Comment by perlgeek
2 days ago
> OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity. We will attempt to directly build safe and beneficial AGI, but will also consider our mission fulfilled if our work aids others to achieve this outcome.
Note that it doesn't say: "Our mission is to maximize shareholder value, and we develop AI systems to do that".
In fairness, no company’s mission statement says “maximize shareholder value” because it doesn’t need to be said - it’s implicit. But I agree that AGI is at the forefront of OpenAI’s mission in a way it isn’t for Google - the nonprofit roots are not gone.
I’m not nitpicking as such, I’m just providing a counterexample because it is rather rare for a company to spell it out:
> In order to achieve our mission, we will conduct our business with the following Code of Ethics in mind:
> Obey the law.
> Take care of our members.
> Take care of our employees.
> Respect our suppliers.
> If we do these four things throughout our organization, then we will achieve our ultimate goal, which is to reward our shareholders.
https://customerservice.costco.com/app/answers/answer_view/a...
> just providing a counterexample because it is rather rare for a company to spell it out
To be fair, that's a mission statement paired with a succinct code of ethics.
If your mission is to build AGI, and building and deploying it will take many years, an appropriate strategy to accomplish that goal is to find other revenue streams that will make the long haul possible.