Re:Sam Altman’s leap of faith
by evrydayhustling on Sunday May 19, 2019 @09:23AM
(#19953167)
The cap is one of the reasons this wager might actually be great marketing.
- General hubris (ambition?) weeds out skeptics (curmudgeons?) In the audience right away. Not the intended buyer!
- Every minute a potential investor spends contemplating the impact of a 100x return cap is a moment they are framing on that outcome.
- OpenAI already proved that they can advance the cutting edge on specific AI tasks. In that context, AGI is a good smokescreen (or the kind of North star that you navigate toward without reaching). It's attractive to idealistic investors and new hires, but also justifies pragmatic research.
I don't put weight on the AGI goal, but I fully believe that Sam can help find business models in the research projects that can be executed with a critical mass of talent and capital.
I wonder if that was poor wording from the reporter. They write “capped” but then describe a liquidation preference.
The article states that this is explicitly false. By design, OpenAI's investor returns are capped at 100x.
I find it odd that 3 other people have also replied to your comment and I'm the first one to mention that OpenAI has explicitly capped investor returns to prevent an explosion in inequality. I wonder how many people read the full article before commenting.