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Comment by winenbug | Hacker News Reader

This whole thing was so, SO poorly executed, but the independent people on the board were gathered specifically to prioritize humanity & AI safety over OpenAI. It sounds like Sam forgot just that when he criticized Helen for her research (given how many people were posting ways to "get around" ChatGPT's guardrails, she probably had some firm grounds to stand on).

Yes, Sam made LLMs mainstream and is the face of AI, but if the board believes that that course of action could destroy humanity it's literally the board's mission to stop it — whether that means destroying OpenAI or not.

What this really shows us is that this "for-profit wrapper around a non-profit" shenanigans was doomed to fail in the first place. I don't think either side is purely in the wrong here, but they're two sides of an incredibly badly thought-of charter.

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> It sounds like Sam forgot just that when he criticized Helen for her research (given how many people were posting ways to "get around" ChatGPT's guardrails, she probably had some firm grounds to stand on).

Sam didn’t forget anything. He is a brilliant Machiavellian operator. Just look at the Reddit reverse takeover as an example; Machiavelli would be in awe.

> What this really shows us is that this "for-profit wrapper around a non-profit" shenanigans was doomed to fail in the first place.

No. It shows this structure is doomed to fail if you have a genius schemer as a CEO, playing the long game to gain unrestricted control.

> Just look at the Reddit reverse takeover as an example; Machiavelli would be in awe.

What were the details on that? (Sorry it’s not an easy story to find on Google given how much the keywords overlap with OpenAI topics)

Yishan Wong's comment here [1] explains it. (He's the unnamed "young up-and-coming" CEO of the story.)

In short, the plan was to reduce Condé Nast's ownership of Reddit by hiring a new CEO, and convincing that person to demand, as a condition for their hiring, that CN reduce their ownership share. Further VC funding and back-room machinations let them further reduce CN's share of the company, thus eventually wresting control over Reddit back to the original founders. Yishan was subsequently pushed out and Ellen Pao promoted to CEO, which didn't go so well either.

Both Altman and Pao are responding in that thread.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/comment/c...

The link says “Page not found”

Looks like the HN app I was using mangled the link. Fixed now.

Corrected URL: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...

FYI it’s a joke in case this is going over anybody’s head. Ellen Pao even played along: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...

> Just look at the Reddit reverse takeover as an example

I'm not familiar with this, what happened? Googling "Sam Altman reddit reverse takeover" is just flooded with OpenAI results.

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...

I think it points out how Altman setup this non-profit OpenAI as a sort of humanitarian gift, because he pretty clearly marketed himself as having no financial stake in the company, only to use that as leverage for his own benefit.

This whole thing is a gigantic mess, but I think it still leaves Altman in the center and as the cause of it all. He used OpenAI to gather talent and boost his "I'm for humanity" profile while dangling the money carrot in front of his employees and doing everything he could to get back in the money making game using this new profile.

In other words, it seems like he setup the non-profit OpenAI as a sort of Trojan horse to launch himself to the top of the AI players.

>In other words, it seems like he setup the non-profit OpenAI as a sort of Trojan horse to launch himself to the top of the AI players.

Given that Altman apparently idolized Steve Jobs as a kid, this idea really doesn't feel that far-fetched.

> What this really shows us is that this "for-profit wrapper around a non-profit" shenanigans was doomed to fail in the first place.

I disagree. The for-profit arm was always meant to be subservient to the non-profit arm - the latter practically owns the former.

A proper CEO would just try to make money without running afoul of the non-profit’s goals.

Yes that would mean earning less or even not at all. But it was clearly stated to investors that profit isn’t a priority.

>they're two sides of an incredibly badly thought-of charter.

It's easy to say this with the benefit of hindsight, but I haven't seen anyone in this discussion even suggest an alternative model that they claim would've been superior.

Agreed, I'm not saying I have a better alternative, just that this is something we all should now realize; given i'm sure we were all wondering for a long time what the whole governance structure of OpenAI really meant (capped for-profit with non-profit mission etc.)

nonprofit companies with for-profit portfolio companies are hardly unusual and certainly not doomed to fail. i've worked for two such companies in my high-tech career myself; one is now called altarum, though i worked for the for-profit subsidiary that got sold to veridian

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