Is this some kind of loophole?<p>Start a non-profit with a noble mission. Get $130.5 million in donations without giving out any shares. Make a product. Renounce non-profit mission. Convert to a for-profit.
> An OpenAI spokesperson told Fortune and Reuters that the company's non-profit arm is "core to our mission and will continue to exist," as OpenAI stays "focused on building AI that benefits everyone."<p>Not exactly a denial that the nonprofit board is going to lose all its governance powers and become a rump (just a shell for enough equity to provide a fiduciary defense to fend off the inevitable lawsuits).
Oh good, the company that can't even align its people and product to its non-profit mission is also telling you they'll <i>eventually</i> align superintelligence and surely not be outmaneuvered.<p>"Currently, we don't have a solution for steering or controlling a potentially superintelligent AI, and preventing it from going rogue"[0] -OpenAI<p>Ya don't say?<p>[0]<a href="https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/" rel="nofollow">https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/</a>
So do non 501c3s mean nothing now? (I guess you could argue that they never meant much?) Is bootstrapping as a nonprofit intended to reduce tax burden? What’s the point of being a non-profit?
I'm guessing that Sam Altman will get a few shares, when OpenAI drops the non-profit structure. Always thought it strange that he had no shares, especially considering his VC background.
We should nationalize OpenAI as punishment for the flagrant copyright violation they've taken part in. Either give every aggrieved author points in the company, or fine them for something like the GDP of the entire planet (round up - to maybe fifty trillion dollars?) and establish a fund that pays for global education and the production of new works.<p>They literally are thieves of the world's entire intellectual output. "For training the model", they say.<p>Yeah, there's a lot of bullshit going around.
Daily reminder:<p>"As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in OpenAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science (even though sharing everything is definitely the right strategy in the short and possibly medium term for recruitment purposes)."<p>-Ilya Sutskever (email to Elon musk and Sam Altman, 2016)