A coalition of over 30 leading artificial intelligence researchers and ethicists has issued an urgent warning about OpenAI‘s proposed corporate restructuring, expressing grave concerns that the changes could undermine public oversight and the company’s original mission.
What Happened: The group published an open letter on the “Not For Private Gain” website urging California and Delaware Attorney Generals to intervene in OpenAI’s plan to buy itself out from under its nonprofit’s control.
The letter argues that this restructuring would eliminate crucial governance safeguards designed to prioritize public benefit over commercial interests.
“Removing nonprofit control over how AGI [Artificial general intelligence] is developed and governed would violate the special fiduciary duty owed to the nonprofit’s beneficiaries and pose a palpable and identifiable threat to OpenAI’s charitable purpose,” the signatories stated.
The expert coalition includes AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, notable former OpenAI researchers Steven Adler, Jacob Hilton, Daniel Kokotajlo, Gretchen Krueger, Girish Sastry, Scott Aaronson, Ryan Lowe, Nisan Stiennon, and Anish Tondwalkar. Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, UC Berkeley computer science professor Stuart Russell, and Hugging Face ethics scientist Margaret Mitchell also joined the effort.
"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 CNBC.
Why It Matters: This intervention comes at a critical juncture as OpenAI must complete its restructuring by year-end to secure the full $40 billion funding round led by SoftBank Group Corp.
The company plans to transform into a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation, allowing it to attract conventional equity investments while its nonprofit arm focuses on charitable initiatives.
The AI experts’ objections parallel ongoing litigation from OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, whose xAI Corp now competes with OpenAI after raising $6 billion in funding. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), which has invested nearly $14 billion in OpenAI, could also be significantly impacted by any regulatory action affecting the restructuring.
The dispute highlights growing tensions between OpenAI’s original mission to ensure artificial general intelligence “benefits all of humanity” and its commercial ambitions, raising fundamental questions about who should control and govern powerful AI technologies with potentially transformative global impacts.
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.