By Todd Feathers Published December 30, 2024 | Comments (0) | Geoffrey Hinton, , who won the Nobel and Turing prizes for his work on artificial intelligence. Pontus Lundahl/Getty Images An increasingly diverse coalition is forming in opposition to OpenAIs plan to restructure itself into a fully for-profit company. On Monday, Encode, a youth-led advocacy organization representing young people in dozens of countries, filed an amicus brief in support of Elon Musks ongoing lawsuit to stop OpenAIs corporate metamorphosis. The filing came with support from one of the biggest names in the field, Nobel and Turing prizes award-winner Geoffrey Hinton, who is often called the godfather of AI.OpenAI was founded as an explicitly safety-focused non-profit and made a variety of safety-related promises in its charter, Hinton said in a statement released by Encode along with its brief. It received numerous tax and other benefits from its non-profit status. Allowing it to tear all of that up when it becomes inconvenient sends a very bad message to other actors in the ecosystem. Hinton recently told the BBC he believes there is a 10 percent to 20 percent chance that AI will lead to human extinction within the next 30 years. Previously, Hintons been more modest, putting the odds at just 10 percent.OpenAI is currently structured as a for-profit company controlled by a non-profit board, which places some restrictions on its mission and ability to raise money and compensate investors. The company formally announced its intention to restructure itself as a more traditional for-profit corporation last week, although the change had been anticipated for some time and Musk, who was a cofounder of OpenAI, filed his federal lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction to stop it in November. Encode argues that OpenAIs planned shift from a nonprofit to a Delaware public benefit corporation would undermine specific safety-focused commitments the nonprofit has made to the public. In particular, the brief questions whether a for-profit corporation could ever fulfill OpenAIs promise that it will stop competing with and start assisting any value-aligned organization that appears close to building artificial general intelligence before it does.Today, a handful of companies are racing to develop and deploy transformative AI, internalizing the profits but externalizing the consequences to all of humanity, Sneha Revanur, the president and founder of Encode, said in a statement. The courts must intervene to ensure AI development serves the public interest. For its part, OpenAI has urged the court to reject Musks lawsuit, arguing that he lacks standing and is seeking to gain an unfair competitive advantage for his own AI startup, xAI. OpenAI also released a trove of emails and other messages from Musk, including several that the company said showed Musk advocated for converting the organization to a for-profit as early as 2017.Daily NewsletterYou May Also Like By Matthew Gault Published December 30, 2024 Michael Timothy Bennett and Elija Perrier Published December 29, 2024 By Thomas Maxwell Published December 28, 2024 By AJ Dellinger Published December 27, 2024 By Todd Feathers Published December 27, 2024 By Thomas Maxwell Published December 26, 2024