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Comment by benkarst | Hacker News Reader

It's incredible how many of you alleged tech people think that Sam just wanted a world of safe AI while his actions suggest he wanted to make dump trucks of money.

He was the one who partnered with Microsoft and turned it from a non-profit to a for-profit company.

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I find the close partnership with Microsoft and their vision of "Creating safe AI that benefits all of humanity" difficult to reconcile. Open source vs commercialism could definitely be a reason for the split.

How so? Think about it, Microsoft is very risk averse. Hell, even to get the Xbox project going they had to fight so damn hard because "we're not a games company, we make Windows and Office"

It's completely illogical to say that just because an AI company isn't open source it can't strive to also be "safe".

Microsoft is risk averse only in the sense that they don't want any competition.

This post and its replies are a contest for who can best perform enlightened cynicism.

The truth is there isn't any strong evidence one way or another, only your existing worldviews.

Partnering with Microsoft and closing access both have profit-driven and ideology driven explanations, and we don't have strong evidence it's one and not the other.

You wouldn't have to bring up Microsoft as some kind of evidence, WorldCoin (eyeball scanning scam) is more than enough proof of what he's interested in.

What was the actual endgame there?

Yeah, an interesting point was brought up by David Sacks on the All In Podcast. While technically Altman has (reportedly) no shares in OpenAI he has significant shares/control in the weird entity the profits go. So technically he has kind of a Peter Theil 401k type loophole that allows him to amass control of a potentially massive amount of money while on paper it technically isnt his.

How exactly will he make loads of money if he didn’t have any equity in OpenAI? Or should we assume that was a lie?

You know it's not just about the monetary compensation, that's rather short-sighted. sama is not hurting for cash. Being the CEO of OpenAI, in the climate that we are in, brings with it a lot of exposure and influence.

to add to your point: He was sitting with heads of state because of openai.

That’s just mere fashion. My dad once was good friends with the then president of India. Didn’t mean nothing to any effort or initiative he wanted. It’s not knowing or sitting with someone that matters, it was leverage. Doubt Sam had that on any leader. Didn’t even have it on his own board lol.

You’re almost right. Look at how easily and comfortably he engaged with world leaders. He wants power.

It's a stereotypical heuristic I use and maybe wrong, but I can't ever really trust anyone with a bunch of aesthetic plastic surgery.

If you're that much of a narcissist that you'd risk your health to look better, I need to take everything else you do and say with a big grain of salt.

I’d like to see a mea culpa from the hordes of people who insist OpenAI was purely doing a regulatory capture grift, instead of the very real and very obvious existential AGI debate going on behind the scenes, as we witness now.

Honest question: How would he make money if he didn’t have equity in OpenAI?

Worldcoin is the mud I've seen thrown around, but I'm making absolutely zero assumptions here. This whole situation stinks.

Your forward-looking value to an organization is your value whether it’s realized in equity or not.

In the world where Sam Altman leads OpenAI to market dominance and eventual acquisition by Microsoft for $400B or whatever, he obviously would represent an important part of what Microsoft would be buying and would be compensated accordingly.

If getting paid was his motive all along, wouldn’t taking equity have been a more straightforward way to do that?

Like, why would he not take equity, but instead rely solely on an acquisition?

No he wouldn't, if the CEO is substantially compensated for a $400B acquisition despite not owning equity that would be fraud. It's the CEO's fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of shareholders, if they take a $10bil cut for themselves that is $10bil that could've gone to the shareholders and hence not in their best interest.

It is the reason why CEOs (not Sam, apparently) are usually compensated in stock options. Golden parachutes are some sort of severance when the CEO gets fired immediately from the new company, eg. Twitter.

He's totally the guy who made OpenAI into ClosedAI, but money was clearly not his motivation.

Steve Jobs ended up handsomely rewarded for his return to Apple well beyond whatever equity he held in NeXT. That’s the kind of ultimate compensation I’m talking about.

Yes, it’s a strategy that would/did require—among other chancey things—Altman to make a big bet on himself rather than OpenAI on him.

Can they not be paid a (very substantial) retention bonus? I’ve know people at startups that had no equity that were paid retention bonuses during acquisitions. Is a CEO different here?

Yes, but not too substantial, or the shareholders have grounds to sue based on what I said above.

A similar (but even more complicated) case is currently going on over at Sculptor Capital Management, where former management is suing current management because they have chosen to go with a "worse" acquisition deal that would let current management stay on-board. This is despite shareholder approval to the "worse" deal. https://www.pionline.com/hedge-funds/ex-sculptor-executives-...

In fact, to prevent this situation is exactly why golden parachutes exist.

It's also totally unproportional compared to what Sam would've gotten if he owned equity.

You completely miss OP's point. He is basically saying that the market value of Sam is appreciated regardless of his equity. And one example on how that is true is that whatever company Sam starts next will have an insanely high valuation from the go.

Of course that's true, but what's the point of building a decacorn company just so you have higher chances of building another decacorn company afterwards?

If money was his motivation, why wouldn't he spend his time building a company like that in the first place? As the head of YC, I don't think he would've had any trouble raising for anything, even prior to OpenAI.

Also, it's not really parent's "point" as you claim; they quite explicitly talk about compensation in case of acquisition.

Via his Y Combinator related holdings in companies which use the OpenAI APIs? Or just which are getting capital and exposure due to ChatGPT boosting visibility of AI.

his partner or parents or some trust has probably the equity for him.

Isn’t the for-profit a subsidiary on the non-profit?

Correct. That's why they were able to fire Sam.

He wants his money and a bunch of others will follow him to whatever company he forms because they want their money.

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