The question of Openai, its business and intentions for AI’s future can finally be resolved. In an open letter, Openai CEO and co-founder Sam Altman outlined to keep Openai going under the supervision of a non-profit. In addition, the company’s profits are transferred side of the company to a public benefit corporation (PBC).
A PCB is remarkable because it means that while that part of Openai will still be interested in making money, it will have a larger purpose, one that is intended to serve the good of society.
In more practical terms, Altman wrote, “We will put incredible tools in the hands of everyone …. We will open very skilled models. We will give our users a great freedom of how we let them use our tools within broad boundaries, even if we do not always share the same moral framework and to let our users make decisions about chatgpt.”
In recent years, former partner and Openai co-founder Elon Musk has sued Openai for leaving his non-profit roots behind them, and others have expressed concern about Openai, who is not open-sourcing key models. Altman previously admitted that he was on the wrong side of this argument, and Musk eventually lost his case.
But now Openai and Altman appear to be moving towards musk and the open source critics want.
AI for the good
The change of the heart comes, as Altman admits that in the early days we did not have a detailed sense of how to perform our mission “and also admitted that some at Openai thought that AI” should only be in the hands of a few trusted people who could ‘handle it’. “
The perspective now, especially as artificial general intelligence (AGI) is on the horizon, is “We want to build a brain for the world and make it super easy for people to use for whatever they want,” altman wrote.
The forward plan is that Openai’s non-profit is “the largest and most effective nonprofit in history, which will be focused on using AI to enable the highest gear results for humans.”
There are still questions
Altman also wants to develop “beneficial agi” and notes the importance of security and adaptation. “As AI accelerates, our commitment to security becomes stronger. We want to ensure that the democratic AI wins over authoritarian AI.”
Altman has come a long way since he was suddenly removed by the end of 2023 by Ilya Sutskever, former Openai’s Chief Scientist and co -founder. He returned a few days later. There is a feeling in the new letter that AI and the upcoming AGI are bigger than a person, a company and an AI as chatgpt.
What it will mean for the future of Openai, Chatgpt and Agi, it is unclear. PCB may be focused on the public good, but it will still be interested in making money. How the non-profit supervisors affect that are unclear.
Openai says it will talk to lawyers generals in California and Delaware, which helped it come to this decision with its largest commercial partner, Microsoft (Copilot’s Basic Models are GPT-based) about the implementation of its new plan.
“We think this sets us up to continue to make quick, secure progress and to put great AI in the hands of everyone,” Altman wrote.
We’ll see.
