Geoffrey Hinton, renowned as the "godfather of AI," has expressed his support for Elon Musk in his ongoing legal battle against OpenAI's transition to a fully for-profit model. This shift has prompted significant concern regarding the implications for safety and ethics within the AI landscape.

On December 30, Hinton backed a legal brief filed by Encode, a youth-led advocacy group. Hinton underscored that OpenAI was originally established as a nonprofit aimed at prioritizing safety in AI development. In his statement, he remarked, “OpenAI was founded as an explicitly safety-focused nonprofit and made a variety of safety-related promises in its charter,” highlighting the organization's responsibility due to the benefits it received from its nonprofit status.

The shift from a nonprofit to a for-profit structure raises profound ethical questions. Hinton lamented that this transition, particularly if perceived as convenient, sends “a very bad message to other actors in the ecosystem” about accountability in AI development. He previously indicated a rising concern over the potential risks posed by AI, suggesting there is a “10 to 20 percent” chance of AI leading to human extinction within the next three decades.

Musk's lawsuit, initiated in November, seeks to prevent OpenAI from pursuing its for-profit strategy. The organization, co-founded by Musk in 2015 to benefit humanity, is now attempting to restructure, claiming that the current nonprofit framework hinders its ability to raise capital effectively. OpenAI has dismissed Musk's lawsuit as lacking merit and has argued that he is attempting to gain an unfair competitive advantage for his own AI venture, xAI.

Amid these developments, Hinton, who recently won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, emphasizes that maintaining AI technology's accountability to the public is critical, asserting that "public involvement is essential in shaping the future of this transformative technology." The debate surrounding OpenAI's direction and the implications of its for-profit shift continues to attract significant scrutiny.