Right.
But it seems like everyone agreed that they'd need a lot of money to train an AGI.
Sure, maybe. (Personally I think that’s a mere conjecture, trying to throw more compute at the wall.) But obtaining that money by orienting their R&D towards a profit-driven business goes against the whole stated purpose of the enterprise. And that’s what’s being called out.
Well, I don't think it's a maybe. From the emails it seems clear that even Elon thought the project would flop without a ton of money.
It seems pretty clear that they felt they had to choose between chasing money and shutting down. I'm guessing you'd prefer they went with the latter, but I can entirely understand why they didn't.
I don’t really care what they do. But since they’re now chasing money, they should be honest about it and say they had to give up on the original aspirations and have now become a normal tech company without any noble goals of doing R&D for the most benefit of humanity unconstrained by financial obligations.
Today’s OpenAI is very much driven by considerations of financial returns, and the goal of “most likely to benefit humanity as a whole” and “positive human impact” doesn’t seem to be the driving principle anymore.
Their product and business strategy is now governed by financial objectives, and their research therefore not “free from financial obligations” and “unconstrained by a need to generate financial return” anymore.
They are thus severely compromising their alleged mission by what they claim is necessary for continuing it.