Will GenAI Survive Capitalism?

(draft) If not, will we?

Capitalism has a way of messing things up.

This week, OpenAI opted to become a for-profit company. It may not seem like a big thing, but it is.

Remember the weekend in November 2023 when OpenAI's board fired Sam Altman, then everyone resigned, then he was rehired and the board was fired? Weird, wasn't it? Oh, but before he was rehired, Microsoft hired him! The whole thing was a surreal, real-time soap opera, played out in the public sphere.

My interpretation of that weekend was that OpenAI was shaking off its higher purpose, and settling in to capitalism. Sort of like an insect or snake shedding the carapace or skin it had outgrown, except not that positive.

Earlier, many of the early OpenAI staffers who believed in the company's higher calling left, founding Anthropic, which still seems to hew to the open mission. In the face of the temptations we're describing, this deserves extra praise.

We've seen this show before.

Multiple Promising Technologies Were Warped by Capitalism

I fear the outcomes.

When too much money chases initially good ideas, bad things tend to happen.

The Commons loses. We lose.

Capitalism, at least in its current form, is insatiable. And greedy.

Whether we can fix Capitalism is a subject for future posts.

#OpenAI, #critiquesofcapitalism, #innovation,

— Jerry Michalski

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This article is cross-posted on Substack here, Medium here and LinkedIn here. It's also here in my Brain.

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