Meta is asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta to block OpenAI’s planned transition from a non-profit to for-profit entity.

In a letter sent to Bonta’s office this week, Meta says that OpenAI “should not be allowed to flout the law by taking and reappropriating assets it built as a charity and using them for potentially enormous private gains.”

The letter, which was first reported on by The Wall Street Journal and you can read in full below, goes so far as to say that Meta believes Elon Musk is “qualified and well positioned to represent the interests of Californians in this matter.” Meta supporting Musk’s fight against OpenAI is notable given that Musk and Mark Zuckerberg were talking about literally fighting in a cage match just last year.

  • Phoenixz
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    11 days ago

    Meta sucks, but here they are very right

    • Retrograde@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Meta sucks, but here they are very right hypocritical*

      Don’t worry fam I got you

      • Fuck Yankies@lemmy.ml
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        10 days ago

        Meta sucks, but here they are very right hypocritical immoral*

        Don’t worry fam I got you

    • masterofn001
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      10 days ago

      Ironic they are demanding government regulation / interdiction.

    • vga@sopuli.xyz
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      10 days ago

      Meta is just trying to protect their intellectual property, meaning everything anyone has created on any of their platforms.

      Yep, they own all of it, including every single comment anyone has written on Whatsapp.

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    don’t just block them. force all AI companies that use online content for research to move to a nonprofit and require them to provide their source code openly.

    tax payer dollars paid to create that content so that means that AI is tax payer bought.

    don’t like it? train your models on a closed network that’s behind a paywall.

    • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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      10 days ago

      Dont limit this to AI companies. All social media companies should be forced to become nonprofits and their code AGPL’d

        • nimble@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          10 days ago

          Being nonprofit also doesn’t prevent you from doing commercial activities.

          But i think the idea would be if they are forced to be nonprofit and their code open-sourced then there is now transparency in how their LLMs are trained and operate.

          But it’s a bit silly to try to make AI companies nonprofits to begin with since they could just go to another country with “better” laws if they are punished too heavily in one country.

        • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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          9 days ago

          People gotta eat. There’s nothing wrong with selling open source software

          The most important part is that the people and the government can see how the suggestion and feed algorithms are written, so they they can make them change them if they’re found to lead to increased harm, such as suicides.

    • john89
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      10 days ago

      That’s beyond stupid.

      If you don’t want bots scraping your content, then don’t put it up on the public internet.

      • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        I think you’re misunderstanding the origin of the Internet.

        I was there, I know what made the Internet amazing before it was sold out for corporate interests.

        It was inspired by another technology that was, in many ways, the Internet of the early 20th century. I’m referring to HAM radio.

        HAM radio is fun because of the strict regulations operators need to follow and the communities that are fostered in those regulations.

        the early Internet was not only built by those same people, but had fostered the same kind of spirit behind HAM. corporate interests broke the dam on a lack of regulation and have been flooding the web for decades since.

        if we want to return to any semblance of what the Internet supported at the turn of the century, we must increase regulations that prohibit the abuse and theft of online intellectual property.

        If a company can be considered a person, then I see no reason why each of my online contributions can’t be one as well. and as such no reason why each of those contributions can’t be afforded the same protections of personhood giants like UHC, Amazon, OpenAI can benefit from.

      • Sarah@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        9 days ago

        Do artists not deserve the right to decide who profits from their art, even if it’s posted to the internet? Would it be ethical for me to sell posters of artwork I did not create without the artists permission?

        • john89
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          9 days ago

          Do artists not deserve the right to decide who profits from their art, even if it’s posted to the internet?

          No, I don’t think they deserve that “right.”

          Would it be ethical for me to sell posters of artwork I did not create without the artists permission?

          Ethics vary from person to person and change with the times. I think it would be ethical because I do not support the ownership of ideas.

      • bamboo@lemm.ee
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        10 days ago

        This is one of the funnier things I see frequently on here. People both champion free and open source code and data that can be used for anything… until it is used for anything they even mildly dislike.

        • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          it’s disturbing how many people blindly agree with you.

          free and open does not mean open menu to make money from.

          I shared this comment on Lemmy with the full intention to allow the community to benefit from it, not for a company with an inflated valuation of $1.2B to steal, bottle, and sell to the world.

          • bamboo@lemm.ee
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            10 days ago

            Maybe that’s what you believe, but allowing commercial use has been a core tenant of free and open source software

            • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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              10 days ago

              no it hasn’t. the first instance of open source anything was a major manufacturer(Ford) strong arming the patent office into forcing a patent holder to give up the rights to his patent effectively making it worthless.

              only then to create a shell company (Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association) that would then hold the rights to the patent and share it with all motor vehicle manufacturers.

              it was all a grift to get the patent away from the original holder so that Ford would directly benefit from it because they didn’t have an engineering team capable enough to design an engine that didn’t infringe upon the original patent.

              because of this we have had zero to no true innovation on engine designs outside of a racetrack (which also directly benefits the manufacturer).

              so don’t go spouting that FOSS has always been about being an equalizing factor to intellectual property rights, because if anything it’s the exact opposite.

  • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    90% of Facebook content is AI generated content now. I cant even see what my friends are doing anymore. Makes me want to just delete it. But, I do occasionally see stuff from family and friends, which is the only reason I keep it. Some people I only stay in touch with through Facebook. But seriously, fuck that company.

    • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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      11 days ago

      Getting rid of Facebook was easily one of the best things I’ve done. The people that are important will find other ways to reach out.

    • iopq@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      I have only used groups to ask questions. Do people still do that, go browse the Facebook feed? I thought that’s a grandma thing

      • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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        11 days ago

        I got a Facebook again about 6 months ago so I could post our wedding photos for our friends. Before that I hadn’t had a Facebook in like 5 years.

    • 11111one11111@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Here’s a thought. Leave Facebook and spend more time with family and friends wether it be in person, on the phone or over text. You’ll feel better for doing it and your family will be happy to hear from you. Deleted mine close to 10 years ago and have never had a desire to go back.

    • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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      10 days ago

      I have yet to receive a single chat message that was AI generated. Being able to connect to old college buddies that I otherwise would loose contact with is literally the only use case for Facebook

        • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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          10 days ago

          Sure, but my point is that nobody posts anything on Facebook anymore. Its just bots and, well, maybe grandmas.

          Facebook today is essentially just an address book to check in on old friends when you’ve lost their contact info

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      I’ve remembered Babylon 5 season 4 today. Specifically the part where the “good” Vorlons and the “bad” Shadows started erasing the shit out of worlds inhabited by lesser races who made the wrong choice of having traces of the opposing side.

      Point being, you are being sarcastic about Republicans and rightfully so, but Clinton administration is the one that introduced mass surveillance in the USA, and now in Syria CNN praises HTS (Sunni jihadis) and Fox News highlight SDF (secular socialists). Though from what I’ve read, apparently they really honestly talk to each other, which is a surprising kind of coexistence, HTS leader’s words I took with scepticism, but SDF leaders too say they have no problem with HTS. HTS is a mix of ex-al-Qaeda and ex-ISIS, that’s how strange this is.

      OK, politics again.

      On the subject - I think turning a non-profit into for-profit while not letting go of datasets and such, legally allowed to be assembled in the context of it being non-profit, is kinda theft. So Facebook is right here. Circumstantially of course.

      • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Hadn’t considered the ethics of transferring data acquired as a non-profit. It’s an interesting moral question - although I doubt this is Meta’s motivation (which is simply to tamp down competition).

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Well, for me it’s the obvious first question. I guess I’m conditioned by, well, living in Russia, where something like this has led to the current regrettable situation.

          • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            Not sure which regrettable situation you’re talking about there, but as an outsider Russia’s current state seems like the product of a century of diverse developments.

            I think America’s current state is a combination of the public getting more stupid and the oligarchy taking advantage of it and encouraging it. I attribute the stupidity increase to entertainment addiction, starting small with radio and progressing through television and computers to the internet. Lots of people can’t even even take a shit now without their little plastic rectangle to stare at.

    • john89
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      10 days ago

      It’s a bit more complicated than that.

      I think there’s a for-profit part of the business and a non-profit part.

      • qaz@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        The non-profit part used to own the for profit with a majority stake afaik

  • Loduz_247@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    Why doesn’t Meta want Open AI to be a for-profit company?

    And are there any examples of a company that started as a non-profit becoming for-profit?

    • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
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      11 days ago

      for profit would imply they can grow even faster due to having funds to expand its service. You would be against it if you plan on having your own competing AI service(which meta clearly does)

      • just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 days ago

        Meta has also released many top tier model to the open source community. To say “meta only oppose openai cuz they wanna create a service of their own” is quite frankely uninformed.

        Meta is the reason so many researchers are able to work and make AI accessible to the everyday people. Without llama models, so much of research would not have been possible cuz openai never release their stuff under the guise of “safety”.

        Openai wants to monopolize and charge us whatever they want. And this going for-profit was part of their plan from the beginning. If only meta had not released their top tier models for absolutely free, openai would have had complete monopoly.

        Also saying for profit structure would allow them to have more fund is like saying having a gun will allow a robber to have more funds.

        The funds will come from consumers, for profit would mean they will have an easier time ripping off the people without too much scrutiny

        • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
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          11 days ago

          none of this doesn’t refute anything ive said. the whole point to prevent open ai from getting profit is to prevent it from getting big to the point that the rest are worthless. anyone who has a foot in AI would not want open ai to go for profit, as that on its own is a limiter to how fast it can grow. Strictly speaking, any non-profit organization has a significantly harder time to expand than ones that are for profit.

        • Loduz_247@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          But in that case sooner or later Roko’s basilisk will achieve its goal if you try to stop it, it will punish you in the process.

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      It seems like besides Linux itself, most successful open source projects go for profit. When users don’t like the changes, they fork and keep going.

      Like MySQL going for profit with a sell out to Oracle and MariaDB becoming the most popular fork of MySQL.

    • randoot@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      They’re all racing to build super intelligent AI. The first one to get there could essentially become God. So zelon and mark are desperately trying to buy time.