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Comment by exitb | Hacker News Reader

> But seen from another perspective, releasing that email was a massive fuckup—because it shows decisively that OpenAI knew for years that they had no intention of being as open as their name or public statements suggested.

It would have been nice to have the top company share the details of their work, but I don't quite get the community outrage over this. There are companies formed around volunteer driven open-source projects that eventually move towards closed development model. This however is not a case like that, they never took volunteer work. I don't think they have any real external obligations outside of their investors.

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The perceived hypocrisy stems from the contrast between OpenAI's public statements about benefiting humanity and their actions, which reveal a profit-driven focus similar to Microsoft's. Unlike Microsoft, OpenAI lacks transparency about this core motivation. Microsoft is not bullshitting that they do AI for the common good under an NGO.

Many, many companies claim to be doing what they do for the good of all humanity - they would have you believe that any profit made is just a nice side effect.

Examples:

* Aon insurance - At Aon, we exist to shape decisions for the better — to protect and enrich the lives of people around the world.

* Nike - Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world

* Glencore - Responsibly sourcing the commodities that advance everyday life

I don't really see any difference with OpenAI, beyond their name including some fluffy sounding loveliness.

none of these examples say that we are not in for the money or profit and under an NGO

If you read the article openai says that they are not in for the money and then proceed to be in for the money. Also, Ilya says to not change anything because it will hurt recruitment.

Well, they being an NGO is a big difference.

> OpenAI's public statements about benefiting humanity and their actions, which reveal a profit-driven focus similar to Microsoft's.

Their reasoning is that not only are those things not mutually exclusive; it would have been impossible to achieve that mission without the capped-profit pivot. Which is pretty obviously true (and by Elon Musk's admission, "0% chance"). I don't think anyone could have had the foresight in 2015 that Chinchilla scaling laws would necessitate multiple billions of dollars. Like, everyone knew scaling was important, but not to the point that you could easily divine that a pure nonprofit would guarantee failure.

I also don't get the exaggerated anger at "hypocrisy" (or what some would call "changing ones mind"). If they renamed to XYZ AI, does that make them any better or worse than xAI or Anthropic on whatever measure you care about? They are yet another closed AI company. Ok? If being closed AI is evil, then one should be equally angry at their equivalently closed competitors. If being closed AI is not evil, then one should not be so angry at the alleged hypocrisy. My point is, hypocrites doing evil things are about as bad as non-hypocrites doing the equivalent evil thing, which means the disparate emotional reactions we're seeing are unreasonable.

The backlash that OpenAI gets is the same as the backlash any entity gets upon becoming large and successful.

I cannot think of a single example of any company or entity that has been lauded after experiencing hypergrowth, regardless of the value of these entities provide to humanity, which becomes normalized and thus taken for granted in the public conscience.

I think it is in human nature to simply hate on anything that is more successful than ourselves. Perhaps it is jealousy, insecurity, pessimism, or something else. People will try to rationalize their hatred of <entity> but the trend is clear. There is literally nothing you can do as such an entity to consistently gain and keep the mob's goodwill.

It does not matter how many free services you provide, how much further you have pushed humanity forward, how many billions have come to rely on or even enjoy what you have made - all these are taken for granted (perhaps a testament to your success), and all you are left with is dissatisfaction/hatred from the public.

This is just a sad fact of human nature. See: tall poppy syndrome, negativity bias, expectation inflation, and the general impossibility of consistently maintaining widescale goodwill.

> all you are left with is dissatisfaction/hatred from the public.

and billions of dollars, and the hero-worship of people that will excuse literally anything you did to get there...

Yes, of course people will criticize you for making money (even when you are hemorrhaging billions), and every choice you make (because it's trivially easy to construe literally any decision as evil.)

Again, maintaining goodwill at scale for long periods of time is simply not possible. People will end up taking what you contribute for granted and find something to get angry about.

Maintaining goodwill with some people is pretty easy. All you have to do is be successful, and they'll insist that anyone with the temerity to suggest they might have been less dishonest is only doing so out of envy.

After all, nobody ever criticises unsuccessful companies.

> I cannot think of a single example of any company or entity that has been lauded after experiencing hypergrowth

Is it perhaps due to the fact that large-scale success is usually enabled by large-scale exploitation? America is a good example of an entity that was lauded after hypergrowth, but only after denouncing the autocracy that made it.

Perhaps more companies would be lauded if they denounced the horrible practices that put them on the map. At least, it would make it easier to rationalize their behavior in the face of their progress.

> It does not matter how many free services you provide, how much further you have pushed humanity forward, how many billions have come to rely on or even enjoy what you have made

It quite literally, doesn't. If you do any of these things while disrespecting hierarchical order or offending human judgement, you will be reprimanded. If humanity stood for nothing, we'd all fall for everything.

For example, war tends to increase the distribution of free services, pushes humanity forward and makes even more people reliant on you. The continued manufacture of war is an enemy to the sanctity of human life and the preservation of order. Every single government primarily exists to regulate the waging of warfare and ensure the stability of it's constituent population.

> If humanity stood for nothing, we'd all fall for everything.

But not everything that causes moral outrage is worthy. There are many taboos I support. The taboo against war is one of them. But witch hunts? Superstition? Being morally outraged at attempts to remove slavery? Humans are social creatures that are easily manipulated, for good or bad, by the amoral and conveniently self-serving narratives that run roughshod through our culture. These narratives and our responses to them aren't something to worship at an altar. They're something to side-eye with skepticism. Cherish the ones that are useful, and reject the ones that aren't.

The outrage stems from years of:

-OpenAI taking the cover of nonprofit status, when that was privately never their intent;

-OpenAI publicly claiming they were going to open source everything, when that was privately never their intent;

-OpenAI publicly claiming a moral high ground on responsible AI, when that is clearly not their priority.

Sure, I think Musk's lawsuit is a stunt, and sure, legally, OpenAI may have done nothing wrong but it shows they are at best disingenuous, to put it mildly.

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