80,000 Hours Podcast With Rob Wiblin

OpenAI’s recent announcement that its nonprofit would “retain control” of its for-profit business sounds reassuring. But this seemingly major concession, celebrated by so many, is in itself largely meaningless.Litigator Tyler Whitmer is a coauthor of a newly published letter that describes this attempted sleight of hand and directs regulators on how to stop it.As Tyler explains, the plan both before and after this announcement has been to convert OpenAI into a Delaware public benefit corporation (PBC) — and this alone will dramatically weaken the nonprofit’s ability to direct the business in pursuit of its charitable purpose: ensuring AGI is safe and “benefits all of humanity.”Right now, the nonprofit directly controls the business. But were OpenAI to become a PBC, the nonprofit, rather than having its “hand on the lever,” would merely contribute to the decision of who does.Why does this matter? Today, if OpenAI’s commercial arm were about to release an unhinged AI model that might make money but be bad for h