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An increasingly diverse coalition is forming against OpenAI’s plan to transform itself into a completely for-profit company.
On Monday, Encode, a youth-led advocacy organization representing youth in dozens of countries, filed an amicus brief in support of Elon Musk’s ongoing lawsuit to halt the corporate metamorphosis of OpenAI. The paper came with the support of one of the biggest names in the field, Nobel and Turing prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, often called the godfather of artificial intelligence.
“OpenAI was founded as an explicitly security-focused non-profit organization and made various security-related promises in its charter,” Hinton said in a statement released by Encode along with a brief summary. “It received many tax and other benefits from its non-profit status. Letting them tear it all up when it’s inconvenient sends a very bad message to other actors in the ecosystem.”
Hinton He recently told the BBC he believes there is a “10 to 20 percent” chance that AI will make humans extinct within the next 30 years. Previously, Hinton was more modest, putting the odds at just 10 percent.
OpenAI is currently structured as a for-profit company governed by a non-profit board, which places some limitations on its mission and ability to raise money and compensate investors. Company officially announced The change has been expected for some time, however, and Musk, who co-founded OpenAI, announced last week that he would reposition himself as a more traditional for-profit corporation. appealed to federal court is seeking a preliminary injunction in November.
Encode claims that OpenAI’s planned transition from a nonprofit to a public benefit corporation in Delaware “would violate the nonprofit’s specific security-oriented obligations to the public.” Specifically, the brief asks whether a for-profit corporation could ever fulfill OpenAI’s promise to “stop competing and start helping” any worthwhile organization that seems close to creating artificial general intelligence.
“Today, a handful of companies are racing to develop and deploy transformative AI, internalizing the profits but externalizing the results for all of humanity,” said Sneha Revanur, president and founder of Encode. “Courts must intervene to ensure that AI development serves the public interest.”
OpenAI in turn appealed to the court He denied Musk’s claim, arguing that he had no standing and wanted to gain an unfair competitive advantage for his own AI startup, xAI. OpenAI also provides a stack of emails and other messages from Musk, including one that the company said showed Musk advocating for the organization to become a for-profit organization in 2017.
