More than a dozen former Openai employees opposed the startup’s plans as for-profit as Elon Musk raised a high-risk legal challenge to the overhaul.
Data scientists and technicians presented the latest turn in court documents on keeping control of OpenAI in their nonprofit organization in a showdown between the world’s wealthiest people and one of the most valuable startups.
“If Openai nonprofit agrees to change the structure of OpenAI, the structure deprives it of its control, which will fundamentally violate its mission,” the document said. Former employee, all of whom worked at the company between 2018 and 2024, is represented by Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor and political activist.
In a court battle with Musk, launched last year, he accused OpenAI CEO Sam Altman of abandoning the startup’s founding as a charity when he began garnering billions of dollars in support from Microsoft Corp. in 2019.
Openai believes that the new structure will further promote its philanthropic mission, as nonprofits will have significant stakes in future for-profits, which will be a public welfare company that is responsible not only to financial shareholders but to the public. Openai said it needs to be partially reorganized to attract investors and fund its mission.
“Our board is very clear: our nonprofit organization has nowhere to go and our mission will remain the same,” Openai said in a statement. “We have turned the existing for-profit organization into a public welfare company – the same structure as other AI labs, such as Anthropic, where some of the former employees are working now – XAI.”
The former employee’s application focused on the 2018 OpenAI Charter, which was “not organized for anyone’s private interests” and will work to ensure that AI usage is safe. Some of these employees have previously raised concerns about Openai’s ability to balance security with commercialization technology.
Musk’s attorney Marc Toberoff said the former employee’s court application “verified what we already know.”
“Altman proposed Openai’s charitable mission and used it as a prop to seduce and leverage the contributions of Musk and AI top talent,” Toberoff said in a statement.
Lessig declined to comment.
Openai faces other criticisms as it seeks to reorganize regulators. A youth-led nonprofit organization advocates for AI security, coded in a court filing in December said Musk’s concerns about Openai becoming a for-profit business. Meta Platforms Inc. asked California Attorney General Rob Bonta to suspend “restructuring investors and consumers”.
Last month, a federal judge rejected Musk’s request to temporarily stop the Jacobs manufacturer’s restructuring while the legal battle is underway. Instead, she has already held a trial for March.
Openai raised opposition opposition against Musk this week, accusing serial entrepreneurs of launching a “ruthless” campaign for more than a year that hurt the startup and demanded a court order him to stop.
This article was generated from the Automation News Agency feed without the text being modified.
