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Elon Musk isn’t the only one fighting to keep OpenAI a nonprofit. More than 30 individuals, including Nobel laureates, former OpenAI employees, and law experts, today submitted a 25-page letter to the attorneys general of California and Delaware, asking them to block OpenAI’s proposed restructuring to a for-profit entity. While Musk’s argument revolves around a breach of contract claim, the central issue remains — that OpenAI abandoning its nonprofit structure violates its original charitable mission.
“OpenAI is trying to build AGI, but building AGI is not its mission,” the letter reads. Its purpose, as stated in official documentation, is “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,” and not for the “private gain of any person.”
It is legally complicated to change the mission of the company. “If there are inefficiencies, you can fix them,” said Page Hedley, a policy and ethics advisor for OpenAI from 2017 to 2018, who signed the letter. “But if the problem is [that] investors don’t like that the mission comes first, that’s too bad. That’s baked into who you are.”
As the focus for AI development in the US shifts from safety to speed, the pressure to scale is intensifying. OpenAI says it can maintain its mission to benefit humanity as a for-profit entity while its nonprofit arm will play a philanthropic role. “Our Board has been very clear: our nonprofit will be strengthened and any changes to our existing structure would be in service of ensuring the broader public can benefit from AI,” an OpenAI spokesperson told Semafor.
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While OpenAI is one of the leading model developers, that status has also hampered its ability to meet some market demands. A portion of the investment in its latest funding round, which valued the company at $300 billion, came with the caveat that it transition to a for-profit company by the end of the year.
OpenAI is the only major AI firm not playing for profits. Simultaneously, it is, in many ways, already functioning like a for-profit entity through its capped-profit segment and massive commercial partnerships. That makes the status change murky. “If someone’s behavior is inconsistent with the law, you don’t change the law to match their behavior,” Hedley told Semafor. “You change their behavior to match the law.”