The [Nonprofit and For-Profit] Contradictions of Sam Altman, AI Crusader
Sam shows why IT Nerd-ness is the new cool.
From the WSJ, March 31, 2023
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In recent months, Mr. Altman has done more than anyone else to usher in this future—and commercialize it. OpenAI, the company he leads, in November released ChatGPT, the chatbot with an uncanny ability to produce humanlike writing that has become one of the most viral products in the history of technology. In the process, OpenAI went from a small nonprofit into a multibillion-dollar company, at near record speed, thanks in part to the launch of a for-profit arm that enabled it to raise $13 billion from Microsoft Corp., according to investor documents.
This success has come as part of a delicate balancing act. Mr. Altman said he fears what could happen if AI is rolled out into society recklessly. He co-founded OpenAI eight years ago as a research nonprofit, arguing that it’s uniquely dangerous to have profits be the main driver of developing powerful AI models.
He is so wary of profit as an incentive in AI development that he has taken no direct financial stake in the business he built, he said—an anomaly in Silicon Valley, where founders of successful startups typically get rich off their equity.
“Like most other people, I like watching scores go up,” when it comes to financial gains, he said. “And I just like not having that be any factor at all.” (The company said he earns a “modest” salary, but declined to disclose how much.) Mr. Altman said he has a small stake in a venture fund that invested in OpenAI, but that it is “immaterial.”
His goal, he said, is to forge a new world order in which machines free people to pursue more creative work. In his vision, universal basic income—the concept of a cash stipend for everyone, no strings attached—helps compensate for jobs replaced by AI. Mr. Altman even thinks that humanity will love AI so much that an advanced chatbot could represent “an extension of your will.”
Backers say his brand of social-minded capitalism makes him the ideal person to lead OpenAI. Others, including some who’ve worked for him, say he’s too commercially minded and immersed in Silicon Valley thinking to lead a technological revolution that is already reshaping business and social life.
The company signed a $10 billion deal with Microsoft in January that would allow the tech behemoth to own 49% of the company’s for-profit entity, investor documents show. The corporate partnership, along with Mr. Altman’s push to more aggressively commercialize its technology, have disillusioned key early leaders at OpenAI who felt the decisions violated an initial commitment to develop AI outside the influence of shareholders.
One of OpenAI’s critics has been Elon Musk, who co-founded the nonprofit in 2015 but parted ways in 2018 after a dispute over its control and direction. The Tesla Inc. CEO tweeted in February that OpenAI had been founded as an open-source nonprofit “to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft. Not what I intended at all.”
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darryll jones