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Comment by kitsune_ | Hacker News Reader

OpenAI Inc.'s mission in their filings:

"OpenAIs goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. We think that artificial intelligence technology will help shape the 21st century, and we want to help the world build safe AI technology and ensure that AI's benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible. Were trying to build AI as part of a larger community, and we want to openly share our plans and capabilities along the way."

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People got burned on “don’t be evil” once and so far OpenAI’s vision looks like a bunch of marketing superlatives when compared to their track record.

At least Google lasted a good 10 years or so before succumbing to the vagaries of the public stock market. OpenAI lasted, what, 3 years?

Not to mention Google never paraded itself around as a non-profit acting in the best interests of humanity.

I would classify their mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" as some light parading acting in the best interests of humanity.

> Google lasted a good 10 years

not sure what event you're thinking of, but Google was a public company before 10 years and they started their first ad program just barely more than a year after forming as a company in 1998.

I have no objection to companies[0] making money. It's discarding the philosophical foundations of the company to prioritize quarterly earnings that is offensive.

I consider Google to have been a reasonably benevolent corporate citizen for a good time after they were listed (compare with, say, Microsoft, who were the stereotypical "bad company" throughout the 90s). It was probably around the time of the Google+ failure that things slowly started to go downhill.

[0] a non-profit supposedly acting in the best interests of humanity, though? That's insidious.

> Google never paraded itself around as a non-profit acting in the best interests of humanity.

Just throwing this out there, but maybe … non-profits shouldn't be considered holier-than-thou, just because they are “non-profits”.

Maybe, but their actions should definitely not be oriented to decide how to maximize their profit.

What's wrong with profit and wanting to maximize it?

Profit is now a dirty word somehow, the idea being that it's a perverse incentive. I don't believe that's true. Profit is the one incentive businesses have that's candid and the least perverse. All other incentives lead to concentrating power without being beholden to the free market, via monopoly, regulations, etc.

The most ethically defensible LLM-related work right now is done by Meta/Facebook, because their work is more open to scrutiny. And the non-profit AI doomers are against developing LLMs in the open. Don't you find it curious?

The problem is moreso trying to maximize profit after claiming to be a nonprofit. Profit can be a good driving force but it is not perfect. We have nonprofits for a reason, and it is shameful to take advantage of this if you are not functionally a nonprofit. There would be nothing wrong with OpenAI trying to maximize profits if they were a typical company.

Because non-profit?

There's nothing wrong with running a perfectly good car wash, but you shouldn't be shocked if people are mad when you advertise it as an all you can eat buffet and they come out soaked and hungry.

At this point I tend to believe that big company slogans mean the opposite of what the words say.

Like I would become immediately suspicious if food packaging had “real food” written on it.

Unless somehow a “mission statement” is legally binding it will never mean anything that matters.

Its always written by PR people with marketing in mind

I wouldn't really give OpenAI credit for lasting 3 years. OpenAI lasted until they moment they had a successful commercial product. Principles are cheap when there is no actual consequences to sticking to them.

Those mission statements are a dime a dozen. A junkie's promise has more value.

Ianal, but given that OpenAI Inc is a 501(c)(3) public charity wouldn't that mean that the mission statement has some actual legal power to it?

Most employees of any organization dont give a fuck about the vision or mission (often they dont even know it) - and are there just for the money.

Not so true working for an organisation that is ostensibly a non-profit. People working for a non-profit are generally taking a significant hit to their earning's compared to doing similar work in a for-profit, outside of the top management of huge global charities.

The issue here is that OpenAI, Inc (officially and legally a non-profit) has spun up a subsidiary OpenAI Global, LLC (for-profit). OpenAI Global, LLC is what's taken venture funding and can provide equity to employees.

Understandably there's conflict now between those who want to increase growth and profit (and hence the value of their equity) and those who are loyal to the mission of the non-profit.

I don't really think this is true in non-charity work. Half of American hospitals are nonprofit and many of the insurance conglomerates are too, like Kaiser. The executives make plenty of money. Kaiser is a massive nonprofit shell for profitmaking entities owned by physicians or whatever, not all that dissimilar to the OpenAI shell idea. Healthcare worked out this way because it was seen as a good model to have doctors either reporting to a nonprofit or owning their own operations, not reporting to shareholders. That's just tradition though. At this point plenty of healthcare operations are just normal corporations controlled by shareholders.

Lots of non profits that collect money for "cause X" spend 95% of money for administration and 5% for cause X.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't hold an organization accountable for their publicized mission statement. Especially its board and directors.

What is socially defined as beneficial-to-humanity is functionally mandated by the MSM and therefore capricious, at the least. With that in mind, a translation:

"OpenAI will be obligated to make decisions according to government preference as communicated through soft pressure exerted by the Media. Don't expect these decisions to make financial sense for us".

If that were true they’d be a not-for-profit

> most likely to benefit humanity as a whole

Giving me a billion $ would be a net benefit to humanity as a whole

Depends on what you do (and stop doing) with it :-)

It could be hard to do that while paying a penalty to FTB and IRS for what they’re suspected to have done (in allowing a for-profit subsidiary to influence an NPO parent) or dealing with SEC and the state courts over any fiduciary breach allegations related to the published stories. [ Nadella is an OG genius because his company is now shielded from all of that drama as it plays out, no matter the outcome. He can take the time to plan for a soft landing at MS for any OpenAI workers (if/when they need it) and/or to begin duplicating their efforts “just in case.” Heard coming from the HQ parking lot in Redmond https://youtu.be/GGXzlRoNtHU ]

Now we can all go back to work on GPT4turbo integrations while MS worries about diverting a river or whatever to power and cool all of those AI chips they’re gunna [sic] need because none of our enterprises will think twice about our decisions to bet on all this. /s/

For profit subsidiaries can totally influence the nonprofit shell without penalty. Happens all the time. The nonprofit board must act in the interest of the exempt mission rather than just investor value or some other primary purpose. Otherwise it's cool.

yeah, all they have to do is pray for humanity to not let the magic AI out of the bottle and they’re free to have a $91b valuation and flaunt it in the media for days.. https://youtu.be/2HJxya0CWco

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