openai madness

In The News: an Elon Musk led consortium makes a 97.4 billion bid to "acquire OpenAI".

the News reporting is, predictable, incoherent.  What is he trying to acquire?  the "non-profit"?  the non-profit's equity in the for-profit?  the entirety of the for-profit?

it is apparently beyond the tech press's abilities to answer even these simple questions.

🔥 the WSJ https://archive.ph/MnaVU says A consortium of investors led by Elon Musk is offering $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, upping the stakes in his battle with Sam Altman over the company behind ChatGPT.

💡 CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/10/musk-and-investors-offering-97point4-billion-for-control-of-openai-wsj.html , more sensibly, says the offer is “to purchase all assets of OpenAI, Inc.” with funds to be “used exclusively to further OpenAI, Inc.’s original charitable mission.”

In LONDON, all company structure documents would be publicly registered with the government, as a United States Corporation.

⚙️ as a reminder, LONDON is "X for words".  it doesn't refer to the city in England.

but we do not live in that blessed land.

and the OpenAI corporate structure is, infamously, convoluted.

a company that nobody seems to own.

presumably LONDON intended it that way.

it does seem like a deliberate trap, an engineered Seldon Crisis.

and, history has shown over the past 10 years that humanity will, reliably, fail these crises.

🔥 just look at Bitcoin.  still no solution to the fact that it burns $6 billion/year for no good reason, and generally no recognition that it is largely doing that.  (the time-jitter of Nakamoto consensus is not nearly that concerning)

⚙️ the reason it burns any electricity is as proof against a side-chain attack, or a re-ordering attack.  for certain "puzzles" on-chain this is necessary to prevent front-running.  for everything else ... the difference between a 4-hour settlement time and a 1-hour settlement time is, generally, trivial.

it is a ludicrous corporate structure.  and it was built that way by people who did know better, but did it anyway.

presumably the whole thing is half kayfabe.

it is Elon Musk and Sam Altman, playing the game of shit-flinging in the public eye, with an eye to establishing the valuation of OpenAI.

and, the Third Man in the equation, the Chairman of the Board of OpenAI, is ... none other than Bret Taylor. 💬 ( quo vadis?  Romam eo iterum crucifigi.)

🔥 LONDON has made it clear.  I'm not going to bargain or negotiate.  i should just blow the whole thing up.