zlacker

It's clear that OpenAI has become something that it wasn't intended to be at it's founding. Maybe that change happened for good reasons, but the fact that there was a change is not in doubt.

>>reso+(OP)
Generally speaking, changing what your company does is just “pivoting”. It’s not clear to me why Elon would having standing for this suit, or why a company changing their direction would be actionable.

This would be like suing Google for removing “Don’t be evil” from their mission statement.

>>reso+(OP)
Elon Musk: actual billionaire

Sam Altman: fake billionaire (most equity is tied to openAI)

this should be a one sided battle

>>amou23+U2
I thought Sam has no equity in OpenAI?

>>amou23+U2
Most of Elon’s wealth is also tied up in equity.

>>reso+(OP)
Intention is an interesting word. I wonder how many of the founders quietly hoped it would make them a lot of money. Though to be fair, I do believe that hope would have been tied to the expectation that they meet their stated goals of developing some form of AGI.

>>amou23+U2
This type of thing makes me wish the only option was public defenders so you aren't able to just pay more and have better chances in court. That said - I still don't think Musk has a good chance here, he's lost cases against people with far less resources by just being confidently wrong, at some point paying more for lawyers doesn't help you

>>akerl_+i2
There is a great difference between a for profit company "pivoting" - and a nonprofit changing direction of mission goals. Because a non profit accepts donation - and they are bound to the original mission. Also their profits usually are. Google never was a nonprofit, so adding and later removing their "don't be evil" was basically just PR (even though I do believe, that originally it was supposed to mean something, but not in a legally binding way).

>>akerl_+i2
I think non-profits change the argument here a bit. With a for-profit company, what your company is doing is trying to make money. If you change that, investors have a right to sue. With a non-profit, what the company is doing is some public service mission. Why does Musk have standing? Potentially because he donated millions to OpenAI to further their non-profit mission.

I'm not saying that Musk has a good case. I haven't read the complaint.

Still, with a non-profit, you're donating to a certain cause. If I create "Save the Climate" as a non-profit and then pivot to creating educational videos on the necessity of fossil fuels, I think it'd be reasonable to sue since we aren't performing our mission. There's certainly some latitude that management and the board should enjoy in pivoting the mission, but it isn't completely free to do whatever it wants.

Even with a for-profit company, if management or the board pivot in a way that investors think would be disastrous for the company, there could be reason to sue. Google removing "don't be evil" is a meaningless change - it changes nothing. Google deciding that it was going to shut down all of its technology properties in favor of becoming a package delivery company would be a massive change and investors could sue that it wasn't the right direction for the company and that Google was ignoring their duty to shareholders.

Companies can change direction, but they also have duties. For-profit companies are entrusted with your investment toward a goal of earning money. Non-profit companies are entrusted with your donations toward a goal of some public good. If they're breaching their duty, a lawsuit is reasonable. I'm not saying OpenAI is breaching their duty, just that they aren't free to do anything they want.

>>speedy+y3
Only indirectly via his equity in YC, but it's tiny, AFAICT.

>>andrub+b4
His TSLA shares are quite liquid.

>>omarfa+Y8
Sure, but most of the "value" in his companies are tied... to him! Sort of like early Amazon; "In Bezos We Trust".

>>akerl_+i2
If they started selling jelly beans, I would agree with you. But they changed from a non profit to a for profit model and from a open source to a closed source model. If they pivoted their product that would be one thing, but they completely shifted their mission.

>>andrub+b4
He was liquid enough to buy Twitter on a whim though.

>>omarfa+Y8
and fraudulent

>>mdasen+28
If you haven't read the complaint, why comment? It's right there!

>>little+5h
Ah yes, so liquid he had to go borrowing.

>>thesha+Fj
He sold for over 22 billions (two times $8bn over just a few days, plus roughly 7 billions in two other occurrences), this count as liquid without doubt…

>>amou23+U2
At least 1/2 of Altman's net worth is invested in Helion energy (fusion energy startup).

>>_fizz_+2f
> But they changed from a non profit to a for profit model

Not exactly - they changed from a non-profit funded by donations to a for-profit/non-profit hybrid with the non-profit funded by the for-profit.

>>Taylor+d6
Well of course they'll make a lot of money. For some definition of "a lot."

>>pauldd+nU
Maybe. It's certainly possible to create great good and not become wealthy. But lets say it is a reasonable assumption. The question comes what they would do if they became impatient, or greedy.

>>Taylor+d6
It seems a bit weird to quietly hope that the money you put in an organization with the explicit goal of being a non-profit, would give you direct monetary returns though.. Maybe they hoped for returns in other ways, like getting some back-channel AGI love when it finally became conscious? :)

>>l33tma+vk1
Maybe. I’m operating a non profit engineering project. I have no expectation that the non profit will make me money, but we do plan eventually to spin off the project in to a for-profit partner that takes the open source and adds value-add fleet management systems (it’s a farming robot) and service contracts. We are modeling this after the successful implementation of this method by the Ardupilot drone software founders.

So while the non profit is a specific legal entity that has a certain clear function, one may still want to use this public benefit open source project for for-profit means.

However this doesn’t really apply to OpenAI, because their system is not open source and also because strangely, their non profit owns the for-profit. Non-profit founders could theoretically be fine desiring profit, but the way OpenAI has done it seems particularly strange.