← Back to context

Comment by Turskarama

2 hours ago

If it's a publicly traded company then literally yes, public companies are mandated to make as much money for their investors as possible. It's a very stupid law but there it is.

Where is this law? Public companies (or rather their management) have fiduciary duties to shareholders. And it is usually safe for management to mostly assume that means making money.

But eg no one has sued Google management for giving company resources to charity. And in general, companies can have all kinds of goals, as long as shareholders are ok with them.

Going on a tangent: it's usually safe to assume that investors want money, because you can further most goals you care about with money. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence for an AI flavoured take on the same topic.