It's not "wacky" to have goals other than the accumulation of capital. In fact, given the purpose of OpenAI, I think it's meritorious.
I'd personally prefer we just not work on AGI at all, but I'd rather a non-profit dedicated to safe AI do it than a for-profit company dedicated to returns for shareholders.
> Let this be a lesson, don’t have a wacky ownership structure and wacky board when you have the (perhaps) the most valuable product in the world.
I think the lesson is just the opposite: If you want to work according to your ideals, and not simply for money, you should absolutely do whatever 'wacky' thing protects that.
For-profit doesn't automatically mean non-virtuous.
There are non-wacky non-profits.
> I'd personally prefer we just not work on AGI at all, but I'd rather a non-profit dedicated to safe AI do it than a for-profit company dedicated to returns for shareholders.
You seem to be under the impression that OpenAI is a nonprofit. For the most part, it's not: it was founded as a non-profit, but it subsequently restructured into a for-profit company with the nonprofit owned under the same umbrella company. This is indeed an unusual corporate structure.
That's likely what OP is referring to as "wacky".
Wikipedia says the for-profit part is owned by the non-profit, not under the same umbrella company.
Mozilla Foundation/Corporation does this too IIRC. It's what allows them to to pursue serious revenue streams with the for-profit part, while still steering their mission with the non-profit in charge, as long as they keep a separation in some kinds of revenue terms.
EDIT after 56 minutes: Hell, even IKEA does this type of ownership structure. So it's quite cool, but probably not all that "wacky" as far as enterprises that want to be socially responsible go.
>so people put up with his foolishness.
about Ilya. OP just implied, having ideals == being foolish. it is as close to calling a non-profit, wacky.
The OP was clearly implying not being solely focused on getting the highest bid is loony and wacky.
Which may be true, but let’s not pretend that’s not what they’re saying.
It is an honour based system to clarify what you edited if it goes beyond typos/grammar.
Most probably GP used stronger words and then edited.
> Let this be a lesson, don’t have a wacky ownership structure and wacky board when you have the (perhaps) the most valuable product in the world.
- immediately calls their structure “strange” thanks to Ilya’s “idealism”.
- immediately calls him the “man” for his talents but a fool for what other than his ideals
- also labels Helen and Tasha (in quotes for some reason) as fools
- labels the board as “comically poor” for no other reason than they disagree with Sam’s supposed profit motive
Do we really need to draw a diagram here? It seems like you yourself may be out of your depth when it comes to reading comprehension.
> Serious revenue streams like having Google for a patron yes? I feel like the context is important here because […]
For that specific example, Mozilla did also go with Yahoo for as-good revenue for a couple of years IIRC, and they are also able to (at least try to) branch out with their VPN, Pocket, etc. The Google situation is more a product of simply existing as an Internet-dependent company in the modern age, combined with some bad business decisions by the Mozilla Corpo, that would have been the case regardless of their ownership structure.
> Which is great and possible in theory, but […] is ultimately only sustainable because of a patron who doesn't share in exemplifying that same idealism.
The for-profit-owned-by-nonprofit model works, but as with most things it tends to work better if you're in a market that isn't dominated by a small handful of monopolies which actively punish prosocial behaviour:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stichting_IKEA_Foundation
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/
> people are trying to defend OpenAI's structure as somehow well considered and definitely not naively idealistic.
Ultimately I'm not sure what the point you're trying to argue is.
The structure's obviously not perfect, but the most probable alternatives are to either (1) have a single for-profit that just straight-up doesn't care about anything other than greed, or (2) have a single non-profit that has to rely entirely on donations without any serious commercial power, both of which would obviously be worse scenarios.
They're still beholden to market forces like everybody else, but a couple hundred million dollars in charity every year, plus a couple billion-dollar companies that at least try to do the right thing within the limits of their power, is obviously still better than not.