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492 points Lionga | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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Rebuff5007 ◴[] No.45673440[source]
From a quick online search:

- OpenAI's mission is to build safe AI, and ensure AI's benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible.

- Google's mission is to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

- Meta's mission is to build the future of human connection and the technology that makes it possible.

Lets just take these three companies, and their self-defined mission statements. I see what google and openai are after. Is there any case for anyone to make inside or outside Meta that AI is needed to build the future of human connection? What problem is Meta trying to solve with their billions of investment in "super" intelligence? I genuinely have no idea, and they probably don't either. Which is why they would be laying of 600 people a week after paying a billion dollars to some guy for working on the same stuff.

EDIT: everyone commenting that mission statements are PR fluff. Fine. What is a productive way they can use LLMs in any of their flagship products today?

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scrollop ◴[] No.45673603[source]
Why are you asking questions about their PR department coordinated "Company missions"?

Let me summarise their real missions:

1. Power and money

2. Power and money

3. Power and money

How does AI help them make money and gain more power?

I can give you a few ways...

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jonas21 ◴[] No.45674443[source]
Even if we assume you're correct and every company's true mission is to maximize power and money, the stated mission is still useful in helping us understand how they plan to do this.

The questions in the original comment were really about the "how", and are still worth considering.

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qsort ◴[] No.45674507[source]
Have you considered that people can just say things?
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1718627440 ◴[] No.45674587[source]
But we can still consider the consistency of their story, because they are telling that story to influence the perception of their actions.
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1. qsort ◴[] No.45674684[source]
The consistency of a mission statement? Are you guys for real?

To be clear: I'm not arguing that everyone at OpenAI or Meta is a bad person, I don't think that's true. Most of their employees are probably normal people. But seriously, you have to tell me what you guys are smoking if a mission statement causes you to update in any direction whatsoever. I can hardly think of anything more devoid of content.

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2. 1718627440 ◴[] No.45679561[source]
A lie still tells you what the liar things you should believe of him, in this case what the public is supposed to think of these layoffs.