OpenAI's Fault Lines: Cracks in a Groundbreaking “Capped-Profit” Organization
| dc.contributor.author | Collins-Burke, Drew | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-02-28T00:11:42Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-02-28T00:11:42Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025-02-20 | |
| dc.description | Drew Collins-Burke (drewcb2020@gmail.com) is a recent summa cum laude Honors College graduate with previous work for a Brookings-affiliated institution and multi-year contributions as a research assistant to a Carnegie Fellow. He is interested in AI policy, political polarization, men's issues, and loves to hike, play tennis, and listen to classic albums. | |
| dc.description.abstract | Influential artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI has a unique corporate structure featuring a non-profit/capped-profit (NP/CP) model. In the NP/CP model, a non-profit organization has control over a for-profit arm that offers financiers a fixed return based on their initial investment, as opposed to offering unlimited potential return. OpenAI’s NP/CP structure is intended to reduce the negative impacts of shareholder capitalism on high-stakes artificial general intelligence (AGI) development projects. This paper evaluates OpenAI’s organizational successes and failures, comparing its approach to the pitfalls many shareholder corporations fall into: excessive profit motives, lack of transparency, and negligence towards societal impacts. It also explores how OpenAI’s structural features, such as investor profit caps and non-profit authority over the for- profit arm, have aided the company in avoiding some common issues with shareholder corporations. However, CEO Sam Altman’s high-profile ousting and reinstatement, OpenAI’s lack of open-source practices, and Microsoft’s influence raise concerns about the overall efficacy of this structure. Through an analysis of OpenAI's structure, actions, and public statements, this paper investigates the hybrid NP/CP model’s potential for mitigating the negative impacts of shareholder capitalism on responsible AGI development, highlighting its successes and limitations. The paper concludes that OpenAI’s ability to develop AGI safely within this organization model is possible but uncertain. | |
| dc.identifier.issn | 2160-617X | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/30510 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | |
| dc.rights | Creative Commons BY | |
| dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | |
| dc.subject | artificial intelligence | |
| dc.subject | AI | |
| dc.subject | artificial general intelligence | |
| dc.subject | non-profit | |
| dc.subject | capped-profit | |
| dc.subject | corporate structure | |
| dc.title | OpenAI's Fault Lines: Cracks in a Groundbreaking “Capped-Profit” Organization | |
| dc.type | Article |