Lao Mein's Shortform

Lao Mein

This is a special post for quick takes by Lao Mein. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.

Sam Altman has made many enemies in his tenure at OpenAI. One of them is Elon Musk, who feels betrayed by OpenAI, and has filed failed lawsuits against the company. I previously wrote this off as Musk considering the org too "woke", but Altman's recent behavior has made me wonder if it was more of a personal betrayal. Altman has taken Musk's money, intended for an AI safety non-profit, and is currently converting it into enormous personal equity. All the while de-emphasizing AI safety research.

Musk now has the ear of the President-elect. Vice-President-elect JD Vance is also associated with Peter Thiel, whose ties with Musk go all the way back to PayPal. Has there been any analysis on the impact this may have on OpenAI's ongoing restructuring? What might happen if the DOJ turns hostile?

[Following was added after initial post]

I would add that convincing Musk to take action against Altman is the highest ROI thing I can think of in terms of decreasing AI extinction risk.

Internal Tech Emails on X: "Sam Altman emails Elon Musk May 25, 2015 https://t.co/L1F5bMkqkd" / X

maybe if xAI was in 1st place, Elon's positions would shift.

Update from the future: they did.

2Eli Tyre2y

Those people don't get substantial equity in most business in the world. They generally get paid a salary and benefits in exchange for their work, and that's about it.

2Ben Pace2y

I know little enough that I don't know whether this statement is true. I would've guessed that in most $10B companies anyone with a title like "CFO" and "CTO" and "COO" is paid primarily in equity, but perhaps this is mostly true of a few companies I've looked into more (like Amazon).

Lao Mein's Shortform

4

Lao Mein's Shortform

4