Openai is not an ordinary company. Founded as a non -profit organism in 2015, its founding announcement predicted that AI could “achieve human performance on almost all intellectual tasks”, creating the need for an organization that “would make the value for everyone rather than for shareholders”.
In the following years, the development of AI has become more and more expensive and, therefore, in 2019, Openai created a commercial subsidiary which could increase investment capital while remaining linked to the charity of the non -profit organization.
It was at the time of this transition that I joined the company as a junior researcher. My Openai team focused on learning strengthening: a process in which an AI system interacts with a simulated environment and learns to improve by tests and errors. We first applied this method to video games, then on major language models, shaping them using human feedback in the first versions of Chatgpt. The same techniques are used today to train systems which benefit from hundreds of millions of users.
The work of me and my team was based on the key commitment made by OpenAi in its 2019 transition: a legally binding duty to put the interests of the public before those of investors. But this commitment is currently threatened, because Openai pursues a restructuring which would remove the ceilings on the profits of investors and reduces its obligations to its charitable mission.
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It is tempting to respond to this cynically, by raising his shoulders: once enough money has been at stake, the transformation of the organization of a non -profit organization of the mission into large business has been inevitable. But such a story allows the company to get rid of its promises to the public. In addition, Openai’s restructuring plans are still under surveillance of elected officials, so the public has a reason and a right to defend their interests.
I still have equity in OpenAI, but despite this interest acquired for the financial success of the organization, I think that public interests must be protected. Before leaving the company in 2023, the products were already published on a tight schedule, but that only seems to have intensified, insofar as the employees warned of security tests. This hasty approach now leads to versions during declines to “feed anger, urge impulsive actions or strengthen negative emotions”. Meanwhile, decision -makers have incentives that do not fully take into account these drawbacks.
The responsibility of holding OPENAI to its charitable mission is the responsibility of its non -profit board of directors. Unfortunately, many have raised fears that the current non -profit board of directors does not have independence and the resources necessary to effectively play this role. Since 2019, OPENAI’s commercial operations have increased from the absence of annual income non-deaths. On the other hand, the non -profit organization still has no independent staff, and its members of the board of directors are too busy directing their own companies or their university laboratories to provide significant monitoring. To add to this, the proposed restructuring of Openai now threatens to weaken the authority of the Council when it should rather be strengthened.
But there is another path to follow. Before carrying out a restructuring, the immediate priority of the Council should be to hire a non -profit CEO to constitute an independent team, free from conflicts of financial interests and managers of the board of directors. The goal of this team would be to support the board of directors in its surveillance tasks, and it could grow to fulfill a certain number of critical functions.
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First, the non -profit organization could carry out executive performance examinations according to the standards of the organization’s charitable mission. These could be used by the Board of Directors to determine the executive compensation packages, helping to align the incentives at the top of the company.
Second, the non -profit organization could provide the Council independent expertise on security and security. He could examine the internal security tests carried out as part of the preparation of the company, as well as external security tests and third -party audits of business security practices. Border deployments could be subject to the approval of the board of directors, supported by summaries of these exams.
Third, non -profit organization could improve transparency. By maintaining his own communication channel with the public, he could hold the public informed of company security and security practices, important changes in internal policies or specifications of the model and new public concerns. He could also lead and publish his own post-mortems of security incidents and manage the internal denunciation hotline.
Finally, the non -profit organization could take charge of all the activities where the incentives is likely to diverge from the public interest, such as the lobbying efforts of the company. It could also start using the vast financial resources of the non -profit organization (deriving from its majority participation in the company) to grant subsidies to support both beneficial uses of AI and risk mitigation efforts.
While the development of the AI continues and without any prospect of significant federal regulation on the horizon, an authorized non -profit board of directors is more important than ever. The activities of non -profit organization could serve not only for surveillance for Openai, but also as a plan for others. For example, transparency standards and the third -party examined examination in Openai could provide a starting point for future regulations.
The next OpenAi steps will determine the trajectory of the company for the years to come. Instead of irreversibly abandoning his commitments to the public’s interest, he could recurse from the edge and reaffirm them, by improving the capacity of the non -profit board to fulfill his duty of surveillance.
Openai’s non -profit soul can still be saved, but this can force the public to be heard as the legitimate beneficiary of the organization.
