Godfather of AI Throws Support Behind Elon Musk’s Lawsuit Against OpenAI

An increasingly diverse coalition is forming in opposition to OpenAI’s plans to restructure itself into a fully for-profit company.

On Monday, Encode, a youth-led advocacy organization that represents young people in dozens of countries, filed an amicus brief in support of Elon Musk’s ongoing lawsuit to stop OpenAI’s corporate metamorphosis. The filing comes with the support of one of the biggest names in the field, Nobel and Turing Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, often called the godfather of AI.

“OpenAI was founded as an explicitly security-focused nonprofit and made several security-related commitments in its charter,” Hinton said in a statement published by Encode along with his brief. “It received numerous tax and other benefits from its non-profit status. Allowing it to be torn down when it becomes inconvenient sends a very bad message to other actors in the ecosystem.”

Hinton He recently told the BBC He believes there is a “10 percent to 20 percent” chance that AI will lead to human extinction within the next 30 years. Previously, Hinton was more modest, putting the odds at just 10 percent.

OpenAI is currently structured as a for-profit company governed by a nonprofit board, which places some limitations on its mission and ability to raise money and compensate investors. Company officially announced Last week it intended to restructure itself as a more traditional for-profit corporation, though the change had been expected for some time and Musk, who co-founded OpenAI, He filed a federal lawsuit Seeking a preliminary injunction to stop it in November.

Encode argues that OpenAI’s planned transition from a nonprofit to a Delaware public benefit corporation would “undermine specific security-focused commitments that the nonprofit has made to the public.” In particular, the brief questions whether a for-profit corporation could ever fulfill OpenAI’s promise that it would “stop competing and start helping” any standards-aligned company that appears close to building artificial general intelligence before doing so.

Sneha Revanur, president and founder of Encode, said in a statement, “Today, a handful of companies are racing to develop and deploy transformative AI, internalizing the profits but externalizing the results for all of humanity. “Courts must intervene to ensure that AI development serves the public interest.”

For its part, there is OpenAI requested the court to reject Musk’s lawsuit, arguing that he lacked standing and was seeking an unfair competitive advantage for his own AI startup, xAI. OpenAI has also published a Email repository And other messages from Musk, including what several companies have said, show that Musk was in favor of converting the company to for-profit in early 2017.