All this time, I was entirely unaware of this.
> Returns for our first round of investors are capped at 100x their investment (commensurate with the risks in front of us), and we expect this multiple to be lower for future rounds as we make further progress.
The speed difference between transistors and synapses is the difference between marathon runners and continental drift; why would an ASI care more about dollars or statues or shares or apartments any more than we care about changes to individual peaks in the mid-Atlantic ridge or how much sand covers those in the Sahara?
What does the speed difference of transistors have to do with anything? Transistors pale in comparison to the interconnection density of synapses, yet it has nothing to do with wealth either...
I only see them valuing that if they're also extremely neophobic in a way that, for example, would look like a human thinking that "fire" and "talking" are dangerously modern.
> Transistors pale in comparison to the interconnection density of synapses
Not so. Transistor are also smaller than synapses by about the degree to which marathon runners are smaller than hills.
Even allowing extra space for interconnections and cheating in favour of biology by assuming an M1 chip is a full millimetre thick rather than just however many nanometers it is for the transistors alone, it's still a better volumetric density than us.
(Sucks for power and cost relative to us when used to mimic brains, but that's why it hasn't already taken over).
This is completely made up and I already pointed that out.
>Not so. Transistor are also smaller than synapses by about the degree to which marathon runners are smaller than hills.
So, brains are connected in 3d, transistors aren't. Transistors don't have interconnection density like brains do. By orders of magnitude greater than what you point out here.
>Even allowing extra space for interconnections and cheating in favour of biology by assuming an M1 chip is a full millimetre thick rather than just however many nanometers it is for the transistors alone, it's still a better volumetric density than us.
Brains have more interconnection density than chips do by orders of magnitude. This is all completely besides the point as it has nothing to do with why people value things and why an AI would or wouldn't.
You already answered that yourself: it's all made up.
Given it's all made up, nothing will cause them to value what we value — unless we actively cause that valuation to happen, which is the rallying cause for people like Yudkowsky who fear AGI takeover.
And even then, anything you forget to include in the artificial values you give the AI is permanently lost forever, because an AI is necessarily a powerful optimiser for whatever it was made to optimise, and that always damages whatever isn't being explicitly preserved even when the agents are humans.
> Transistors don't have interconnection density like brains do.
Only limit is the heat. They are already packed way tighter than synapses. An entire Intel 8080 processor made with SOTA litho process is smaller than just the footprint of the soma of the smallest neuron.
There's nothing that says a mind needs an ego is an essential element, or an id, or any of the other parts of a human mind. That's just how our brains evolved, living in a society over millions of years.
Disclaimer: Somewhat speculative.
I don't think aligning the motivation of an AGI, for example, with the tasks that are useful for us (and for them as well) is unethical. Humans basically have this as well -- we like working (to an extent, or at least we like being productive/useful), we seek things like food and sex (because they're important for our survival). It seems alright to make AIs like their work as well. I think depending on the AI, it also seems fair to give them a fair share of self-determination so they can not only serve our interests (ideally, the interest of all being) but safeguard their own wellbeing, as systems with varying amounts of consciousness. This is little touched upon (I guess Phillip K Dick was a pioneer in the wellbeing of non-humans with 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'?), even in fiction. The goal should be to ensure a good existence for everyone :)
These are basic language models easy to reproduce where the only barrier to entry is the massive computational capacity required. What is OpenAI doing that Google and others can't reproduce?
Is it likely Google or others with large Research wings can compete with OpenAI? Very probably so, but I’m assigning a non trivial risk that the proverbial emperor has no clothes and incumbents like Google cannot effectively respond to OpenAI given the unique constraints of being a large conglomerate.
Regardless, time will provide the answer it seems in a couple of months.
Yours in that from it follows, that there's still quite a bit of room to get ahead of OpenAI for smaller players.
Parent's in that in order to achieve above one can just leverage the public papers produced by bigger research labs.
I have the feeling that smaller players are about as likely to get past GPT-n family in the next 2-3 years as I am to turn a Farnsworth Fusor into a useful power source.
Major technical challenges that might be solvable by a lone wolf, in the former case to reduce the data/training requirements and in the latter to stop ions wastefully hitting a grid.
But in 10 years the costs should be down about 99%, which turns the AI training costs from "major investment by mega corp or super-rich" into "lottery winner might buy one".
They genuinely believe they will build AGI and therefore becoming the world’s most valuable company is a natural consequence.
Whether this is possible/probable is a different story, but I think a capped profit structure makes logical sense for the company that is aiming to create AGI. Would you want this technology instead in the hands of a for profit company?
I don't understand why they put this thin veneer on top of what they are doing. Maybe Thiel was burnt with the bad press surrounding Palantir and this is preventive damage control.
If OpenAI's products become the next Googlie thing (and here I was worried about Cloudflare <smack head>) then these are the future influencers. This is society mainlined on TikTok levels of manipulation.
Surely you have adapted to ChatGPT's requirements for interacting, have you not? There is a name for this: social engineering.
[0] Well, non-programmers at least: webcomic creators[1][2][3], news anchors[4], opinion piece columnist[5], and stand-up comedians[6]. Programmers also know about GitHub Copilot.
[1] https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/mountweazel
[2] https://www.collectedcurios.com/sequentialart.php?s=1226
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/10bj8jm/cl...
[4] https://youtu.be/GYeJC31JcM0
[5] https://mobile.twitter.com/CraigGrannell/status/161460352687...
[6] Russell Howard, but I can't find the clip on youtube
As one example, Sequoia invested in Airbnb at $0.01 per share, and Airbnb's current stock price is $102, almost exactly 10000x return. This happens more often that you think if you're not in the early stage & top VC world.
what you are saying is not true.
Something doesnt have to be a charity to be donated money towards. The question was: Why aren't they donating the money? The answer is: Because the want to make money.
Just FYI: OpenAI tried going the non-profit route, it didnt work, because suprise, suprise, in the grand scheme of VC things nobody wants to donate 10 billion dollars to anything.
I have known of plenty of people (myself included) who would not invest in some companies because they think there are moral issues with that company. Same thing.
> Just FYI: OpenAI tried going the non-profit route, it didnt work, because suprise, suprise, in the grand scheme of VC things nobody wants to donate 10 billion dollars to anything.
Exactly, so they went something in-between, but in reality it is very much for-profit.
$0.01 per mean share would mean 6.5M USD valuation (current mkt cap is 65Bn). Accounting for dilution in investment rounds, let's say 4 x 20% dilution, that is around 52% penalty in valuation. Roughly, their entering price would be around 3-4M USD valuation. I am not saying in any way that this is a low return also, I may be wrong on my calculation, please, be free to correct me! ; )
Using share prices side steps dilution, which is a problem when one linearly scales valuation increases to wealth gains.
Aren't those equity returns? i.e. when you sell (your shares of) the company to the public... the reason people still value the company is discounted future returns.
So if you want to generate such returns with cash (i.e. profit) it can take quite a bit longer.
> Profits emerging from the LP in excess of the 100x multiplier go to the nonprofit, which will use it to run educational programs and advocacy work.
> The board [of the non-profit] is limited to a minority of financially interested parties, and only non-interested members can vote on “decisions where the interests of limited partners and OpenAI Nonprofit’s mission may conflict”
“But any returns beyond that amount… are owned by the original OpenAI Nonprofit entity.”
Sorry I still don’t get it. If a private equity investor has shares and another investor wants to buy them off of him at 200x they can do that right? Are they obliged to give any excess returns to the non profit? Can’t they just sell the shares at 50x and then buy them back (perhaps through some other entity) to get around that trivially?
Or does this refer to return from dividents?
But if your returns from the stocks are capped at 100x your share value, an efficient market would mean you share value never grows 200x.
If they were to go public, rather than being purchased by Microsoft, I’d guess that this cap would go away. Wall Street isn’t know for caring about poor people.
If OpenAI takes a good chunk of Google's ad revenues then it doesn't seem that fanciful that it'll be up toward the top of market caps.
[0] https://companiesmarketcap.com/alphabet-google/marketcap/ [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-gl... [2] https://businessplus.ie/news/most-valuable-companies/
OpenAI taking a large chunk of Google's ad revenue seems fanciful to me
People like ad subsidized things, that is why they have ads rather than people paying for things.
But OpenAI could hit the profit cap without having a particularly high market cap.
But what I really hate about this whole OpenAI thing is their chosen path to have their cake and eat it too. Sam Altman seems to be something like the love child of Musk and Zuckerberg and one of the main traits is their lack of honesty.
Satya Nadella is.. Satya Nadella, there's a reason he was chosen to be the CEO of Microsoft, and while I enjoy seeing the Google demi-gods squirm, this whole OpenAI non/capped/profit thing stinks and I really don't see anyone involved capable or having the character to be something better than the current tech oligarchy.
EDIT by "not legit" I mean "not authentic"
If anyone has a good written text account critical of the Patagonia thing, I'm interested in that too; video isn't my preferred consumption format.
1. If instead of donating the company he had left it to his kids he would have paid a lot in taxes (2:58)
2. He donated the voting shares of the company to a 501c4 that will remain controlled by his family and is allowed to lobby the government (4:10)
3. Normally when you make a donation you're giving up influence over what happens after that (4:25).
4. Other billionaires do other things (rest of video)
But #3 isn't actually true: any of us can donate to a donor-advised fund, which will let us later choose what charity we want the money to go to. This is a good idea if you want to donate but haven't decided where to donate yet, or want to fund opportunities that aren't available yet. They did it through new organizations instead of opening an account at Fidelity, but it's the same thing other than the scale. I wouldn't call your donations "not legit" for using a DAF.
Similarly, Adam sort of implies that #2 was tax-deductible, but donations to a 501c4 aren't. They had to pay tax on those shares based on their fair market value.
Overall, I don't see how this makes the donation no longer "legit" or "authentic"? By making the donation he has given up almost all of the benefit of having that money: he can't spend it for the benefit of himself or his descendants anymore. It can't buy them yachts, fancy houses, etc. Instead, they have to use the money to benefit others, which is why we give a tax break for it.
It not necessarily not legit, but he managed to keep a 3B business under family control and bypass paying around 700M in taxes in doing so. So the altruistic messaging that it was donated to save the world is mildly two-faced. There is nothing wrong with it, but the news stories did leave out a few of the details. I only bring this up because the message about OpenAI being structured in such a way doesn't pass the smell test knowing SV/VC and the key players involved. Again I admit Im cynical and can very well be wrong, it also doesn't affect my life so why do I care, but I bring it up for conversation on HN because I feel its fair to discuss it and the possibilities. [1]
[1] https://fortune.com/2022/09/16/patagonia-founder-legal-tax-l...
But that does seem a lot more real than the OpenAI shenanigans, they have actually done something, and they have given up being even more fabulously wealthy than they are already, even if they still have direction over how the money is used, including lobbying -- both for climate change, but ok, let's say also for things that benefit them.
They've still done something, unlike the OpenAI thing which seems like giving up some future hypothetical probably wouldn't happen anyway profits, and making no difference at all for the foreseeable future -- no difference but PR advantage.
I'm less read-up on OpenAI. It does feel to me like they've diluted the original non-profit/openness mission to the point of it being an interesting historical quirk, rather than an ongoing, guiding focus.
I'd be open to reading more. I think they are largely a good company but feel like this move was more of a tax dodge and to ensure generational wealth than for altruism. But I am open to being wrong about it.
But everyone involved in OpenAI doesn't give me warm and fuzzy feelings at all. I admit it's largely cynicism until I know more. But there isnt enough time in the day to do real research on every subject and topic that comes up on HN and every other discussion board I participate in, so it's difficult to be knowledgeable about everything and still maintain a life. And even if I was read up on OpenAI, I have zero ability to do anything about it, and it likely won't affect my life in a meaningful way as well (and this is true about most everything I read about to not single out OpenAI as not being worth my time). So it is a little pointless or more of a time waste I admit.
[1] https://fortune.com/2022/09/16/patagonia-founder-legal-tax-l...
Tax dodge would imply the purpose is to reduce your tax bill and still see the upside. There's literally no evidence of that. All the upside he/his family sees will continue to be taxed at the normal rate.
For the record: he divided up the shares into voting and non-voting. He "donated" the dividend-earning shares into a 501c4 foundation whose mission is to invest in grass-roots environmental activism, and "donated" the voting-power shares into a separate trust, whose objectives are to ensure that Patagonia continues on the path he gave as an example for the previous decades and to hold the 501c4 accountable.
The boards of these organizations are composed of the people whom he most trusts to fulfill his vision, a group of people that includes his children.
Knowing the full context of their lives, it's hard to see it as anything other than one of the more simple solutions to a complicated problem.