Did you know that last year Alphabet had a shareholder vote on transitioning to a public benefit corporation? Only ~1% of shares voted in favor of it.
Jan Leike on X: "Did you know that last year Alphabet had a shareholder vote on transitioning to a public benefit corporation? Only ~1% of shares voted in favor of it."
Proposal: user benefits before shareholder profits Shareholders: nah 4,000,000,000 users: ...? Shareholders: oh you don't get to vote
In alignment terms: Alphabet's reward function (profits) in misaligned with their users' interests. Usually, but not always, it's a decent proxy because happy users lead to profits. However, changing this reward function would be worse according to the current reward function.
To be fair, I'm an Alphabet shareholder too and I don't even know how I voted. Or how to vote. Or even that this vote was happening. If you own any index funds, you're probably a shareholder as well. I presume index funds just automatically vote for whatever is best for profits?