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When it was founded in 2014 it was criticized as yet another glass building in London (technically a floor in this case) in a very prestigious location. And ind

When it was founded in 2014 it was criticized as yet another glass building in London (technically a floor in this case) in a very prestigious location. And indeed as you could a lot of the funding went into the building, maintenance, events/catering and you could see random freeloaders loosely associated with the Institute using the space as a free coworking space. I think since the beginning, the PhD funding was great idea as you could do your research towards current issues, somewhat outside of the usual rusty academic echo chambers. But the fact that you were supposed to commute to the central London location, a lot of the grant went on train tickets or accommodation. As an early LLM adopter / practitioner, I went there for some sessions on AI Ethics and such and did not see that it was worth the millions pumped into the institution as we saw that whatever Captain Obvious insights (guardrails, data protection etc) came out of the Institute were completely ignored by the US giants. The current political twist toward practical applications in defence might actually be good for the institute as they will actually be able to practice some applied science but frankly I don't have much hope that my tax payer money is being put to good use here - it's always been a desperate scream for relevance and there's more and more of this action free nonsense coming from the government, like the recent OpenAI memorandum https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/memorandum-of-understanding-between-the-uk-and-openai-on-ai-opportunities https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/memorandum-of-und...

homefree 1y ago
This is sort of the problem with nonprofits and NGOs generally - they have bad incentives, are easily corrupted, and attract people that don't create any value. It's the communist form of a company and shares similar failures. IMO we're better off just not having them for the most part.
- troad 1y ago
  The purpose of most non-profits would not make any sense as a company, and is not easily amenable to being measured in terms of 'value'. What value is feeding poor people? Technically negative, as that food could have been sold for a profit. But that is of course not a useful metric here. I agree that it is difficult to align incentives for non-profits, but turning them into companies would simply add a profit motive and an obligation to shareholders on top of those difficult-to-align incentives. The people that non-profits are accountable to (the poor, minorities, etc) are generally powerless vis-à-vis those non-profits, and there is a perpetual risk of corruption arising from that effective lack of accountability. The paying customers of a business are relatively much more powerful vis-à-vis that business. If Gmail upsets you, you switch to Fastmail; if your soup kitchen upsets you, you... what? Don't eat? This stuff is very, very hard, and something I'm sceptical will ever be solved, least of all here on HN.
  - philipallstar 1y ago
    > What value is feeding poor people? Technically negative, as that food could have been sold for a profit. But that is of course not a useful metric here. In the UK, poor people can afford food that's sold at a profit. They're given free money.
  - homefree 1y ago
    In SF non profits actively make the problems they’re attempting (in theory) to solve worse, while enriching themselves at (often gratuitous) cost to the tax payer. I understand your argument, but in practice SF would benefit from these shutting down. At a minimum they shouldn’t be tax payer funded. Even philanthropic non-profits are often funded by children (or spouses) via inherited wealth from the people that actually built things. This then funds actively harmful policy and orgs because the people throwing money around have no idea how to achieve what they want and there is a class of specialized NGO vultures that go after the money while accomplishing nothing. This is anecdotal, but what I’ve seen of friends that work at these places is wild. People stealing money, extreme entitlement, stupid policy, enormous waste, no accountability. It’s bad.
    - troad 1y ago
      > In SF non profits actively make the problems they’re attempting (in theory) to solve worse, while enriching themselves at (often gratuitous) cost to the tax payer. Yes, that's why FAANG keeps losing employees to soup kitchens. The fabulous pay. > This is anecdotal, but what I’ve seen of friends that work at these places is wild. People stealing money, extreme entitlement, stupid policy, enormous waste, no accountability. It’s bad. Real issues. I don't think I ever said that non-profits work well; they don't. My problem is with the idea that there's some simple alternative that we could whip up in VS Code, some clever business structure that somehow makes the organisation immune from basic incentives. Non-profits become bloated and ineffective in exactly the same way as monopolies, and for exactly the same reason - their 'customers' are powerless against them. This is a fundamental issue of power relations, not something someone designed to work this way because they thought starting a soup kitchen is a great get-rich-quick scheme (in the Bay Area, no less. No other way to get rich quick there!). There's an incredible amount of naïveté in tech criticism of non-profits, and people who end up hurt by that are people in need.

homefree 1y ago

This is sort of the problem with nonprofits and NGOs generally - they have bad incentives, are easily corrupted, and attract people that don't create any value. It's the communist form of a company and shares similar failures. IMO we're better off just not having them for the most part.

troad 1y ago
The purpose of most non-profits would not make any sense as a company, and is not easily amenable to being measured in terms of 'value'. What value is feeding poor people? Technically negative, as that food could have been sold for a profit. But that is of course not a useful metric here. I agree that it is difficult to align incentives for non-profits, but turning them into companies would simply add a profit motive and an obligation to shareholders on top of those difficult-to-align incentives. The people that non-profits are accountable to (the poor, minorities, etc) are generally powerless vis-à-vis those non-profits, and there is a perpetual risk of corruption arising from that effective lack of accountability. The paying customers of a business are relatively much more powerful vis-à-vis that business. If Gmail upsets you, you switch to Fastmail; if your soup kitchen upsets you, you... what? Don't eat? This stuff is very, very hard, and something I'm sceptical will ever be solved, least of all here on HN.
- philipallstar 1y ago
  > What value is feeding poor people? Technically negative, as that food could have been sold for a profit. But that is of course not a useful metric here. In the UK, poor people can afford food that's sold at a profit. They're given free money.
- homefree 1y ago
  In SF non profits actively make the problems they’re attempting (in theory) to solve worse, while enriching themselves at (often gratuitous) cost to the tax payer. I understand your argument, but in practice SF would benefit from these shutting down. At a minimum they shouldn’t be tax payer funded. Even philanthropic non-profits are often funded by children (or spouses) via inherited wealth from the people that actually built things. This then funds actively harmful policy and orgs because the people throwing money around have no idea how to achieve what they want and there is a class of specialized NGO vultures that go after the money while accomplishing nothing. This is anecdotal, but what I’ve seen of friends that work at these places is wild. People stealing money, extreme entitlement, stupid policy, enormous waste, no accountability. It’s bad.
  - troad 1y ago
    > In SF non profits actively make the problems they’re attempting (in theory) to solve worse, while enriching themselves at (often gratuitous) cost to the tax payer. Yes, that's why FAANG keeps losing employees to soup kitchens. The fabulous pay. > This is anecdotal, but what I’ve seen of friends that work at these places is wild. People stealing money, extreme entitlement, stupid policy, enormous waste, no accountability. It’s bad. Real issues. I don't think I ever said that non-profits work well; they don't. My problem is with the idea that there's some simple alternative that we could whip up in VS Code, some clever business structure that somehow makes the organisation immune from basic incentives. Non-profits become bloated and ineffective in exactly the same way as monopolies, and for exactly the same reason - their 'customers' are powerless against them. This is a fundamental issue of power relations, not something someone designed to work this way because they thought starting a soup kitchen is a great get-rich-quick scheme (in the Bay Area, no less. No other way to get rich quick there!). There's an incredible amount of naïveté in tech criticism of non-profits, and people who end up hurt by that are people in need.