The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Partner on Sora

buried the lede:

> As part of the agreement, Disney will make a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI, and receive warrants to purchase additional equity.

I say this with no snark or disdain: Sam has mastered the art of the flywheel.

Re licensed ai videos, if anyone wants to see the perspective the C-suites are being sold on, check out this episode of Belloni's The Town, in which they discuss the vision for AI + IP https://overcast.fm/+AA4DU9JreIE

>I say this with no snark or disdain: Sam has mastered the art of the flywheel.

It's been his entire career. Guy has made billions of dollars from talking.

Did we forget about Enron? Or are we deliberately retconning it? Many such cases.

Lmao your user name.

I like the phrase “vulture capital”

Disney said "Our IP is $1B for a 3yr license, or we sue"

Altman said "We can pay with equity, but let's frame it as an investment"

No cash exchanged

This is probably very similar to what happened!

Yeah, he’s a sociopath

Disney loves the idea of giving investors an angle to bet on AI

Disney is actually paying $1B so it makes no sense. OpenAI gets the IP plus $1B.

I'm actually curious, how do we know for a fact that this is the case?

He's taking from Disney and Microsoft though so I see no moral issues.

Could you elaborate?

Do you mean to say they’ll never take the payment?

Who does Disney and Microsoft get their money from?

Groups like this aren’t singular entities.

What are the terms? It is not at all clear from the announcement. "part of this three-year licensing agreement", it _could_ mean the license cost is $1 billion, which Disney in turn invests in OpenAI in return for equity, and they're calling it "investment" (that's what's hypothesized above, but I don't think we know). Disney surely gets something for the license other than the privilege of buying $1 billion in OpenAI stock at their most recent valuation price.

Yeah - they save face.

What if he’s wrong? He doesn’t care.

It could however, be pretty fucking shitty for the US/World economy.

He don’t care.

Americans mostly. Both abuse copyright law to profit off of works done by creators/inventors of the past. Neither contribute much to humanity these days.

What if who's wrong? Sam? If right means turning a profit, he's most certainly wrong. It would be a very stupid investment to give money to him but it turns out there no shortage of dumb money. Can't blame the guy for taking money people are literally throwing at him. If you know anything about the guy he has no interest in business or profit. He just wants to create AGI. Mostly out of curiosity it seems.

Kept failing upwards after Loopt.

Frustratingly impressive.

Never forget the double polo.

> I say this with no snark or disdain

Given the context, I think snark and disdain are called for.

Has he made billions? He's obviously done well but I'm not sure he has been able to capture any value from openai except for publicity, and what else does he have? A few $10m from loopt and ycombinator?

Disney gets to invest $1B pre-IPO, in what might become an even more valuable company (or crash and burn, we'll see).

Disney gets the opportunity to tell the board and investors that they are now partnered with a leading AI company. In effect, Disney is now an AI company as well. They haven't really done anything, but if anyone asks they can just say "of course we're at the forefront of the entertainment industry. We're already leveraging AI in our partnerships"

Isn't that the case for most ultra-rich CEOs? All of the CEOs of Microsoft apparently started off either building product or helping develop the business into something profitable. But at some point it doesn't really matter if you have the skills to be an individual contributor, a team leader, or even a vice president. The role of CEO mostly is to keep investors happy & secondarily to put the right people in the company together to make things happen.

I can't really see how Altman is a sociopath? I think his current vision greatly exceeds the technical capabilities that OpenAI can ever build. OpenAI seems to have produced some genuinely interesting products on the other hand. But they aren't profitable at present and I don't see it happening.

Altman talks to the talk of a CEO who is going to build a company that can change the world. It's what investors want to hear. He seems to make as many attempts as possible to actually execute on that. I think most of those plans are unlikely to be as successful as desired. But this isn't Theranos level fraud, where what they are trying to build is obviously impossible.