t seen evidence to the contrary for OpenAI. Any profits that a nonprofit makes, even those through ownership of the for-profit entity, must go back to the initial cause, and may include paying employees. Salaries in AI are high these days so if you want to stay on top you have to keep them higher than competition. In any case, I think this thread was not as productive as I hoped.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com