Geoffrey Hinton, the godfather of AI, has joined the growing opposition to ChatGPT-maker OpenAI’s plan to become an entirely for-profit company. On Monday, December 30, Encode, a youth-led advocacy group representing young people worldwide, filed a legal brief supporting Elon Musk’s lawsuit to stop OpenAI’s restructuring. A Nobel and Turing Award-winning researcher, Hinton supported the filing and voiced concerns over OpenAI’s direction.
Hinton criticized OpenAI for moving away from its original safety-focused nonprofit mission. In a statement released with Encode’s brief, he said, “OpenAI was founded as an explicitly safety-focused nonprofit and made various safety-related promises in its charter. It received numerous tax and other benefits from its nonprofit status. Allowing it to tear all of that up when it becomes inconvenient sends a terrible message to other actors in the ecosystem.”
AI can lead to human extinction: Geoffrey Hilton.
Hinton has also warned of the risks posed by artificial intelligence. In a recent interview with the BBC, he said there is a “10 to 20 percent” chance AI will lead to human extinction within the next 30 years, a shift from his earlier estimate of 10 percent.
Why Elon Musk is opposing OpenAI
OpenAI started as a nonprofit organisation in 2015 to develop AI to benefit humanity without generating financial returns. It is currently a for-profit company controlled by a nonprofit board. This setup limits its ability to raise funds and pay investors.
Last week, the company announced plans to fully transition to a traditional for-profit company, a move that Musk, one of OpenAI’s cofounders, has been trying to block through a lawsuit he filed in November.
OpenAI has rejected Musk’s lawsuit, arguing that he lacks the legal standing to challenge the decision and is seeking an unfair advantage for his AI company, xAI. In response, OpenAI released emails and messages from Musk, some of which reportedly show that he supported the idea of transitioning OpenAI to a for-profit model as early as 2017.
