Former employees of OpenAI are asking the top law enforcement officers in California and Delaware to stop the company from shifting control of its artificial intelligence technology from a nonprofit charity to a for-profit business.
They’re concerned about what happens if the ChatGPT maker fulfils its ambition to build AI that outperforms humans, but is no longer accountable to its public mission to safeguard that technology from causing grievous harms.
“Ultimately, I’m worried about who owns and controls this technology once it’s created,” said Page Hedley, a former policy and ethics adviser at OpenAI, in an interview with The Associated Press.
Backed by three Nobel Prize winners and other advocates and experts, Hedley and nine other ex-OpenAI workers sent a letter this week to the two state attorneys general.
The coalition is asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, both Democrats, to use their authority to protect OpenAI’s charitable purpose and block its planned restructuring. OpenAI is incorporated in Delaware and operates out of San Francisco.
OpenAI said in response that “any changes to our existing structure would be in service of ensuring the broader public can benefit from AI.” It said its for-profit will be a public benefit corporation, similar to other AI labs like Anthropic and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s xAI, except that OpenAI will still preserve a nonprofit arm.
