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Comment by daniel-thompson | Hacker News Reader

From the original article linked to by this CNBC story:

> Altman also made an unusual decision for a tech boss: He would take no equity in the new for-profit entity, according to people familiar with the matter. Altman was already extremely wealthy, investing in several wildly successful tech startups, and didn’t need the money.

> He also believed the company needed to become a business to continue its work, but he told people the project was not designed to make money. Eschewing any ownership interest would help him stay aligned with the original mission.

https://www.semafor.com/article/03/24/2023/the-secret-histor...

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As I understand, OpenAI started as a non-profit entity and has taken on large donations. Then, the for-profit entity has been created and is using the technology developed by the non-profit entity, which was developed presumably by using the donated funds. So, maybe it's not about altruism at all, but instead Sam Altman is just protecting himself against potential lawsuits from the donors? There was probably some agreement on how the technology will be used.

Elon Musk has donated $100M USD, and does not look happy about the developments, based on his tweets.

Elon tried to buy the company and become CEO and OpenAI said no. I also heard that they knew they were going to burn through the 100M, and were counting on the 1B he promised, and couldn't raise enough money as a non profit so that's why they went for profit.

Happy accidents.

As a rule of thumb, its never about altruism.

Obviously. It's Sam Altman, not Sam Altruism.

Sam 'I altruistically give up equity control in my companies' Altruism

Bit of a mouthful

Rules of thumb often apply.

The non-profit-oh-wait-just-kidding nonsense feels like an existential risk to OpenAI. I agree that Altman may be (unintentionally?) protecting himself from lawsuits, but I don't see it being enough to avoid the spotlight.

I expect someone will eventually sue OpenAI for the shenanigans, and that a competitor (Meta?) or Elon Musk will fund the lawsuit. The goal won't be to actually win the case, but instead to motivate US regulatory action to undercuts OpenAI's perceived advantage.

Bill Gates and Microsoft will have something to say about that.

>>Elon Musk has donated $100M USD, and does not look happy about the developments, based on his tweets.

He is not happy because he could have invested in OpenAI instead of Twitter.

> Elon Musk has donated $100M USD, and does not look happy about the developments, based on his tweets.

Sour grapes?

A few years ago, he wasn’t happy with his investment in the company because they were behind Google.

So he proposed becoming the CEO, and got snubbed by Altman and the rest (presumably from fear of how it played out for the original Tesla founders, at the time).

One possibility is - that he is genuinely concerned, and his vision of AI included some hardcoded rules - such as Asimov’s rules for robots. Can’t dismiss it completely, as this was his original purpose for starting OpenAI.

Perhaps it’s a bit of both.

Do we know if Altman continues to have no equity in OpenAI?

The article re-asserts that he still has no equity in its closing paragraphs:

> For Altman, it’s not about money, either. One of the most surprising things in all of this is that he does not own even a tiny piece of OpenAI, which highlights the unusual nature of this company and the entire AI industry.

What about options? He might own options.

Or be able to negotiate a management carve out

> Do we know if Altman continues to have no equity in OpenAI?

Even if he doesn’t, he might in one of OpenAI, LPs, business partners / investors that is benefitting from the work, like Microsoft. Which would provide just the right distance for plausible deniability of a personal profit motive while very much having a personal profit motive.

"Eschewing any ownership interest would help him stay aligned with the original mission."

Is this a nice acknowledgement that the capitalist drive for profit can produce bad outcomes, which Altman wanted to avoid?

Buried in the article is this gem: "The latest language model, GPT-4, has 1 trillion parameters." - have no idea if it's true or not.

This is like Charlie Lee selling all his litecoins. Divesting from the project in order to prove that he's not after enriching himself. But the idea landed really poorly with people who assume a leader is more motivated when personal wealth is at stake.

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