By Matt O’Brien, Associated Press technology writer
Former OpenAi employees ask the main agents of the California and Delaware law enforcement agents to prevent the company from changing the control of its artificial intelligence technology from a non -profit charity to a for -profit business.
They are concerned about what is happening if the Chatpt manufacturer achieves his ambition to build the AI that surpasses humans, but is no longer responsible for his public mission to protect this technology to cause serious damage.
“In the end, I am concerned about who has and controls this technology once it is created,” Page Hedley, former politics and ethical advisor in Openai, said in an interview with the Associated Press.
Supported by three winners of the Nobel Prize and other defenders and experts, Hedley and nine other former OpenAi workers sent a letter this week to the two state prosecutors.
The Coalition asks the Attorney General of California Rob Bonta and the Attorney General of Delaware, Kathy Jennings, the two Democrats, to use their authority to protect the charity of Openai and block its expected restructuring. Openai is incorporated into the Delaware and operates in San Francisco.
Openai said in response that “any modification of our existing structure would be at the service to guarantee that the wider public can benefit from AI”. He said that his for -profit company will be a public service company, similar to other AI laboratories such as the XAI of Anthropic and Tech Billionaire Elon Musk, except that Optai will always preserve a non -profit arm.
“This structure will continue to guarantee that, as the for -profit purpose succeeds and develops, the same goes for the non -profit organization, allowing us to reach the mission,” said the company in a press release.
The letter is the second petition of state representatives this month. The last one came from a group of labor leaders and non -profit organizations focused on the protection of billions of dollars of openai charities.
Jennings said last fall that it “examines such a transaction to ensure that public interests were adequately protected”. The Bonta office asked for more information from Openai at the end of last year, but said it could not comment, even to confirm or deny if it is investigating.
The co-founders of Openai, including the current CEO Sam Altman and Musk, initially launched it as a non-profit research laboratory on a mission to securely build what is known as the general artificial intelligence, or AG, for the benefit of humanity. Almost a decade later, Openai declared its market value at $ 300 billion and has 400 million weekly Chatgpt users, its flagship product.
Openai already has a for -profit subsidiary but faces a number of challenges in the conversion of its basic governance structure. One is a Musk trial, which accuses the company and Altman of betraying the founding principles which led the CEO of Tesla to invest in the charity.
While some of this week’s letter signatories support Musk’s trial, Hedley said that others were “naturally cynical” because Musk also manages his own rival IA business.
The signatories include two economists winner of the Nobel Prize, Oliver Hart and Joseph Stiglitz, as well as the Pioneers of the AI and the computer scientists Geoffrey Hinton, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics from last year, and Stuart Russell.
“I like OpenAi’s mission to” ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity “, and I would like them to execute this mission instead of enriching their investors,” said Hinton in a statement on Wednesday. “I am happy that there is an effort to hold Openai to his mission which does not imply Elon Musk.”
Conflicts on Openai’s objective has long simmered the San Francisco Institute, contributing to the Musk stop in 2018, to the short -term eviction of Altman in 2023 and to other high -level departures.
Hedley, a training lawyer, worked for Openai in 2017 and 2018, an era when the non -profit association was still sailing the best ways to manage the technology it wanted to build. Not later that in 2023, Altman said that Advanced IA was promising but also warned against extraordinary risks, drastic accidents with societal disturbances.
In recent years, however, Hedley has said that he was looking at OpenAi concern, supported by the success of Chatgpt, has increasingly reduced the corners of security tests and rushing on new products to get ahead of business competitors.
“The costs of these decisions will continue to increase as technology becomes more powerful,” he said. “I think that in the new structure that Optai wants, the incentives to rush to make these decisions will increase and there will be no one who can tell them not to tell them that it is not OK.”
Software engineer Anish Tondwalkar, a former member of the OpenAi technical team until last year, said that an important insurance in the non -profit charter of Openai is a “stop and assistance clause” which orders Openai to withdraw and help if another organization is approaching the realization of a better than that of the man.
“If Openai is authorized to become a lucrative goal, these guarantees and the duty of Openai towards the public can disappear overnight,” said Tondwalkar in a statement on Wednesday.
Another former worker who signed the letter puts him more frank.
“OpenAi can one day build a technology that could make us kill all,” said Nisan Stiennon, an IA engineer who worked in Openai from 2018 to 2020. “It is at the opening of Openai that it is controlled by a non -profit organization with an obligation towards humanity. This obligation prevents abandoning this control.”
The Associated Press and Openai have a license and technology agreement which allows OPENAI access to part of the AP text archives.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
