On 4/27/26, the trial to determine if OpenAI should revert back to a non-profit and whether Elon Musk should be compensated for his early investments began.
I cannot comment on the legality of converting a non-profit to a for-profit company since I am not a corporate lawyer, but I can comment on the ethics which seems to be awry. It doesn’t make sense that a non-profit and all of its assets (intellectual and other assets) can be taken by insiders and investors like Microsoft and Amazon for their own profit.
The more important issue is about the stewardship of software that has major strategic and national security importance and poses significant safety issues. I am not sure whether non-profit/for-profit, or open-sourced/closed-sourced is the best way to ensure safety, but they must be able to ensure it cannot commit crimes or pose a hazard to public safety if it remains open sourced.
I have personally been impacted by privacy, IP, and health issues since AI has grown and proliferated and I am told my issues are caused by OpenAI, which means that OpenAI is developing systems that can be used to commit cyber crimes and it has proliferated to XAI, Palantir, Microsoft, Apple, Meta etc and private citizens as well.
It is significant that AI remains unregulated by the Federal Government when this can solve these problems, yet both companies have fought against safety regulations and endorsed politicians that have not implemented regulations during this time. Both XAI and OpenAI seem to be guilty of privacy, IP theft issues, deep fakes, user manipulation, etc and are both capable of manipulating the communications network to facilitate cyber-crimes. This is probably why I have read this case being referred to as Godzilla v. King Kong or the Hindenburg landing on the Titanic.
It should be noted that the FCC allows AI companies to access the 5G communications network to manipulate beam-forming which is used to target people with harmful. This is one of many things that needs to be regulated.
I do not buy that a for profit company was needed to get the investment needed to get enough compute to build a major player in AI. Most companies go to cloud companies for compute, and if their product is good, they could make enough revenue to pay off the investment, or they could get loans from banks or the Government if needed. It seems like the motivation was that a partnership with Microsoft, Amazon and Apple put them on every desktop and phone on the planet. Why is it that only 3 companies determine who succeeds or fails? At the same time, these companies are also robbing every phone, desktop of their privacy and intellectual property. Why is that?
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