Norway Should Buy OpenAI
As AI capabilities outpace institutional responses, the risk of concentrating power and wealth in a few private hands grows. The Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global, with over $2 trillion in assets, could acquire OpenAI—valued at around $800 billion—and manage it for the international community. This would reverse the enclosure of a commons built on public data and infrastructure, and align with Norway's cosmopolitan tradition of global stewardship.
This is a commons being enclosed.
- nater5000
This is a very "funny" post:
- OpenAI can easily not become anything of significance in the future, even if the OP's prediction of the future becomes reality. I'd argue that being bought by a government and controlled within the ethical confines of that government would be a great way for OpenAI to quickly fall behind its peers who aren't subject to such regulations (which is the entire point of this post in the first place).
- Norway may be a great country ran by a great government, but that doesn't mean they would be a great leader of some AI revolution. Not only is the bar for being a competent government not particularly high on the world scale, but the skills of a competent government don't necessarily translate to the skills of an AI revolution Sherpa. I don't see why the OP feels Norway wouldn't use an advanced AI to simply enrich itself while leaving other countries to fend for themselves. It's not like Norway's fund is designed to serve the rest of the world as it is, nor is it the case that Norwegians would allow their government to serve other countries at the cost of their own well being.
- Those at OpenAI would either (a) never entertain this offer or (b) would sell to Norway if this exact thesis wasn't true (i.e., they'd be happy to sell if they thought OpenAI was going to become worthless anyway). Using the logic that the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global can just buy OpenAI because it has more money than a given valuation for OpenAI is embarrassing. It […]
- recursivecaveat
Reminds me of that article about Nevada's pension fund manager, his job is just come into the office and not do anything stupid like dump half the fund on a single speculative investment. https://web.archive.org/web/20171202134916/https://www.wsj.c...
- stanfordkid
I would agree with this, except it sits on the thesis that one company really has that much of an impact. I don't think it actually does. AI is here and it will continue to progress. Norway controlling OpenAI is not going to change it's trajectory -- the cat is already out of the bag.
- Imnimo
Would Norway be prepared to commit to huge future capex spending? Like the pitch that OpenAI is going to achieve AGI seems to rely on vast investments in more compute over the coming years. If you just pay the $800B and then take your foot off the gas, do you still have a frontier lab or have you just paid a lot of money to remove a competitor from the market?
- paxys
OpenAI is worth $800B because that’s what the last funding round valued it at. It does not mean that >50% of existing shareholders will agree to sell for that amount. If a serious buyer does emerge they will likely hold out for 2x that, maybe more.
- vinni2
Why on earth would Norway do a charity to the world? The oil fund while it has some moral guidelines, profit making is still the primary goal. There is no guarantee OpenAI will be profitable ever.
- einarfd
As someone who is a citizen of Norway and does follow our local politics.
I can say with a high sense of certainty, that this is not going to happen.
There is no political appetite to do anything this radical, and anyone trying to get this done.
Would run into a problems with an electorate that would view this a playing games with its money, and a political establishment, that could easily be even more horrified over this idea.
- hashstring
I think Norway should not waste money on this.
I think OpenAI’s does not have ANY moat. They are currently a leader but lack the piles of cash required to stay a leader in the medium/long-term. (They can not in anyway compete with AWS/Alphabet on that front, and they know that too.)
Researchers and engineer will want big comp, as they can get it elsewhere, if you stop paying that, then you loose the knowledge necessary to stay a leader, even though it’s a losing race in the long-term anyway.
The company will become a growing pile of non-SOTA techniques and models + old hardware in no time.
Why waste that money…?