Bill Wildi

A new legal letter aimed at OpenAI lays out in stark terms the money and power grab OpenAI is trying to trick its board members into accepting — what one analyst calls "the theft of the millennium." The simple facts of the case are both devastating and darkly hilarious. I'll explain for your amusement. The letter 'Not For Private Gain' is written for the relevant Attorneys General and is signed by 3 Nobel Prize winners among dozens of top ML researchers, legal experts, economists, ex-OpenAI staff and civil society groups. (I'll link below.) It says that OpenAI's attempt to restructure as a for-profit is simply totally illegal, like you might naively expect. It then asks the Attorneys General (AGs) to take some extreme measures I've never seen discussed before. Here's how they build up to their radical demands. For 9 years OpenAI and its founders went on ad nauseam about how non-profit control was essential to: 1. Prevent a few people concentrating immense power 2. Ensure the benefits of artificial general intelligence (AGI) were shared with all humanity 3. Avoid the incentive to risk other people's lives to get even richer They told us these commitments were legally binding and inescapable. They weren't in it for the money or the power. We could trust them. "The goal isn't to build AGI, it's to make sure AGI benefits humanity" said OpenAI President Greg Brockman. And indeed, OpenAI’s charitable purpose, which its board is legally obligated to pursue, is to “ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity” rather than advancing “the private gain of any person.” 100s of top researchers chose to work for OpenAI at below-market salaries, in part motivated by this idealism. It was core to OpenAI's recruitment and PR strategy. Now along comes 2024. That idealism has paid off. OpenAI is one of the world's hottest companies. The money is rolling in. But now suddenly we're told the setup under which they became one of the fastest-growing startups in history, the setup that was supposedly totally essential and distinguished them from their rivals, and the protections that made it possible for us to trust them, ALL HAVE TO GO ASAP: 1. The non-profit's (and therefore humanity at large’s) right to super-profits, should they make tens of trillions? Gone. (Guess where that money will go now!) 2. The non-profit’s ownership of AGI, and ability to influence how it’s actually used once it’s built? Gone. 3. The non-profit's ability (and legal duty) to object if OpenAI is doing outrageous things that harm humanity? Gone. 4. A commitment to assist another AGI project if necessary to avoid a harmful arms race, or if joining forces would help the US beat China? Gone. 5. Majority board control by people who don't have a huge personal financial stake in OpenAI? Gone. 6. The ability of the courts or Attorneys General to object if they betray their stated charitable purpose of benefitting humanity? Gone, gone, gone! Screenshotting from the letter: (I'll do a new tweet after each image so they appear right.) 1/

Lasconi is representing USR, a relatively new party that is also anti-incumbent, but takes an anti-corruption pro-europe stance. She probably is the stronger candidate at this point to take on Georgescu in the second round at this point.

General perception in Romania is that PSD (one of the main parties in power since the end of communism) have been incompetent and corrupt. If the recount reverses the 2nd place result, it might actually end up helping Georgescu by increasing anti-incumbent sentiment.

The western reporting on Romania is consistently implying that the recount of the vote is because of concerns of Russian interfence and Georgescu's victory in the first r As far as I can tell, that isn't true. on.ft.com/4g7sWAE via @FT

I am currently in Romania, and there was a first round presidential election. The result is a massive shock bbc.co.uk/news/articles/… Călin Georgescu did not even register on opinion polls before. Could be a protest vote, but possibility of Russian interference can't be ignored.

Very happy about this new paper on LLM safety and opportunity to work with such a great group of researchers! We leverage a mechanistic analysis of LLM jailbreaks to design a robust and efficient training method, check it out:

4. I was also greedy, pre-debate, I had an excellent chance to exit my position. Obviously smart in retrospect, but ex ante, I ignored the fact the debate was an actual test of Biden unscripted, and there was no need to take that risk.

3. I was, as you are in these thing, unlucky. I did not need a good debate performance, a mediocre cogent performance would have likely sufficed. Ex ante, it still seems to me that the debate performance we got was more on the tail-end of terrible.

2. I almost completely ignored probabilities of a senile moment potentially causing Biden to be pressured to stand-down. I had priced in some risk in him dying or becoming very sick, but I had not considered the effect of a particular political moment.

My Biden bet on winning democrat nomination has not gone as expected: 1. Biden is probably has <50% chance of being dem nominee (betting market agrees) 2. Harris was underated after the debate, and I managed to get a 10-1 bet on her as a hedge. She is now arguably the favourite.

My bet is therefore reasonably safe, but I think I screwed this up, so a post-mortem is a good exercise: 1. I think I underestimated how much age-related deterioriation Biden was experiencing. This was probably confirmation bias.

But it doesn't have to be electorally rational. It's probably simpler - he's pressured into doing it by other people, knows he's almost certainly going to lose whenever it happens, and wants to just rip the bandaid off!

I was surprised Sunak called an election for July - I think it's really hard to justify that as an electorally rational decision. Tories are so behind in the polls that things pretty much cannot get worse.

Why is he priced differently? Because political markets are super dumb. I think a lot of people who bet on politics are conspiracy theorists. Evidence: the market is taking betting advice from Ted Cruz - the second favourite candidate is Michelle Obama at >10 percent

So I don't really see how you can get much lower than assuming Biden has a 90 percent chance of winning his primary. I'm not currently betting on the actual election result yet fwiw

Maybe a bunch of insiders could pressure him, democrats decide his age is too much of a liability, convince him to resign, and pick a new candidate at the convention. Possible, but you have to go back to 1968 for a comparable scenario, and it didn't work out for democrats then.

Biden standing down: I think this is more possible than I did two months ago, but rate it as 1-5 percent. Bidens intention to run is clear, he clearly believes he's the best bet to beat trump because he already has, and a lot of people agree with him.

I'm betting big on Biden to win the democratic nomination. He is currently priced at a 70 percent favourite, a great price for a >90 percent likely outcome. Three ways to lose: Biden loses his primary, he stands down voluntarily, or he gets too sick/dead to run.