[dareobasanjo]

The idea that OpenAI people whose focus is building an AGI that can replace humans in every viable human activity will create a more ethical outcome than Microsoft whose focus is using AI to empower workers to do more sounds extremely unlikely.

People have gotten into their heads that researchers are good and corporations are bad in every case which is simply not true. OpenAI's mission is worse for humanity than Microsoft's.

[jampekka]

Corporations literally are maximizing profit. Researchers at least can have other motives.

If Microsoft came up with a way of making trillion dollars in profit by enslaving half the planet, it kinda has to do it.

[joenot443]

This is a pretty simplistic and uneducated view on how big companies actually function.

[jampekka]

Individual companies of course can and do do all kinds of things that may not be most profitable, but in the long run it's survival of the most profitable. Those get the most capital and thus have the most power of towards which goals resources are allocated.

Also companies, especially public companies, are typically mandated by law to prioritize profit.

[Eggpants]

There is no such law, ChatBLT told me so. But seriously, there isn’t because it so vague. Short term vs long term profits alone produces so much wiggle room alone that if such a law existed it would be meaningless.

[Eggpants]

There is no such law, ChatBLT told me so. But seriously, there isn’t because it so vague. Short term vs long term profits alone produces so much wiggle room that even if such a law existed it would be meaningless.

[wredue]

Dude no. Companies literally start wars and have us peasants murdered.

A journalist was car bombed in broad daylight.

If you push the wrong buttons of trillion dollar corporations, they just off you can continue with business as usual.

If Microsoft sees trillions of dollars in ending all of your work, they’ll take it in a heart beat.

[staunton]

What's the educated view?

[insanitybit]

No one I've ever had as an investor would be OK with me enslaving the planet for 1 Trillion dollars...

You're talking about investors and shareholders like they're just machines that only ever prioritize profit. That's just obviously not true.

[jampekka]

Have you heard of e.g. East India companies? Or United Fruit?

Most of stock is not owned by individual persons (not that there aren't individuals that don't give a shit about enslaving people), but other companies and institutions that by charter prioritize profit. E.g. Microsoft's institutional ownership is around 70%.

[insanitybit]

The presence of unethical people does not imply that all people are unethical, only that people are different. And that's my point. Reducing a company to "they will always maximize shareholder value" is incorrect - for many, many companies that is simply not true.

[FpUser]

>"Researchers at least can have other motives."

I know about a man who had turned country upside down while "having people's best interests" in mind.

[jampekka]

I know about many companies that have turned countries, and even continents, upside down while having shareholders' profit in mind.

[FpUser]

So either is fucked up. Why would we prefer one over the other? What's your point?

[jampekka]

Maybe having a dictator or profit motive running the show is not a binary choice?

[jprete]

I agree that OpenAI’s mission is probabky bad for humanity. But Microsoft is not a company that would hesitate at replacing a billion people permanently with AI.