OpenAI is reportedly working on a plan to restructure its core business into a for-profit benefit corporation that will no longer be controlled by its non-profit board. The news comes after longtime chief technology officer Mira Murati announced she was departing the company.
Sarah Kreps, John L. Wetherill Professor in the Department of Government in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Brooks School and director of Cornell’s Tech Policy Institute, says the latest changes at OpenAI mark a potential departure from the company's founding.
Kreps says: “Restructuring around a core for-profit entity formalizes what outsiders have known for some time: that OpenAI is seeking to profit in an industry that has received an enormous influx of investment in the last few years. As part of the restructuring, Sam Altman would receive equity, which also formalizes changes in personnel at the top in the last year. Of the individuals who were leading the organization a year ago, only one, Altman, remains.
“At least circumstantially, these changes – the shifting emphasis to for-profit, turnover at the top, as well as the dissolution of OpenAI's super alignment team that focused on AI risk – points to an accelerated move into the boundary-pushing directions of AI research. It's a natural consequence of an AI arms race with high financial stakes. However, the moves collectively mark a potential departure from the company's founding emphasis on safety, transparency and an aim of not concentrating power in the development of artificial general intelligence.”
For interviews contact Becka Bowyer,cell (607) 220-4185, rpb224@cornell.edu.
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