Gus Carlson is a U.S.-based columnist for The Globe and Mail.
When it comes to making strange bedfellows, Big Tech is giving politics a run for its money.
Consider the peculiar alignment of archrivals Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, whose mutual animosity has been boiling for a decade. Suddenly, they find themselves allied – at least intellectually and legally – in a fight to stop OpenAI’s attempt to change from a charity to for-profit status.
Both billionaires have filed legal complaints in the past two months suggesting the billions of dollars OpenAI has raised as a charity would give it an unfair competitive advantage if it were allowed to change its spots. Further, Mr. Zuckerberg said in a letter to California’s attorney-general, blessing such a structural shift would set a dangerous precedent for other startups to do the same.
To be sure, there is lots of competitive posturing going on here. After all, OpenAI is the main rival of Mr. Zuckerberg’s Meta and Mr. Musk’s xAI in the AI space. And there is no love lost between the Meta/xAI alignment and Microsoft, OpenAI’s main investment partner.
Still, Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Musk have valid points. OpenAI’s bait-and-switch does have serious implications for maintaining the kind of level playing field essential to a free and fair market and cries out for a scotching of any attempt to short-cut the line to success.
But there is a bigger issue at play here. Aside from the legality of OpenAI’s ambitions, there is an important ethical imperative, too. Such a structural shift runs counter to OpenAI’s mandate as an independent operator of AI development and deployment – sort of the average human’s voice, immune from commercial bias and committed to acting in the best interest of the greater good.
“Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence – AI systems that are generally smarter than humans – benefits all of humanity,” the company says.
OpenAI’s mission statement even calls out the importance of its non-profit structure: “We are governed by a non-profit and our unique capped-profit model drives our commitment to safety. This means that as AI becomes more powerful, we can redistribute profits from our work to maximize the social and economic benefits of AI technology.”
A noble and socially considerate cause, without question. But wouldn’t the structural shift OpenAI is contemplating compromise its position on the moral high ground and give it a commercial boost in the process?
Mr. Zuckerberg thinks so. In his letter to the California AG, he said: “OpenAI wants to change its status while retaining all of the benefits that enabled it to reach the point it has today. That is wrong. OpenAI should not be allowed to flout the law by taking and reappropriating assets it built as a charity and using them for potentially enormous private gains.” Mr. Musk, a cofounder of OpenAI who left the company in its infancy, feels the same way. In November, he launched a second court bid for an injunction to stop OpenAI from changing its structure.
OpenAI has fought back. In a blog post last month, it suggested that Mr. Musk supported a for-profit structure when he was with the company.
Government intervention rarely works in situations like this. There’s a legitimate reason that the saying, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” has long been the catchphrase for absurdity.
But someone needs to take seriously the legal questions raised by Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Musk as well as the attendant ethical concerns. In this case, tech’s strange bedfellows are right.
Perhaps seeing OpenAI as a champion or gatekeeper of the public trust is too lofty – or naive. But, in line with its mission, considering it to be something of a neutral clearinghouse with no commercial motive to favour or disfavour certain tech is fairer.
With no profit motive, the industrial logic suggests, the company would look at pros and cons of AI development without a jaundiced commercial eye and tend to err on the side of what’s best in the public interest.
A shift in its status would change that posture, perhaps for the worse, and open it to influences and bias. With billions behind it right out of the gate, its potential to disrupt the market in negative ways is enormous.
If allowed, it would also set a dangerous precedent that goes well beyond the tech sector. If an entity can raise money as a charity, then change its status to for-profit, why would it go through the onerous process of fundraising that private for-profit companies endure?
While the legality of the case will be decided by the courts, someone needs to call out OpenAI on ethical grounds. For the benefit of all humanity, of course.