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Former employees of OpenAI are asking the top law enforcement officers in California and Delaware to stop the company from shifting control of its artificial intelligence technology from a nonprofit charity to a for-profit business.They’re concerned about what happens if the ChatGPT maker fulfills its ambition to build AI that outperforms humans, but is no longer accountable to its public mission to safeguard that technology from causing grievous harms.“Ultimately, I’m worried about who owns and controls this technology once it’s created,” said Page Hedley, a former policy and ethics adviser at OpenAI, in an interview with the Associated Press.Backed by three Nobel Prize winners and other advocates and experts, Hedley and nine other ex-OpenAI workers sent a letter this week to the two state attorneys general.The coalition is asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, both Democrats, to use their authority to protect OpenAI’s charitable purpose and block its planned restructuring. OpenAI is incorporated in Delaware and operates out of San Francisco.OpenAI said in response that “any changes to our existing structure would be in service of ensuring the broader public can benefit from AI.” It said its for-profit will be a public benefit corporation, similar to other AI labs like Anthropic and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s xAI, except that OpenAI will still preserve a nonprofit arm.“This structure will continue to ensure that as the for-profit succeeds and grows, so too does the nonprofit, enabling us to achieve the mission,” the company said in a statement.The letter is the second petition to state officials this month. The last came from a group of labor leaders and nonprofits focused on protecting OpenAI’s billions of dollars of charitable assets.Jennings said last fall she would “review any such transaction to ensure that the public’s interests are adequately protected.” Bonta’s office sought more information from OpenAI late last year but has said it can’t comment, even to confirm or deny if it is investigating.OpenAI’s cofounders, including current CEO Sam Altman and Musk, originally started it as a nonprofit research laboratory on a mission to safely build what’s known as artificial general intelligence, or AGI, for humanity’s benefit. Nearly a decade later, OpenAI has reported its market value as $300 billion and counts 400 million weekly users of ChatGPT, its flagship product.OpenAI already has a for-profit subsidiary but faces a number of challenges in converting its core governance structure. One is a lawsuit from Musk, who accuses the company and Altman of betraying the founding principles that led the Tesla CEO to invest in the charity.While some of the signatories of this week’s letter support Musk’s lawsuit, Hedley said others are “understandably cynical” because Musk also runs his own rival AI company.The signatories include two Nobel-winning economists, Oliver Hart and Joseph Stiglitz, as well as AI pioneers and computer scientists Geoffrey Hinton, who won last year’s Nobel Prize in physics, and Stuart Russell.“I like OpenAI’s mission to ‘ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,’ and I would like them to execute that mission instead of enriching their investors,” Hinton said in a statement Wednesday. “I’m happy there is an effort to hold OpenAI to its mission that does not involve Elon Musk.”Conflicts over OpenAI’s purpose have long simmered at the San Francisco institute, contributing to Musk quitting in 2018, Altman’s short-lived ouster in 2023 and other high-profile departures.Hedley, a lawyer by training, worked for OpenAI in 2017 and 2018, a time when the nonprofit was still navigating the best ways to steward the technology it wanted to build. As recently as 2023, Altman said advanced AI held promise but also warned of extraordinary risks, from drastic accidents to societal disruptions.In recent years, however, Hedley said he watched with concern as OpenAI, buoyed by the success of ChatGPT, was increasingly cutting corners on safety testing and rushing out new products to get ahead of business competitors.“The costs of those decisions will continue to go up as the technology becomes more powerful,” he said. “I think that in the new structure that OpenAI wants, the incentives to rush to make those decisions will go up and there will no longer be anybody really who can tell them not to, tell them this is not OK.”Software engineer Anish Tondwalkar, a former member of OpenAI’s technical team until last year, said an important assurance in OpenAI’s nonprofit charter is a “stop-and-assist clause” that directs OpenAI to stand down and help if another organization is nearing the achievement of better-than-human AI.“If OpenAI is allowed to become a for-profit, these safeguards, and OpenAI’s duty to the public can vanish overnight,” Tondwalkar said in a statement Wednesday.Another former worker who signed the letter puts it more bluntly.“OpenAI may one day build technology that could get us all killed,” said Nisan Stiennon, an AI engineer who worked at OpenAI from 2018 to 2020. “It is to OpenAI’s credit that it’s controlled by a nonprofit with a duty to humanity. This duty precludes giving up that control.” The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives. Matt O’Brien, AP Technology Writer
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Anjan Roy was studying with friends at Missouri State University when he got an email that turned his world upside down. His legal status as an international student had been terminated, and he was suddenly at risk for deportation.“I was in literal shock, like, what the hell is this?” said Roy, a graduate student in computer science from Bangladesh.At first, he avoided going out in public, skipping classes and mostly keeping his phone turned off. A court ruling in his favor led to his status being restored this week, and he has returned to his apartment, but he is still asking his roommates to screen visitors.More than a thousand international students have faced similar disruptions in recent weeks, with their academic careersand their lives in the U.S.thrown into doubt in a widespread crackdown by the Trump administration. Some have found a measure of success in court, with federal judges around the country issuing orders to restore students’ legal status at least temporarily.In addition to the case filed in Atlanta, where Roy is among 133 plaintiffs, judges have issued temporary restraining orders in states including New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Judges have denied similar requests in some other cases, saying it was not clear the loss of status would cause irreparable harm. International students challenge grounds for their status revocation Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last month the State Department was revoking visas held by visitors who were acting counter to national interests, including some who protested Israel’s war in Gaza and those who face criminal charges. But many affected students said they have been involved only in minor infractions, or it’s unclear altogether why they were targeted.The attorney for Roy and his fellow plaintiffs, Charles Kuck, argued the government did not have legal grounds to terminate the students’ status.He speculated in court last week the government is trying to encourage these students to self-deport, saying “the pressure on these students is overwhelming.” He said some asked him if it was safe to leave their homes to get food, and others worried they wouldn’t receive a degree after years of work or feared their chances of a career in the U.S. were shot.“I think the hope is they’ll just leave,” Kuck said. “The reality is these kids are invested.”An attorney for the government, R. David Powell, argued the students did not suffer significant harm because they could transfer their academic credits or find jobs in another country.At least 1,100 students at 174 colleges, universities and university systems have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records. The AP is working to confirm reports of hundreds more students who are caught up in the crackdown.In a lawsuit filed Monday by four people on student visas at the University of Iowa, attorneys detail the “mental and financial suffering” they’ve experienced. One graduate student, from India, “cannot sleep and is having difficulty breathing and eating,” the lawsuit reads. He has stopped going to school, doing research or working as a teaching assistant. Another student, a Chinese undergraduate who expected to graduate this December, said his revoked status has caused his depression to worsen to the point that his doctor increased his medication dosage. The student, the lawsuit says, has not left his apartment out of fear of detention. Tiny infractions made students targets for the crackdown Roy, 23, began his academic career at Missouri State in August 2024 as an undergraduate computer science student. He was active in the chess club and a fraternity and has a broad circle of friends. After graduating in December, he began work on a master’s degree in January and expects to finish in May 2026.When Roy received the university’s April 10 email on his status termination, one of his friends offered to skip class to go with him to the school’s international services office, even though they had a quiz in 45 minutes. The staff there said a database check showed his student status had been terminated, but they didn’t know why.Roy said his only brush with the law came in 2021, when he was questioned by campus security after someone called in a dispute at a university housing building. But he said an officer determined there was no evidence of any crime and no charges were filed.Roy also got an email from the U.S. embassy in Bangladesh telling him his visa had been revoked and that he could be detained at any time. It warned that if he was deported, he could be sent to a country other than his own. Roy thought about leaving the U.S. but decided to stay after talking to a lawyer.Anxious about being in his own apartment, Roy went to stay with his second cousin and her husband nearby.“They were scared someone was going to pick me up from the street and take me somewhere that they wouldn’t even know,” Roy said.He mostly stayed inside, turned off his phone unless he needed to use it, and avoided internet browsers that track user data through cookies. His professors were understanding when he told them he wouldn’t be able to come to classes for a while, he said. New doubts about students’ future in the U.S. After the judge’s order Friday, he moved back to his apartment. He learned Tuesday his status had been restored, and he plans to return to class. But he’s still nervous. He asked his two roommates, both international students, to let him know before they open the door if someone they don’t know knocks.The judge’s restoration of his legal status is temporary. Another hearing scheduled for Thursday will determine whether he keeps that status while the litigation continues.Roy chose the U.S. over other options in Canada and Australia because of the research opportunities and potential for professional connections, and he ultimately wanted to teach at an American university. But now those plans are up in the air.His parents, back in Dhaka, have been watching the news and are “freaked out,” he said. His father mentioned to him that they have family in Melbourne, Australia, including a cousin who’s an assistant professor at a university there. _AP reporters Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this story. The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Kate Brumback, Associated Press
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Harmful bleaching of the world’s coral has grown to include 84% of the ocean’s reefs in the most intense event of its kind in recorded history, the International Coral Reef Initiative announced Wednesday.It’s the fourth global bleaching event since 1998, and has now surpassed bleaching from 2014-17 that hit some two-thirds of reefs, said the ICRI, a mix of more than 100 governments, non-governmental organizations and others. And it’s not clear when the current crisis, which began in 2023 and is blamed on warming oceans, will end.“We may never see the heat stress that causes bleaching dropping below the threshold that triggers a global event,” said Mark Eakin, executive secretary for the International Coral Reef Society and retired coral monitoring chief for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.“We’re looking at something that’s completely changing the face of our planet and the ability of our oceans to sustain lives and livelihoods,” Eakin said.Last year was Earth’s hottest year on record, and much of that is going into oceans. The average annual sea surface temperature of oceans away from the poles was a record 20.87 degrees Celsius (69.57 degrees Fahrenheit).That’s deadly to corals, which are key to seafood production, tourism and protecting coastlines from erosion and storms. Coral reefs are sometimes dubbed “rainforests of the sea” because they support high levels of biodiversityapproximately 25% of all marine species can be found in, on and around coral reefs.Coral get their bright colors from the colorful algae that live inside them and are a food source for the corals. Prolonged warmth causes the algae to release toxic compounds, and the coral eject them. A stark white skeleton is left behind, and the weakened coral is at heightened risk of dying.The bleaching event has been so severe that NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program has had to add levels to its bleaching alert scale to account for the growing risk of coral death.Efforts are underway to conserve and restore coral. One Dutch lab has worked with coral fragments, including some taken from off the coast of the Seychelles, to propagate them in a zoo so that they might be used someday to repopulate wild coral reefs if needed. Other projects, including one off Florida, have worked to rescue corals endangered by high heat and nurse them back to health before returning them to the ocean.But scientists say it’s essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet, such as carbon dioxide and methane.“The best way to protect coral reefs is to address the root cause of climate change. And that means reducing the human emissions that are mostly from burning of fossil fuels . . . everything else is looking more like a Band-Aid rather than a solution,” Eakin said.“I think people really need to recognize what they’re doing . . . inaction is the kiss of death for coral reefs,” said Melanie McField, co-chair of the Caribbean Steering Committee for the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, a network of scientists that monitors reefs throughout the world.The group’s update comes as President Donald Trump has moved aggressively in his second term to boost fossil fuels and roll back clean energy programs, which he says is necessary for economic growth.“We’ve got a government right now that is working very hard to destroy all of these ecosystems . . . removing these protections is going to have devastating consequences,” Eakin said. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Isabella O’Malley, Associated Press
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