The importance of artificial intelligence (AI) cannot be analyzed, or its abilities, risks or future achievements, without talking about money. Without keeping the companies and magnates that launch those products to force each other. There will be no benefits for humanity if there is no way to monetize them; There will always be dangers as long as it is not profitable to control them. Beyond the cliché of Follow the Money (Follow the money trail) popularized by Hollywood, we have the advantage that they are themselves Tecnoligarcas Those who insist on reminding us over and over again. Like Elon Musk, which tries to dynamit Sam Altman’s plans to become discreetly in the most powerful player in the AI mat.
On Monday at the last minute we knew that Musk has joined a group of investors to buy OpenAI for 97.4 billion dollars. We have already seen Musk sue this company after monopolizing worldwide attention, so it is difficult to know how much the infantile and spiteful character of Musk influences this movement (he has trolled him calling him directly “scammer” in his network X). But beyond the joke of fragile masculinity, with its Musk order it allows us to ask ourselves what Altman’s letters are in his hand. Because Openai leader, the firm that revolutionized the sector with Chatgpt, wants to shoot the value of the company. As?
After many rumors and Scops Journalistic, OpenAI confirmed that it aims to change its business structure in a blog post on December 27, 2024. Because OpenAi, when they launched it Altman, Musk and other investors in 2015, was constituted as a non -profit organization (Nonprofit). With the initial one billion they intended to set up a leading laboratory that developed true thinking machines before “the bad”, as Altman said. “Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity,” says the company’s website still today. Three years after constituting it, when the pasta began to appear, the dance began: Musk wanted to take control, but Altman took the cat to the water. A company with profit (Openai Global LLC) was created, controlled by the original, in order to receive more money from investors interested in shooting the development of the AI. Microsoft appeared on the scene and the business structure was complicated.
Ten years after Openai’s birth, humanity is not so important. Altman wants to turn the company into a technological giant that enters and generates a lot of money and the corset Nonprofit It is not allowed. Its plan is to compensate for the non -profit company in exchange for taking control of the company with profit. How much money is enough? In the last financing round, Openai was valued at more than 150,000 million. Bloomberg now places that assessment around 300,000 million dollars, how much did he think Buy it Altman, who would take 7% of the cake? That’s where Musk’s play enters with his 97,400 million. There is a very common expression in the psychology of decisions, popularized by the Nobel Prize in Economics Daniel Kahneman: the anchor effect. Inevitably, any figure that Altman puts on the mat will be compared to Musk’s. You can no longer do it for four bitches or may not, at least, do it discreetly.
Musk’s inconsistencies are innumerable. In 2018 he wanted to control OpenAi to be him who would pilot the success that was seen coming. In 2023, when Chatgpt captured the attention of the entire world, Musk publicly demanded a moratorium in the development of AI, while silently launched his own company, XAI. He wanted the Trump administration to flaund the investment in AI, and when its president launched a program (Stargate) by OpenAi, he wanted to dynamite him. But Altman’s dark points are also notable. That’s where Musk is right, regardless of his true motivations: in 2023 the Board decided to remove Altman because they did not trust him, because they did not believe he was able to build the AI for the benefit of humanity. All the pioneers of Openai, the best brains of the company, including the engineers who knew most about the dangers of their technology, have left him alone.
On Sunday, Altman published an article in which he recognized that the benefits of AI will not be magically distributed: “The history of technological progress suggests that most of the indicators that matter to us (health, economic prosperity, etc.) improve on average Already long term, but reducing inequality does not seem to be something that technology guarantees on its own. ” And he added: “In particular, the balance of power between capital and work could be easily altered, and this may need an early intervention.” Openai is Altman and Altman is OpenAi, but that has a price: for him and maybe for everyone.
