Even as Sam Altman-led OpenAI transitions from its earlier non-profit status to becoming for-profit, the consensus among rivals, some ex-founders, ex-employees, and other AI experts has been the same - halt the OpenAI express. Earlier in 2019, OpenAI announced its “capped profit” structure, three years after the founding of the OpenAI nonprofit, to power its arm for the development of AGI (artificial general intelligence), which would outperform humanity on several fronts, notwithstanding the risk that ships with it. In its portal, the AI company argues as follows why the nonprofit model wouldnt sustain its R&D of an AGI.
We initially believed a 501(c)(3) would be the most effective vehicle to direct the development of safe and broadly beneficial AGI while remaining unencumbered by profit incentives. We committed to publishing our research and data in cases where we felt it was safe to do so and would benefit the public.
We always suspected that our project would be capital intensive, which is why we launched with the goal of $1 billion in donation commitments. Yet over the years, OpenAI’s Nonprofit received approximately $130.5 million in total donations, which funded the Nonprofit’s operations and its initial exploratory work in deep learning, safety, and alignment.
It became increasingly clear that donations alone would not scale with the cost of computational power and talent required to push core research forward, jeopardizing our mission.
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With its pivot to for-profit since December 2024, the company is facing more heat than ever, with Musk being the rallying voice against OpenAI. Even as OpenAI seeks to restructure, seeking $40 billion, over 30 domain experts, which includes nine ex-OpenAI staff, Nobel Laureate and Godfather of AI Geoffrey Hinton, Hugging Face researcher and chief ethics scientist Margaret Mitchell, and others, have written an open letter warning against the company’s mission that would derail its original endeavor of AI’s “benefits for all humanity.” OpenAI needs approval from California Attorney General Rob Bonta for restructuring.
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In his scathing tweets, Geoffrey Hinton remarked
AGI is the most important and potentially dangerous technology of our time. OpenAI was right that this technology merits strong structures and incentives to ensure it is developed safely and is wrong now in attempting to change these structures and incentives. We're urging the AGs to protect the public and stop this.
The former Google scientist also wrote
I like OpenAI’s mission of "ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity”, and I’d like to stop them from completely gutting it. I’ve signed on to a new letter to @AGRobBonta & @DE_DOJ asking them to halt the restructuring.
Elon Musk shared the aforementioned tweet with a screenshot of Geoffrey’s impressive credentials, which also shows a snapshot of his views on how AGIs will spell doom for humanity.
I like OpenAI’s mission of 'ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity”, and I’d like to stop them from completely gutting it.
I’ve signed on to a new letter to @AGRobBonta & @DE_DOJ asking them to halt the restructuring. (1/2)— Geoffrey Hinton (@geoffreyhinton) April 28, 2025
AGI is the most important and potentially dangerous technology of our time. OpenAI was right that this technology merits strong structures and incentives to ensure it is developed safely, and is wrong now in attempting to change these structures and incentives.
We're urging the…
— Geoffrey Hinton (@geoffreyhinton) April 28, 2025
https://t.co/DdmpUG8gMZ pic.twitter.com/LUBh6s39eU— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2025
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