As OpenAI Goes For-Profit, ‘Conflicted and Compromised’ OpenAI Nonprofit Cannot Be Allowed to Absorb its Value
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a new letter, Public Citizen urged California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings to make clear to OpenAI that its transformation into a for-profit enterprise must involve payments to a new, independent charitable enterprise not affiliated with OpenAI.
The letter was prompted by reports indicating that OpenAI plans to direct payments from the for-profit — which are a legally mandated condition of the for-profit transition — back to the OpenAI nonprofit. In its letter, Public Citizen details the ways in which OpenAI has repeatedly failed in its mission as a nonprofit and its nonprofit board’s history of making decisions based on the for-profit’s interests, which should disqualify it from receiving those payments.
As Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, writes in the letter, “Everything about the last 12 months has shown that OpenAI Nonprofit is under the control of For-Profit OpenAI — and that OpenAI Nonprofit and its board have subordinated nonprofit mission to the interests of the for-profit. Now, in this time of transition, OpenAI Nonprofit’s history, culture and conflicts make it impossible to manage the transition to protect nonprofit interests.”
The letter notes the impossibility of OpenAI representing the interests of both the for-profit and the nonprofit in negotiations over launching an independent, for-profit OpenAI; the personal conflicting roles and obligations of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and perhaps others; and why it is untenable to imagine OpenAI Nonprofit behaving independently in the future.
The letter calls on the attorneys general and their offices to act quickly to make clear that For-Profit OpenAI’s payments — which Public Citizen argues should total at least at $30 billion, and possibly much more — must be directed to a reputable and independent non-profit entity designed to advance AI safety and access, not to the fatally flawed OpenAI Nonprofit.