Question-13¶

Endless Greed (Mistake?)¶

There is always a chance of misinterpretation when data is not adequate or enough. This may cause mistakes and this is a good thing to learn on them and fix. Here is one example of it.

On getting the information that OpenAI's potential investors were not comfortable with the 100x cap on their potential returns, we could conclude they were greedy to a very high degree (see "Initial text" below).

However, investigation shows that removal of the cap wasn't necessarily because investors were "unsatisfied" with x100, but rather because of how risk, scale, and public markets work in the tech world. Most of the money coming into OpenAI now isn't from "rich guys" sitting on a beach; it’s from Institutional Investors (Pension funds, Saudi/UAE Sovereign Wealth Funds, University Endowments). These entities have a fiduciary duty (a legal requirement) to get the highest possible return for their clients (like teachers' pensions). This has an important consequence:

The "capital" that builds AI massive data centers and pays for thousands of H100 GPUs is, in a very real sense, the collective savings of the global workforce. You are effectively "sponsoring" the development of AI, and in return, these institutions are legally obligated to bring the profits from that development back to your account (retirement or other).

Before justifying removal of 100x as "not greed", however, we need to look at the initial idea of the cap. It was:

• Preventing "Infinite Greed" (wait a minute, again?): The founders feared that if AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) was actually achieved, it would generate more wealth than any company in history. They didn't want a small group of shareholders to own "all the money in the world.
• "The "Exit" Strategy for Humanity: The idea was that once investors made a massive—but finite—profit ($100 for every $1 put in), the company would effectively become a non-profit again. All subsequent billions or trillions would belong to the OpenAI Foundation to be used for the "benefit of humanity" (e.g., universal basic income or free AI for everyone).

Next nuance: while pension fund (main source of money, 98%) managers have a legal duty to their members, the private equity and venture capital firms (the Middleman, 2% of money, and operational decision making) have a different, much more aggressive set of intentions. The process looks like:

1. The Initial Capital

The "Initial Capital" for AI development is not created in a vacuum. As established, it is largely sponsored by workers' money via:

• Pension Funds: Deferred wages from teachers, nurses, and factory workers.
• Institutional Assets: Savings and insurance premiums managed by giant firms like BlackRock or Fidelity.

2. The Middleman’s Moral Choice

The "Middlemen" (Venture Capital and Private Equity firms) act as the bridge between this public capital and OpenAI. Their "real intentions" are driven by a specific moral framework:

• The Spreadsheet over the Citizen: By removing the return cap, the Middleman chooses "Unlimited Growth" over "Social Stability."
• The 20% Incentive: Because these firms take 20% of all profits, they are morally and financially incentivized to push for the most aggressive possible commercialization of AI, regardless of the social cost.

The Result: A "Double Risk" for the Public

The removal of the profit cap creates a paradox where the worker is forced into a "Double Risk" scenario:

Conclusion: The "Math" is a Moral Decision

The argument that "math" or "market reality" forced the removal of the profit cap is a shield for a specific moral outcome.

When a company removes a "Safety Valve for Humanity" (the $100x cap) to satisfy "Middlemen," they are making a definitive moral statement: The concentrated wealth of shareholders and fund managers is more important than the distributed stability of the global workforce.

In this system, AI is not a tool for human flourishing, but a mechanism for value extraction—taking the "sponsored" money of the working class and using it to build a machine that makes their labor unnecessary, while funneling the "uncapped" rewards to the top of the financial schema.

That pulls us back to the conclusion of the "initial text":

Endless greed. On such a background, it is unclear if we can have any serious conversation about UBI or UHI, or we should rather immediately switch our attention the scenario of total economics collapse caused not by "new technology", but by greed and stupidity.