Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

The argument in the complaint is that "OpenAI said they would develop software for everyone, but they gave early favoritism to YC companies, so they went back on their promise." This complaint sounds like a high-effort shitpost. The plantiff is filing this pro se.

Just see the full list of defendants:

SAM ALTMAN, an individual; REID HOFFMAN, an individual; GREG BROCKMAN, an individual; ILYA SUTSKEVER, an individual; WOJCIECH ZAREMBA, an individual; JOHN SCHULMAN, an individual; TASHA MCCAULEY, an individual; BRIAN CHESKY, an individual; ADAM D’ANGELO, an individual; ANDREJ KARPATHY, an individual; PAMELA VAGATA, an individual; TREVOR BLACKWELL, an individual; BRAD LIGHTCAP, an individual; CHRIS CLARK, an individual; JESSICA LIVINGSTON, an individual; WILL HURD, an individual; HELEN TONER, an individual; TOMER KAFTAN, an individual; MICROSOFT CORPORATION, a corporation; MATTHEW BROWN COMPANIES, a company; BEDROCK CAPITAL PARTNERS I, L.P., a limited partnership; SEQUOIA CAPITAL U.S. VENTURE 2010 PARTNERS FUND, L.P., a limited partnership; ANDREESSON HOROWITZ ANGEL FUND I, LLC, a limited liability company; TIGER GLOBAL MANAGEMENT, LLC, a limited liability company; KHOSLA VENTURES, LLC, a limited liability company; HOFFMAN KOFMAN FOUNDATION; OPEN RESEARCH LAB, INC., a nonprofit corporation; CASETEXT, INC., a stock corporation; INSTACART, a corporation; ZAPIER, INC., a corporation; and DOES 1 through 10, inclusive,

Not a lawyer, but my reading of this was quite different. It seems to me like the core of the argument is that "OpenAI" wants non-profit benefits while clearly profiting. While the complaint document itself is verbose, I imagine this is the kind of thing that eventually contributes to setting a precedent for how training data is handled in the legal system as well?

IANAL too, but if there is indeed a legal case for material misrepresentation, it would make more sense to be brought by OpenAI shareholders or the FTC, not some random dude from Texas.

What's wrong with the guy from texas that he shouldn't do it?

No standing.

I agree with you, but based on recent precedent [1], standing no longer seems to be a major concern of the judiciary.

1. https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/politics/student-loan-supreme...

You think the shareholders of the non-profit's for-profit subsidiary should sue themselves for profiting from a non-profit?

That doesn't make sense and is completely backwards. The allegedly damaged party is society, with the major shareholders as defendants.

As a pro se litigant this probably won't go far. But the directionality of the suit seems correct.

That will probably be an early point of litigation, does the non-profit’s behavior of depriving you from these tools like GPT4 amount to damages such that you have standing to bring this case. So that's a huge hurdle. Might be why it's brought pro se.

In some ways it's a more powerful result if plaintiff prevails though, as it dramatically increases the amount of legal stakeholders in the activity of OpenAI... “You filed as a non-profit, now if you start acting like a for-profit, anyone who is systematically excluded from your business dealings can sue you.”

Non profits are completely within their right to choose who they offer services to.

They can select most at risk populations, etc.

> IANAL too, but if there is indeed a legal case for material misrepresentation, it would make more sense to be brought by OpenAI shareholders

The case is for material misrepesentation to benefit OpenAI shareholders at the expense of the identified intended beneficiaries of (and donors to) the OpenAI nonprofit. Why would the beneficiaries of the fraud challenge it?

> or the FTC, not some random dude from Texas.

The law often creates multiple different parties with a legitimate and enforceable interewt in the same requirement; while the plaintiff here doesn’t have the strongest standing claim in the world, it is not diminished for thr fact that some of the allegations create much stronger claims for, say, the IRS and state tax authorities or donors to the nonprofit (particularly the accusations of the nonprofit being fraudulently organized and operated for self-dealing for the commercial benefit of certain of its organizers.)

I thought non-profits were allowed to make money?

This is the kind of thing that gets thrown out of court. And that is the judge feels sorry for the person who filed the suit. It is also possible th person who filed gets hit with not only court fees, but also paying for 5-10 hours of a lot of high priced lawyers for the defendants.

Not a lawyer, but the claims seem pretty kooky and the plaintiff will probably have trouble establishing standing. For example, he claims that OpenAI wouldn’t provide him free access to a ChatGPT-using service and therefore misuses its nonprofit status.

Even if OpenAI were committing tax fraud in this way, they wouldn’t be required to give the plaintiff free stuff. That’s a bit like complaining the Met Museum’s gift shop won’t give me a free t-shirt. If the museum were separately breaking the law, they still aren’t obligated to give me a free shirt.

> The argument in the complaint is that "OpenAI said they would develop software for everyone, but they gave early favoritism to YC companies, so they went back on their promise."

There are several different arguments in the complaint, but the most dangerous to OpenAI seems to be the accusation of principals using the nonprofit for commercial self-dealing which, notwithstanding that this is a pro se filing with a bunch of tangential conspiracy theories in its initial narrative seems both adequately pled and quite likely to be true from the information publicly available.

The big problem for the plaintiff is the theory of standing the complaint relies on, which while reasonably well-pled seems to be something the courts are likely to be leary of as it would grant open season on broad-claimed-benefit nonprofits.

Early favoritism isn't merely early access, it is for commercial benefit- not entirely unlike insider trading, as far as rough analogies go.

This being filed Pro Se immediately makes this whole thing a joke.

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