OpenAI, previously known for its transparency, is now seen to be distancing from its original tenets. WHen asked by WIRED for access to certain documents in the past, OpenAI said they were openly available for public scrutiny. But, this seems no longer to be the case. Experts see this as a significant shift from their intended openness in technological development – an attribute intrinsic to the company’s name.
OpenAI was established in 2015 with backing from Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and corporations such as AWS and Infosys, securing over $1 billion in funding. The founders envisaged an open-source platform, sharing research and patents publicly. After turning for-profit in 2019, and capping profits at a hundredfold their initial investment, it was a transformative move for OpenAI. It invited a $1 billion investment from Microsoft, finalizing its plan to monetize the technologies they were developing.
Issues began surfacing when Musk started distancing himself from the board in 2018. Due to conflicts of interest with Tesla, and lagging behind Google, he reduced his $1 billion commitment to $100 million. This pushed OpenAI further into a commercial model. Microsoft’s subsequent investment led to the creation of successful tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E, but also invited scrutiny.
In 2023, Musk criticized the transformation, especially how a non-profit company to which he donated $100 million could potentially be worth $30 billion as a for-profit entity. In the same year, OpenAI’s financial standing escalated, with a rumored doubling of its valuation from the previous year to $29 billion.
Meanwhile, a management dispute saw CEO Sam Altman removed, then reinstated, implying less opposition to company objectives but raising questions about its capacity to develop AI safely. Upon WIRED’s request for records, an OpenAI spokesperson said they no longer publicly share additional internal documents, although financial statements were available on request. This raised further questions about complex relationships within the company and Altman’s personal investments in AI-related startups.
Despite OpenAI’s insistence that Altman follows due process in managing possible conflicts, the company’s change in transparency policy contributes to an increasing divergence from its founding principles.
