If Plucky Nonprofit was OAI-1, and Abruptly Serious AI Lab was OAI-2, And Viable Commercial Product was OAI-3, and Scary Brittle Governance With Creepy NSA Ties was OAI-4, then God Emperor of Arrakis is presumably OAI-5.<p>I figured they’d ship GPT-5 to justify OAI-5, but I guess they’ve realized that they now answer to no one on anything in practical terms.<p>That’s terrifying.
> Since then, OpenAI's board has been refreshed with more tech executives, chaired by Bret Taylor, former Salesforce co-CEO who now runs his own AI startup. Any corporate changes need approval from its nine-person non-profit board.<p>Why would the non-profit board approve a change to a for-profit company? Wouldn't this be against the nature of the non-profit entity that was founded and which they are supposed to govern?
I'm a bit concerned about how this might impact their commitment to AI safety though. The non-profit structure was supposed to be a safeguard against profit-driven decision making. Will they still prioritize responsible AI development as a regular for-profit company?
That Sam is a shifty one. Here's him 4 months ago:<p>“It's so deeply unimaginable to people to say i don’t really need more money... If I were to say I'm going to try and make a trillion dollars with OpenAI it would save a lot of conspiracy theories”<p>And now having turned OpenAI into closed AI he's trying to give himself $10bn in equity.
This felt inevitable which is why it’s not front page everywhere. It also doesn’t help that we’re in a bit of a lull with AI. I was with friends who don’t work in tech and AI came up in conversation at dinner. The general consensus is that AI is kinda dumb but it does a great job helping everyone write nicer emails.<p>But I don’t think I’m being alarmist when I say that this moment, when the altruistic ideals get suddenly pushed to the side, may be the moment noted in history books before whatever it is that this leads us to happens. I don’t mean evil machines are next, but I do think it’s a cotton gin, telegram over the ocean, light bulb, AARPNET moment. Maybe even more impactful than those. Manhattan project? TBD I guess.<p>Which is why I believe we’ll regret that we didn’t move slower or enforce more collective stop gaps behind the unbridled force of capitalism and the public goodwill. I’m not a doomsayer but you can’t tell me something isn’t up when this much money is involved.
It’s so weird that the person behind Loopt has now come fully in charge of this company and perverted its initial goals so completely. I’m still not clear on what Sam has accomplished or why he was put in charge of YC or OpenAI. Also apparently chairman of Helion Energy (fusion startup). Masterclass in failing up.
Once Sam Altman has consolidated all the power (think: top-10 richest person in the world and control over AGI v0) we’ll find out what he actually wants. And we will hate it.
It <i>is</i> weird that I get this news item from my local general interest newspaper in Europe but not from the HN front page, isn't it?<p>Posted another source (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41653028">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41653028</a>) since I feel this needs a discussion. This one has a more descriptive headline though.
Probably now everyone is starting to realize that Sam Altman really is far worse than Elon and everyone was very late to understand this after the coup that happened nearly a year ago.<p>Perhaps this is what Mira, Greg and IIya saw in Sam; his true intentions after that coup.<p>This 'non-profit' / 'for-profit' complication structure + taking capped investment won't be tried again in a very long time after these events.