Humanity’s final challenge – AI profit?

Hello Dave

Much in the news cycle. Much buzz. I’ll expect books and a movie script for something even more epic that The Social Connection.

OpenAI’s “bizarre org chart.” Mission creep or mission miscommunication? Was a wizard workers mass exit a real scenario? The twists and turns …

Is “the problem posed by superintelligence” really “humanity’s final challenge?” (Like in The Foundation or Dune novels?)

• Wired > email Newsletter > Steven Levy > Plaintext > The Plain View > “OpenAI’s boardroom drama could mess up your future” (November 22, 2023) – Reflecting on a conversation with chief scientist Ilya Sutskever at OpenAI’s headquarters.

OpenAI began as a nonprofit research lab whose mission was to develop artificial intelligence on par or beyond human level—termed artificial general intelligence or AGI—in a safe way. The company discovered a promising path in large language models that generate strikingly fluid text, but developing and implementing those models required huge amounts of computing infrastructure and mountains of cash. This led OpenAI to create a commercial entity to draw outside investors, and it netted a major partner: Microsoft. Virtually everyone in the company worked for this new for-profit arm. But limits were placed on the company’s commercial life. The profit delivered to investors was to be capped—for the first backers at 100 times what they put in—after which OpenAI would revert to a pure nonprofit. The whole shebang was governed by the original nonprofit’s board, which answered only to the goals of the original mission and maybe God.

3 comments

  1. Legal balance

    What’s “the role technology should play in artistry?”

    This article is about “the first wave of class-action lawsuits against big artificial-intelligence companies.” It’s about fairness to creative people, not anti-tech.

    It reminded me that long ago when I worked at Hughes Aircraft, somehow I became point man for working with corporate legal to clarify “fair use” of copyrighted material – amidst the pervasive use of new digital tech. Something which surfaced again when I was a public school teacher.

    • Wired > “Meet the Lawyer Leading the Human Resistance Against AI” by Kate Knibbs (Nov 22,2023) – Matthew Butterick is leading a wave of lawsuits against major AI firms, from OpenAI to Meta. Win or lose, his work will shape the future of human creativity.

    When asked if he’s optimistic about the future of AI, Butterick takes a longer view. “I’m just one piece of this – I don’t want to call it a campaign against AI, I want to call it the human resistance,” he says. “And it’s going to be worldwide. We’ve now talked to lawyers in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Australia. It’s happening everywhere.” He sees his role as a public gadfly as deeply connected to his background in the arts.

  2. the way to fair use

    Some class action lawsuits against artificial intelligence companies are having their day in court at last. Recently, a judicial ruling in one such case allowed parts to proceed.

    • Washington Post > Tech Brief 8-14-2024 by Will Oremus > “AI’s legal reckoning is one step closer”

    At stake is the business model behind a generative AI boom built largely on the free, unauthorized use of works of all kinds from across the internet to train sophisticated software capable of producing humanlike works of its own.

    That content includes art, music, videos, news articles and social media posts. A key question, as lawsuits move forward, will be whether the use of such material to train AI models constitutes “fair use” or illegal infringement.

    But first, Reid said, plaintiffs face the challenge of proving that their work was copied in a meaningful way. That can be tricky for two reasons. First, it’s not always clear exactly what data was used to train a given AI model. Second, the responses an AI tool generates for a user often are not identical to the works it was trained on, though there can be a strong resemblance.

    – – –

    On the flip side of “fair use” litigation, some publishers have signed deals with AI companies. Is this a viable long-term strategy? Will this impact publishers’ employees?

    • Wired > “Condé Nast Signs Deal With OpenAI” by Kate Knibbs (Aug 20, 2024) – The media company joins The Atlantic, Axel Springer, Vox Media, and a host of other publishers who have partnered with OpenAI.

    Condé Nast and OpenAI have struck a multi-year deal that will allow the AI giant to use content from the media giant’s roster of properties—which includes the New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Bon Appetit, and, yes, WIRED. The deal will allow OpenAI to surface stories from these outlets in both ChatGPT and the new SearchGPT prototype.

  3. The amazing saga of OpenAI continues as for-profit restructuring is considered. Investor confidence, despite executive resignations, tensions over safety & leadership, regulation, and hazy pathway to profitability.

    • Washington Post > “OpenAI gets $6.6 billion in new funding, valuing company at $157 billion” by Nitasha Tiku (October 2, 2024) – The artificial intelligence company needs to raise unprecedented sums to fund its insatiable need for chips and energy.

    OpenAI’s new investors include chipmaker Nvidia; MGX, a new technology investment company from the United Arab Emirates; and SoftBank, the Japanese firm known for funneling exorbitant sums into WeWork and Uber as their valuations ballooned before later contracting. Existing investors also participated, including Microsoft, Khosla Ventures and New York investment firms Tiger Global Management and Thrive Capital, which led the round.

    Converting OpenAI into a fully for-profit structure could be a complex process due to laws governing charitable organizations. The terms of the new funding come with a provision that if OpenAI does not complete that transformation within two years the investors can convert their stake in the company into debt at an interest rate of 9 percent, a person familiar with the deal said, adding that the company is confident it can make that deadline.

Comments are closed.