OpenAi said on Monday that it was restructuring as a general interest company, so that the non -profit organization that checks OpenAI can retain its grip on the company.
The decision is a victory for the critics of OpenAi, including one of the founders, Elon Musk, who complained that the company was too focused on winning and had left his early plan to build artificial intelligence systems with safety safety.
The changes announced on Monday are in the last years of business drama for what many consider as the most influential AI company in the world. OpenAi's Chatgpt, released at the end of 2022, was a success of the night that the rest of the technical industry clambed. In just a few years, the largest companies of Tech have spent billions on their own AI projects, with hundreds of billions more planned for this decade.
Mr. Musk, who now runs his own AI company, has sued OpenAi for plans that it sets up to change his business structure of an unorthodox system that supervised a non-profit on a profitable company. But he was not the only critic of the planned changes from OpenAi. The lawyers -general in California, where OpenAi has its head office, and in Delaware, where it was created by law, said they kept an eye on the restructuring. The office of the attorney general of California, Rob Bonta, said in an explanation that it revised the new plan of OpenAi.
And in recent weeks, a number of academics from the legal community and experts such as Geoffrey Hinton, who won a Nobel prize for his groundbreaking AI research last year, also expressed their concern about the direction of OpenAi.
The argument about how OpenAI should be structured and what priorities are priorities should be tackled on a fundamental question about artificial intelligence: Should researchers hurry Headlong to develop new and more powerful AI systems? Or should the theoretical risk that AI present to humanity should inform everything that researchers create?
OpenAi was started in 2015 with that tension in mind.
Sam Altman, OpenAi Chief Executive, founded the artificial intelligence organization with various other figures of Silicon Valley as a non-profit at the end of 2015. In 2018, after Mr. Musk left in a power struggle, Mr Altman OpenAi confirmed to a profit motors that were needed to build ai-golars.
But the non -profit retained its grip in a structure that some saw as an Albatros for the growth of the company. Last year, Mr Altman and his company started working on a plan to move the control of the non -profit organization to the investors of OpenAi, so that it would be more attractive for them.
Shortly thereafter, Mr. Musk OpenAi, Mr Altman and another founder, Greg Brockman, continued at the Federal Court, claimed that they had the commercial interests of the company and AI for the public interest.
This year, Mr. Musk and a consortium of investors also offered to buy the assets of the non -profit organization that checks OpenAI for more than $ 97 billion. The Board of Directors of OpenAi rejected the bid.
Now the company has come back in particular from the plan to move the control of the non -profit. It is unclear whether the new structure, which means that the non -profit can be the largest shareholder in OpenAi, will influence Mr. Musk's lawsuit.
A public benefit company is often described as an organization that is designed to create public and socially good and enables outsiders to invest in almost the same way as they invest in other companies.
“I am very happy that we have made the decision for the non -profit to keep control,” said Mr. Altman during a press conference. He added that the new change “our intention to have a more understandable structure to do the things that a company like ours should do.”
OpenAI said it was still negotiating the importance of the non -profit organization in the new company and that the non -profit organization would choose the board members of the new entity.
“I am pleased that the board seems to have worked with supervisors and that the non -profit will keep control,” said Jill R. Horwitz, a professor of law at Northwestern University that specializes in non -profit organizations. “But we don't know what control means yet.”
The Japanese conglomerate Softbank recently led a $ 40 billion financing round in OpenAI that appreciates the company at $ 300 billion. If this shift is not completed by the end of the year, Softbank will have the option to reduce its total contribution to $ 20 billion, a person who is familiar with the last investment agreement said.
Mr Altman said he was convinced that the financing would not be reduced.
“We have made the decision for the non -profit to maintain control of OpenAi after hearing social leaders and entering into a constructive dialogue with the offices of the attorney of Delaware and the attorney general of California,” said OpenAi chairman Bret Taylor in a statement.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAi and his partner, Microsoft, and accuses them of infringing copyright with regard to news content with regard to AI systems. OpenAi and Microsoft have denied those claims.)
