this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2024
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268
OpenAI looks to shift away from nonprofit roots and convert itself to for-profit company (apnews.com)
submitted 2 months ago by girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to c/news@lemmy.world
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OpenAI’s history as a nonprofit research institute that also sells commercial products like ChatGPT may be coming to an end as the San Francisco company looks to more fully convert itself into a for-profit corporation accountable to shareholders.

The company’s board is considering a decision that would change the company into a public benefit corporation, according to a source familiar with the discussions who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about them.

While OpenAI already has a for-profit division, where most of its staff works, it is controlled by a nonprofit board of directors whose mission is to help humanity. That would change if the company converts the core of its structure to a public benefit corporation, which is a type of corporate entity that is supposed to help society as well as turn a profit.

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[–] BertramDitore@lemm.ee 116 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This was so predictable. It seems they only care about profits now, and also positioning themselves to be a monopoly, so they really haven’t been compatible with the non-profit model for a while. Especially since they just raised more than $6 billion.

It’s truly amazing to me that a “non-profit” that has disingenuously represented itself from day one, and is based almost entirely on the theft of intellectual property that would get normal individuals prosecuted out the ass, can continue to rake in absurd amounts of cash. I really dislike this company.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The government should just nationalize them

[–] BertramDitore@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

I would tend to agree. I feel the same way about Amazon Logistics. The whole packaging and delivery side of Amazon should be brought under the USPS so every driver gets a fair wage and job protections. USPS already delivers so much of their stuff anyway, and Amazon shouldn’t be in control of the marketplace and the whole shipping process and infrastructure.

OpenAI is relying on all of human knowledge to build their product, regardless of whether or not it falls under copyright protection, so while the government doesn’t need more power, it’s still probably the best positioned to regulate this stuff, and that’d be much easier if they had direct control.

[–] ryan213@lemmy.ca 57 points 2 months ago

Absolutely nobody saw that coming...

[–] DarkCloud@lemmy.world 50 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Next you're going to tell me they were never open source (they were never open source).

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

"Open" could also mean open publication of papers, open standards for APIs, or (most likely) Altman's grabby hand always being open for for money.

[–] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 50 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sam Altman is and always has been yet another tech bro.

[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Every time I've heard anything about this guy, it's always made me think "oh, that guy is a total piece of shit."

[–] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

Yea his "funny story" about carrying around a briefcase to explode his data center is just an asshat wanting to play James Bond.

[–] ohellidk@sh.itjust.works 28 points 2 months ago

ClosedAI

[–] leadore@lemmy.world 27 points 2 months ago (1 children)

[–] afk_strats@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Hey. What is this from?

[–] leadore@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's Jim Nabors as Gomer Pyle from the old Andy Griffith Show. He also played the same character on Gomer Pyle USMC

[–] afk_strats@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This solved a 20-year mistery for me. If you listen to Pink Floyd - Nobody Home, I think this plays at 3:00

YouTube link

[–] leadore@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yep, that's him, that's exactly how he would say it!

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 26 points 2 months ago

Just guillotine the rich already

[–] monotremata@lemmy.ca 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Capitalism is already a superintelligence, and its goals are misaligned with those of humanity.

[–] bamfic@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] CondensedPossum@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Corporations are driven by people — they aren’t completely autonomous agents. Yet if you shot the CEO of Exxon or any of the others, what effect would it have? Another person of much the same ilk would swiftly move into place, much as stepping on a few ants hardly effects an anthill at all.

I've never understood why people feel compelled to share this take.

Edit, clarity: The quoted common rhetorical statement, not the overall essay's conclusions about AI.

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

Sociopaths and toxic narcissists comprise only a small percentage of the population, and most of them lack even rudimentary business acumen. I don't advocate your hypothetical strategy, but if it were sustained, they would eventually run out of those categories of sleazeballs.

[–] toastus 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How can it be a thing to just make a non profit organization into a for profit organization?

I thought non profits have benefits when it comes to taxation and regulations.
Why can it be allowed that the new for profit organization can just reap the rewards from those benefits that it used to grow into what it is now?

That seems to me like it should be plainly illegal.

[–] oyo@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Immediate back taxes on everything prior

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

That's how it should work but not how it works.

It's more like an open-source project going closed-source. They can do that at any time.

[–] Enkers@sh.itjust.works 18 points 2 months ago

Shocking. Absolutely shocking, I say. It's almost like we've seen this exact pattern a hundred times before.

[–] fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Fuck these cunts.

God I hope open source models eat their lunch.

[–] BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Unless we can get people to donate $400 million per month to any organizations that develop and train open source models, this dream will always remain a fantasy.

OpenAI and Microsoft simply have way too much money to compete against, because they can afford to buy literally their own entire fucking nuclear reactor complex to power their AI machine learning server super-clusters.

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

Open source products, back in the day, competed against the giant corporations of their time, which spent vast sums on R&D, and yet succeeded. That's because massive organizations lack agility, suck at innovation and fail to inspire people with real talent. They might make a few prestige hires here and there, but who wants to work for Microsoft or for a greedhead VC tech bro, even if it means a big payday? And there are more ethical organizations around that are not controlled by Altman or other greedhead tech bros like Zuckerberg.

[–] tired_n_bored@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Llama is open source, supported by facebook. MistralAI is not too much behind either

[–] Vivendi@lemmy.zip 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

PSA: There is a super easy to use app called "GPT4ALL" which lets literally any idiot run an open source LLM on their local machine. (As long as you don't go fucking crazy and try to run a huuuuge model, that is)

Smaller models run at pretty good speeds on my RX 5700 XT. Yes, you heard that right, you can use Vulkan to run them on an AMD GPU

[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Is there an easy program to run one on an Intel GPU?

[–] Vivendi@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It uses Vulkan so it should be fine

[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I gave it a shot but the program just crashes in Windows 11. It may be because I only have 4gb of vram.

[–] Vivendi@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Tested with a 4Gb RTX 2050 laptop, works perfectly fine. Tested on a i5-3570 & RX 480 machine, also works fine.

What are your settings and setup?

[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I have an Intel a310 and a Ryzen Apu. I guess I was trying to select the apu Vulcan in the menu. The a310 doesn't show up as an option.

[–] stoly@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

I was looking for a job in the San Fran area by keyword for a product I am a near expert on. I happened to find a listing for a position that I was qualified for at OpenAI. The post was truly creepy and had a weird fascist smear all over it where they were writing in all caps, multiple times that there would be no work from home or even hybrid work. It was unnecessary and very strange. I ran away and never looked back. Nothing of this surprises me.

[–] lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee 9 points 2 months ago

I'm shocked, I tell you.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Member when the daily show (or was it Last Week Tonight) would show clips of Jared Kushner and have Gilbert Gottfried voice him?

That’s what needs to happen for this bro.

(RIP Gilbert)

[–] TheLemming@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

That'd be season 3-4 of last week tonight. They have been gradually posting all of the full length episodes on the LWT YouTube account for the last few months if you'd like to watch John Oliver slowly descend into madness. It's amazing how similar the early stories are, despite the show being out for so long.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

AI is going to save the world, but we need to maximize profit for our shareholders to do it!

[–] orcrist@lemm.ee 7 points 2 months ago

Well yeah. They're selling snake oil, and they better get as much money as they can now. That cash is going to dry up in a couple of years, and then where will they be. They'll have to do real work again.

[–] beebarfbadger@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Gotta milk any remaining goodwill while it's still there.

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

Everyone with a clue should quit and go over to Anthropic.