7 ms·

Sam doing a 180 on non-profit to for-profit was egregious, IMHO. Having said that, plenty of extremely profitable organizations masquerade (literally and figura

Sam doing a 180 on non-profit to for-profit was egregious, IMHO. Having said that, plenty of extremely profitable organizations masquerade (literally and figuratively) as non-profits. Also: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1626516035863212034 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1626516035863212034

zitterbewegung 4y ago
Sort of meta that Sam did something that Elon Musk would do…
leesec 4y ago
Capped profit*
- nwoli 4y ago
  Capped at 100x investment which would be the most profitable company in history lol
versteegen 4y ago
It's disruptive technology and an enormous amount of value is likely to be created. I would much rather the profits go to a nonprofit which can distribute them charitably rather than them giving them away freely to the megacorps which actually have the resources to run these massive models (edit^2: at scale). I do think the 100x cap on return on Microsoft's $1B investment was way too high (we don't know what the cap is on later investments but it's meant to be reducing over time). Edit: Plus it's still the case that OpenAI aren't putting profit above all else. E.g. they just released the ChatGPT API and it's 10x cheaper per token than GPT3! And their Charter does count for something, it's binding on them.
- ketzo 4y ago
  A nonprofit wouldn't have to distribute profits to charity. It just can't distribute profits to private or public shareholders (because it can't have them). A nonprofit is obligated to reinvest any earnings towards its mission. Not remotely an expert, this is just my basic understanding. "Nonprofit" is a pretty abused term.
  - hotstickyballs 4y ago
    TIL Amazon was basically a non profit
    - O__________O 4y ago
      No, Amazon has shareholders, nonprofits do not.
      - isubkhankulov 4y ago
        The use of the word “basically” means that the previous commenter is saying that Amazon operated like a non-profit because it re-invested the vast majority of its profits.
        O__________O 4y ago
        Understand and disagree, since there’s a fundamental difference between Amazon and a nonprofit — both in their intended missions and the literal outcomes.
  - rvnx 4y ago
    Not-profit just means it doesn't have shareholders in a traditional sense. But it can have real-estate, it can pay very high salaries, travel, distribute significant bonuses, buy expensive hardware, etc.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  I just looked up the the top CEO salaries of non-profit organizations in the USA - as of 2020, they ranged from about $16 million to $8 million. A non-profit appears to simply be a 'non-stock corporation' and can have the same ridiculouly pyramidal compensation structures that shareholder corporations do. Overhauling the legal definition of non-profit to require the highest-paid employees to make no more than ~10X as much as the lowest-paid employees would make a lot of sense.
  - nl 4y ago
    A non-profit just means excess earnings are reinvested back into the organization instead of having the option of giving them to shareholders. I think you are confusing non-profit with charity perhaps?
  - kkielhofner 4y ago
    CEO salaries alone are the wrong metric. Not that I'm defending them at all (they're ridiculous) but another way to look at it: As one example, the CEO of Kaiser was the highest paid nonprofit CEO at ~$18m[0] in 2021. That seems egregious until you realize Kaiser had $93b in revenue in 2021[1]. As one example from healthcare, the CEO of Moderna was paid $18m in 2021[2]. Moderna reported $18b in revenue in 2021[3]. You see this over and over in discussions about nonprofits, charities, etc. In most cases the executive leadership team is running a huge organization - in the case of Kaiser nearly $100b in revenue and 300k employees. Competent leadership at that scale is expensive. In an ideal world this wouldn't be the case and individuals with these qualifications would be willing to take even more significant pay cuts for the "greater good" of whatever the mission of the nonprofit it. Per usual that's not the world we live in. Speaking personally, I'd give pause to working with, donating to, etc an organization doing $100b in revenue with an executive team making 1/20 (or whatever) they would make elsewhere. In some limited cases for those who have "made their money" it would be a great thing. For anyone else I would assume they're either taking a HUGE pay cut for the cause (great thing, but unlikely) or completely incompetent, embezzling, etc. [0] - https://www.erieri.com/blog/post/top-10-highest-paid-ceos-at-nonprofits-2021 https://www.erieri.com/blog/post/top-10-highest-paid-ceos-at... [1] - https://about.kaiserpermanente.org/news/kaiser-foundation-health-plan-and-hospitals-report-2021-financia https://about.kaiserpermanente.org/news/kaiser-foundation-he... [2] - https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-lobbying/3489175-average-pay-for-big-company-ceos-hit-new-record-of-14-7-million-in-2021/ https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-lobbying/34... [3] - https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/Moderna-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Fiscal-Year-2021-Financial-Results-and-Provides-Business-Updates/default.aspx#:~:text=Revenue%3A%20Total%20revenue%20was%20%2418.5,the%20Company's%20COVID%2D19%20vaccine https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/Moder....
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bayindirh 4y ago
  Well, "they are doing something amazing, so ethics can be suspended for T amount time in the name of value" is equally egregious from my point of view.
gowld 4y ago
OpenAI is a nonprofit that ownes a for-profit. Same as Mozilla. OpenAI was never a charity. A privately owned for-profit company can do whatever it wants, good or evil. OpenAI is not publicly-owned. Did you donate money to OpenAI? A nonprofit is an organization that uses its income and profits for the organization's main goal that supports the mission. On the other hand, a charity is a type of nonprofit that engages in activities aimed at improving lives in the communities. NFL was a non-profit trade association until ignorant whiners made it bad PR and they changed it to shut up the whiners. Did https://openai.com/about https://openai.com/about
mb7733 4y ago
>Having said that, plenty of extremely profitable organizations masquerade (literally and figuratively) as non-profits. That's not a contradiction. A non-profit can be profitable. The profit just needs to be reinvested back into the mission of the organization.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Having said that, plenty of extremely profitable organizations masquerade (literally and figuratively) as non-profits. Non-profit doesn’t mean the organization isn’t supposed to have surplus revenue, it means it doesn’t exist to return profits (e.g., via a claim on the assets of the company) to stockholders or some other beneficiary with a claim on them.
RobotToaster 4y ago
>plenty of extremely profitable organizations masquerade (literally and figuratively) as non-profits. Isn't Ikea technically a non-profit? through some weird structuring?

zitterbewegung 4y ago

Sort of meta that Sam did something that Elon Musk would do…

leesec 4y ago

Capped profit*

nwoli 4y ago
Capped at 100x investment which would be the most profitable company in history lol

versteegen 4y ago

It's disruptive technology and an enormous amount of value is likely to be created. I would much rather the profits go to a nonprofit which can distribute them charitably rather than them giving them away freely to the megacorps which actually have the resources to run these massive models (edit^2: at scale). I do think the 100x cap on return on Microsoft's $1B investment was way too high (we don't know what the cap is on later investments but it's meant to be reducing over time). Edit: Plus it's still the case that OpenAI aren't putting profit above all else. E.g. they just released the ChatGPT API and it's 10x cheaper per token than GPT3! And their Charter does count for something, it's binding on them.

ketzo 4y ago
A nonprofit wouldn't have to distribute profits to charity. It just can't distribute profits to private or public shareholders (because it can't have them). A nonprofit is obligated to reinvest any earnings towards its mission. Not remotely an expert, this is just my basic understanding. "Nonprofit" is a pretty abused term.
- hotstickyballs 4y ago
  TIL Amazon was basically a non profit
  - O__________O 4y ago
    No, Amazon has shareholders, nonprofits do not.
    - isubkhankulov 4y ago
      The use of the word “basically” means that the previous commenter is saying that Amazon operated like a non-profit because it re-invested the vast majority of its profits.
      - O__________O 4y ago
        Understand and disagree, since there’s a fundamental difference between Amazon and a nonprofit — both in their intended missions and the literal outcomes.
- rvnx 4y ago
  Not-profit just means it doesn't have shareholders in a traditional sense. But it can have real-estate, it can pay very high salaries, travel, distribute significant bonuses, buy expensive hardware, etc.
photochemsyn 4y ago
I just looked up the the top CEO salaries of non-profit organizations in the USA - as of 2020, they ranged from about $16 million to $8 million. A non-profit appears to simply be a 'non-stock corporation' and can have the same ridiculouly pyramidal compensation structures that shareholder corporations do. Overhauling the legal definition of non-profit to require the highest-paid employees to make no more than ~10X as much as the lowest-paid employees would make a lot of sense.
- nl 4y ago
  A non-profit just means excess earnings are reinvested back into the organization instead of having the option of giving them to shareholders. I think you are confusing non-profit with charity perhaps?
- kkielhofner 4y ago
  CEO salaries alone are the wrong metric. Not that I'm defending them at all (they're ridiculous) but another way to look at it: As one example, the CEO of Kaiser was the highest paid nonprofit CEO at ~$18m[0] in 2021. That seems egregious until you realize Kaiser had $93b in revenue in 2021[1]. As one example from healthcare, the CEO of Moderna was paid $18m in 2021[2]. Moderna reported $18b in revenue in 2021[3]. You see this over and over in discussions about nonprofits, charities, etc. In most cases the executive leadership team is running a huge organization - in the case of Kaiser nearly $100b in revenue and 300k employees. Competent leadership at that scale is expensive. In an ideal world this wouldn't be the case and individuals with these qualifications would be willing to take even more significant pay cuts for the "greater good" of whatever the mission of the nonprofit it. Per usual that's not the world we live in. Speaking personally, I'd give pause to working with, donating to, etc an organization doing $100b in revenue with an executive team making 1/20 (or whatever) they would make elsewhere. In some limited cases for those who have "made their money" it would be a great thing. For anyone else I would assume they're either taking a HUGE pay cut for the cause (great thing, but unlikely) or completely incompetent, embezzling, etc. [0] - https://www.erieri.com/blog/post/top-10-highest-paid-ceos-at-nonprofits-2021 https://www.erieri.com/blog/post/top-10-highest-paid-ceos-at... [1] - https://about.kaiserpermanente.org/news/kaiser-foundation-health-plan-and-hospitals-report-2021-financia https://about.kaiserpermanente.org/news/kaiser-foundation-he... [2] - https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-lobbying/3489175-average-pay-for-big-company-ceos-hit-new-record-of-14-7-million-in-2021/ https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-lobbying/34... [3] - https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/Moderna-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Fiscal-Year-2021-Financial-Results-and-Provides-Business-Updates/default.aspx#:~:text=Revenue%3A%20Total%20revenue%20was%20%2418.5,the%20Company's%20COVID%2D19%20vaccine https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/Moder....
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bayindirh 4y ago
Well, "they are doing something amazing, so ethics can be suspended for T amount time in the name of value" is equally egregious from my point of view.

gowld 4y ago

OpenAI is a nonprofit that ownes a for-profit. Same as Mozilla. OpenAI was never a charity. A privately owned for-profit company can do whatever it wants, good or evil. OpenAI is not publicly-owned. Did you donate money to OpenAI? A nonprofit is an organization that uses its income and profits for the organization's main goal that supports the mission. On the other hand, a charity is a type of nonprofit that engages in activities aimed at improving lives in the communities. NFL was a non-profit trade association until ignorant whiners made it bad PR and they changed it to shut up the whiners. Did https://openai.com/about https://openai.com/about

mb7733 4y ago

>Having said that, plenty of extremely profitable organizations masquerade (literally and figuratively) as non-profits. That's not a contradiction. A non-profit can be profitable. The profit just needs to be reinvested back into the mission of the organization.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> Having said that, plenty of extremely profitable organizations masquerade (literally and figuratively) as non-profits. Non-profit doesn’t mean the organization isn’t supposed to have surplus revenue, it means it doesn’t exist to return profits (e.g., via a claim on the assets of the company) to stockholders or some other beneficiary with a claim on them.

RobotToaster 4y ago

>plenty of extremely profitable organizations masquerade (literally and figuratively) as non-profits. Isn't Ikea technically a non-profit? through some weird structuring?