I was under the impression that in UK law at least, (and obviously not in this case) the trustees of a non-profit would be bound to work in the best interests of that non-profit. And so allowing an asset like this to somehow slip out of their control would be the sort of negligence that would land you in very hot water. I'd be interested to know how this isn't the case here.
I think it is the case here, and I hope Elon Musk persists in his lawsuits about this. As a large donor to the nonprofit in its early days he’s one of the people with the strongest standing to sue / strongest claim for damages.
Obviously Elon is mostly doing this suit as a way to benefit Grok AI but honestly I don’t mind that; competitors are supposed to keep each other in check, and this is a good and proper way for companies to provide checks & balances to each others’ power and it’s one reason why monopolies are bad is the absence of competitor-enforced accountability.
> somehow slip out of their control would be the sort of negligence that would land you in very hot water.
> how this isn't the case here.
Its not the case because they are doing the opposite of what you are suggesting. They are increasing the value of the asset that they own.
Sure, the asset itself is being diluted, but the individual parts that it owns are more valuable.
It is perfectly reasonable for a non profit to prefer to own 30% of a 100 billion dollar asset, lets say, compared to 100% of a 10 billion dollar asset.
Isn't the goal of a non-profit by its very definition... not profit?
The goal of the openAI non-profit is something something control the development of AI for the good of all humanity, then it seems that they explicitly shouldn't care about making $20 billion, and explicitly should care about maintaining control of openAI.
If you listen to their rhetoric, $20 billion is peanuts compared to the lightcone and the kardashev scale and whatever else.
> Isn't the goal of a non-profit by its very definition... not profit?
Yes, and if you have a bunch more money then you can do more non profit activities that help the world.
Getting as much money as possible, so that the money can be used for your great cause, is the best way to effectively run a non profit.
> then it seems that they explicitly shouldn't care about making $20 billion
Of course they should, because that 20 billion dollars can be used for its goal more effectively than having control over a lower value asset.
> compared to the lightcone and the kardashev scale and whatever else.
You are pre-supposing that openAI's model itself is some magic, infinitely valuable asset already.
Its not. If it were, then it would already be worth 10 trillion dollars. But its not worth that.
Therefore the money is worth more than the asset. There are lots of other AI groups around here. OpenAI is just one of them, and they are not infinitely valuable.
While I'm sure this argument makes sense in some utilitarian world-model or another, it is definitively _not_ one that has been accepted by the courts, largely because both federal and state governments have explicitly legislated against nonprofits doing "general moneymaking" as part of their mission. We already have legal vehicles for that, they're called for-profit companies, they pay tax, and donations to them are not tax deductible.
> Getting as much money as possible, so that the money can be used for your great cause, is the best way to effectively run a non profit.
In anywhere but Silicon Valley is a great way to violate Unrelated Business Income limits and get your charitable status revoked. It is not sufficient that a non-profits "goals" be charitable, their day-to-day activities must be as well, and it's not acceptable to put off those activities until some future date when you'll "make up" for all the regular for-profit work.
Good thing this wouldn't be that. Instead, it would be about promoting the cause.
And yes, non profits are allowed to own assets and maximize the value of those assets.
Of course their mission also matters and they should push towards that. But throwing away billions and billions of dollars for nothing isn't the way to do that.
> their day-to-day activities must be as well
Yes.... and they should also do that.
That has absolutely nothing to do with refusing to sabotage your non profit by throwing away a bunch of money for no reason though.
Of course the non profit should work towards their goal in their day to day activities.
> until some future date
Who said anything about waiting for a future date? Of course their current actions should push towards their goal.
That still has nothing to do with refusing to set money on fire for no reason though.
If anything, I think that the people who were attempting to set their valuable assets on fire and sabotage the non-profit are the ones who should be prosecuted by the legal system to the fullest extend legally allowed for going against the mission and intentionally engaging in charity fraud.
At one point, some of those board members said something about how that they were seriously considering shutting the whole thing down. I would absolutely consider that to be extremely illegal charity fraud, deserving of jail time if they did that.
