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Comment by rediguanayum | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's AGI, but rather video production. OpenAI wants to build the next video social network / ads / tv / movie production system. The moat is the massive compute required.

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I'm sure they're not against building this, and they definitely have competing priorities.

But my personal belief is Sam Altman has a singular goal: AGI. Everything else keeps the lights on.

Is there any indication they are actually working on this and Altman is any good at pursuing this goal? I'm seriously asking, please inform the uninformed.

My impression is that I hear a lot more about basic research from the competing high-profile labs, while OpenAI feels focused on their established stable of products. They also had high-profile researchers leave. Does OpenAI still have a culture looking for the next breakthroughs? How does their brain trust rank?

Huh, my read is exactly the opposite: Altman wants to be a trillionaire and isn't picky about how he gets there. If AGI accomplishes it, great, but if that's not possible, "just" making a megacorporation which permanently breaks the negotiating power of labor is fine too. Amodei is the one who I think actually wants to build AGI.

I think your read is right. There are a few people who want to be trillionaires and aren't too picky about to get there: Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Trump, Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel, Putin. Maybe Bezos and Zuckerberg.

Of course, there wouldn't be many people who don't want to be trillionaires. Rare exceptions[1]. But these are the people with means to get there.

[1]: No means NO - Do you want a one million dollar answer NO!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtWC4X628Ek

I definitely would not want to be a trillionaire yeah. Having a million or so would be nice but more and you get roped into all kinds of power play and you have to get security goons with you all the time to avoid getting kidnapped. I'd much rather be anonymous.

to be fair I couldn't recognize 99% of billionaires and crazy people are easy to deal with if you know what I mean.

To be fair, you're probably not an organized crime syndicate looking for targets either.

crime syndicates are just as afraid of people with that much money.

Then why start a company where you have no equity? (Yes I believe he financially benefits from OpenAI, but the more straightforward way would be OpenAI equity)

I think his initial belief was that OpenAI would to be a research organization which would get acquihired or license its tech out, and then Chat-GPT unexpectedly happened. Notice how ever since then he's been trying to get the nonprofit status cancelled or evaded.

Isn't that just PR?

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