OpenAI Quietly Scrapped a Promise To Disclose Key Documents To the Public (wired.com) 46
From its founding, OpenAI said its governing documents were available to the public. When WIRED requested copies after the company's boardroom drama, it declined to provide them. Wired: Wealthy tech entrepreneurs including Elon Musk launched OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab that they said would involve society and the public in the development of powerful AI, unlike Google and other giant tech companies working behind closed doors. In line with that spirit, OpenAI's reports to US tax authorities have from its founding said that any member of the public can review copies of its governing documents, financial statements, and conflict of interest rules. But when WIRED requested those records last month, OpenAI said its policy had changed, and the company provided only a narrow financial statement that omitted the majority of its operations.
"We provide financial statements when requested," company spokesperson Niko Felix says. "OpenAI aligns our practices with industry standards, and since 2022 that includes not publicly distributing additional internal documents." OpenAI's abandonment of the long-standing transparency pledge obscures information that could shed light on the recent near-implosion of a company with crucial influence over the future of AI and could help outsiders understand its vulnerabilities. In November, OpenAI's board fired CEO Sam Altman, implying in a statement that he was untrustworthy and had endangered its mission to ensure AI "benefits all humanity." An employee and investor revolt soon forced the board to reinstate Altman and eject most of its own members, with an overhauled slate of directors vowing to review the crisis and enact structural changes to win back the trust of stakeholders.
"We provide financial statements when requested," company spokesperson Niko Felix says. "OpenAI aligns our practices with industry standards, and since 2022 that includes not publicly distributing additional internal documents." OpenAI's abandonment of the long-standing transparency pledge obscures information that could shed light on the recent near-implosion of a company with crucial influence over the future of AI and could help outsiders understand its vulnerabilities. In November, OpenAI's board fired CEO Sam Altman, implying in a statement that he was untrustworthy and had endangered its mission to ensure AI "benefits all humanity." An employee and investor revolt soon forced the board to reinstate Altman and eject most of its own members, with an overhauled slate of directors vowing to review the crisis and enact structural changes to win back the trust of stakeholders.
Role of Journalism (Score:5, Interesting)
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Mod parent "off topic" I guess? I'm actually not sure because the statement makes no sense, I can't even decipher its meaning.
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Mod parent "off topic" I guess? I'm actually not sure because the statement makes no sense, I can't even decipher its meaning.
If that particular person has a purpose beyond being a smart-ass, it would be to break this discussion down into partisan back-biting bullshit so that no real discussion can be had without everybody breaking down into "BAD LBRULS" vs. "BAD CONS" nonsense. It's happening often enough that I think, somehow, somebody with a vested interest may be pushing bullshit on /. just to keep the rational people out of the discussion and keep the hyperbolic partisan fighting at the forefront of all discussion.
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It's NOT true fact-based journalism unless we're looking into how Elon Musk's right wing fascism is somehow to blame for this outcome and his threat to Democracy
That kind of whataboutism is not "true fact-based journalism" either. It's cherry picking.
Re:Role of Journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is if we value real quality journalism as a societal necessity (which i believe it is) then we need to come to grips with how to fund it because right now almost all the negatives about journalism come down to the fact that they are desperately clamoring for funds. We hate the relentless advertising, the use of AI, the imbalance of opinion over fact and everyone's perceived political biases but this is all in service of shareholder revenues, just plain staying afloat and the drastic downturn after losing almost all the newspaper advertising.
Like everything else media outlets are forced to gamify and metric down every action to maximize every second of every eyeball because otherwise they'll just be left to wither on the vine like so many other outlets of the past 15 years.
Right now the alternative is is relent to the fact that journalism is the pet project of billionaires and just hope they have the best interests of the public in mind, and that is not a promising outlook to me.
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The inevitable result of advertisement-based model is that more clicks means more money, he who makes the most and clickbaitiest content wins. Modern clickbait is worse than the pre-internet sensationalism and yellow journalism: the reader clicks with no payment and little thought, the author gets basically nothing, no distributor has a stake in the quality or reputation of the article, the competition to be the clickbaitiest or to circle-jerk the reader is intense, seconds count to be the first to report.
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government funding scheme somehow designed so the government can't abuse or fuck it up.
This is the direction I have been thinking about but specifically for local newspapers/news orgs, specifically in some sort of block grant method where Congress simply allocates funds and that's it, if that's some sort of blind trust or 3rd party org but something where Congress can just approve $X and it gets distributed with certain caveats, use the AP as an example for what the money expects out of orgs in terms of ethics.
I wouldn't do it for any national chains but the real tragedy has been the local ne
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The inevitable result of advertisement-based model is that more clicks means more money, he who makes the most and clickbaitiest content wins. Modern clickbait is worse than the pre-internet sensationalism and yellow journalism: the reader clicks with no payment and little thought, the author gets basically nothing, no distributor has a stake in the quality or reputation of the article, the competition to be the clickbaitiest or to circle-jerk the reader is intense, seconds count to be the first to report. Everything is basically anathema to good journalism.
Solutions would be to magically make people want subscriptions again, or hold a funeral for traditional journalism, or a government funding scheme somehow designed so the government can't abuse or fuck it up.
I, as an ordinary citizen, would be happy to buy a subscription to a fact-based reporting site. Unfortunately, today my options for subscriptions are mostly ways to feed yet more of my money to the billionaire club. I'm not sure how we break that cycle right now. I mean, it's not difficult to spin up a news feed, but you'd need good reporters that understand what investigative journalism is, and there are very few of those left in the world that haven't been in on the con for so long they probably don't eve
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The question is if we value real quality journalism as a societal necessity (which i believe it is)
I think an informed, educated people are needed for democracy to function. We are ruled by oligarchs who do not want that.
To wrest power from the oligarchs requires violence, and just as we are intentionally uninformed, we are trained to avoid violence. The oligarchs seem safe.
. . . right now almost all the negatives about journalism come down to the fact that they are desperately clamoring for funds.
Right now mass media is controlled by a small handful of companies - oligopoly! No other problem with media seems so dire.
Like everything else media outlets are forced to gamify and metric down every action to maximize every second of every eyeball because otherwise they'll just be left to wither on the vine like so many other outlets of the past 15 years.
Gamification works well for tasks people do not like, drudgery like taking out the garbage or flossing, because
Companies always become less human (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies are often founded by pie-eyed dreamers who have lofty goals and good ambitions. Successful companies draw the eye of the greedy who are more interested in monetizing than moralizing, and so they start down the slope from empathy to evil.
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If it was ever more than a PR statement, it would be embedded in the corporate constitution and be very specific.
Re:Companies always become less human (Score:4, Interesting)
A handy subpoena should reveal them.
There a number of injured parties suing them right now. Perhaps they'll be visible soon.
When non-profits are organized, and become simply for-profit vehicles, their NFP status can change. The IRS 990 ought to be combed for details. That would be "Open" AI.
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Could you give an example of how you could make "Don't be evil" legally binding? And what very specific definition would you use for "evil"?
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"Generic" is "don't be evil". PR bullshit that never meant anything and could never be used in court.
"Specific" would be a list specific prohibited and mandatory corporate policies in clear legal language as vetted by a bunch of lawyers.
Why would you ever think I was suggesting a definition of 'evil' for a legal document?
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a list specific prohibited and mandatory corporate policies in clear legal language as vetted by a bunch of lawyers.
That would make a terrible motto.
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Remember when Google had "Don't be evil" as part of its mission?
"I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further." -- Darth Vader
Re:Companies always become less human (Score:5, Interesting)
The people who are best at climbing the hierarchy tend to be really bad for the organization. One of my favorite essays covers this. https://bobshea.net/empire_of_... [bobshea.net]
how much you wanna bet (Score:2)
Re:how much you wanna bet (Score:5, Informative)
No betting necessary. OpenAI is already working for the DoD:
https://time.com/6556827/opena... [time.com]
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No betting necessary.
You should have taken the bet. Easy money. Almost as easy as selling to the DoD.
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Turns out the only thing "Open" (Score:4, Funny)
about "OpenAI" is its mouth.
(And yeah, I stole that line from someone who used it to describe another organization with "Open" in its name. But it worked then, and it works now.)
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Why don't they just call it "ProfitAI" and be done with it. Maybe have a border of little F.U.s parading around it on the logo?
Conflicting info presented to regulators? (Score:5, Interesting)
OpenAI's reports to US tax authorities have from its founding said that any member of the public can review copies of its governing documents, financial statements, and conflict of interest rules. But when WIRED requested those records last month, OpenAI said its policy had changed..
So uhm... If they Told regulators one thing in order to Qualify for the classification and are Now doing something different, did they Lie to the taxing authorities? I'm pretty sure the transparency of access to an organization's documents is Part of the criteria involved in whether they qualify or not. What the rest of the industry's policy is might be not that important.. If you say that you do X in a filing, and then decline to do X in practice, then it seems like you've made a false statement.
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. If you say that you do X in a filing, and then decline to do X in practice, then it seems like you've made a false statement.
Are you suggesting the company lied? How could it be that a bunch of billionaires would get together and form a company which doesn't reveal its information after saying it would? That's inconceivable!
Blame Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft clearly believes thar OpenAI will be the next Google. They fucked up when it came to search, let Chrome displace IE, and countless other mistakes over the last two decades. These failures directly led to trillion dollar companies like Google. They believe that trillion dollars should have been theirs, and they are going to spend whatever it takes to make sure they don't miss out this time around.
Re: Blame Microsoft (Score:3)
You're not far off. Novell didn't see what was coming, and basically went out of business. Microsoft is not wanting to miss the boat, and spending like crazy to do so. I think the only difference here is that it's happening more publicly than usual because of they was OpenAI was initially structured. Apparently that structure is now less transparent, so it provides a competitive advantage to Microsoft. It's probably reasonable to assume that Microsoft now has a significant amount of control over the company
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It's not like they wanted to! There was a small thing called antitrust, so they let go, because the alternative was the chopping board.
BTW that's generally a good thing. Microsoft did very bad things for a very long time in a lot of markets around the world. They should not be left alone to do it again, either.
There's a key change that was responsible for that (Score:3)
betrayed humanity (Score:1)
I see them as a bunch of people that recruited the best for a pro human mission then got lured with fascinating riches and achieving the "end of human work". they lost their soul completely and betrayed their stated, public mission. doesn't mean the advances and products aren't best, or whatever, but they turned 180 on their mission and pledges.
I wish they'd change their name (Score:3)
The "Open" in OpenAI is completely bogus at this point, both technologically and ethically speaking.
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A descriptive product name or brandname should be considered a guaranteed feature, with the option to get a refund if the product prove defective.
Sam Altman is Engaged in Tax Fraud (Score:2)
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OpenAI doesn't make a profit. The actual nonprofit entity doesn't make a profit, and the for-profit part is way, way down in the negatives. Being open or Open or "Open" has nothing to do with it.
Mozilla has a similar structure.
Blah (Score:4, Insightful)
"In November, OpenAI's board fired CEO Sam Altman, implying in a statement that he was untrustworthy and had endangered its mission to ensure AI "benefits all humanity." An employee and investor revolt soon forced the board to reinstate Altman and eject most of its own members, with an overhauled slate of directors vowing to review the crisis and enact structural changes to win back the trust of stakeholders."
Now it sounds like the company's turn to the Dark Side is complete. It started with the board pushing out Elon for resisting turning the company commercial and closed source. Now, investors and some greedy employees have finished the process.
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Do you have a link to the full story, something that gives all those details?
No problem (Score:5, Funny)
In other news.... (Score:2)