Watch Live: Openai co-founder Sam Altman testifies to the AI ​​competition in the hearing of the Senate

After months of pursuit of a plan to convert into a profit -oriented business, Openai reverses the course and explains on Monday that the non -profit organization will continue to control the company that produces chatt and other products for artificial intelligence.

Sam Altman, CEO of Chatgpt, is to testify Edt at 10 a.m. on Thursday in the hearing of the Senate. Take a look at our video player at the top.

“We made the decision that the non -profit organization after hearing citizens and discussions with the offices of the General Prosecutors of California and Delaware will keep in control,” said CEO Sam Altman in a letter to the employees.

Altman and the chairman of the non -profit board of Openai, Bret Taylor, said that the board had made the decision for the non -profit organization to maintain control of Openaai, but suggests another way to expand his business.

The existing non -profit organization will convert the existing non -profit organization into a public performance society as part of what Taylor referred to as “recapitalization”, which “must take into account the interests of both the shareholders and the mission.

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The shareholders also receive shares and a profit upper limit for some investors are lifted as part of the new plan. Altman said the changes would make it easier for the more profitable to behave more like a normal company.

Taylor refused to say on Monday how large property of the non -profit organization will have in the new public service society. In a call with reporters, he said that the non -profit organization would select the board members of the public benefit corporation and will initially be the same people who are now sitting in the OpenAis non -profit board.

Public services were first founded in Delaware in 2013, and other states passed the same or similar laws, according to which companies not only have to pursue profit but a social property. Public Benefit Corporations, which include the Amalgamated Bank and the online training platform for Coursera, must define this social well that can vary on the inclusion.

Altman said that conversion from a limited liability company to a public performance society is “only a more understandable structure to do the things that a company of our scope has to do.”

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“There is so much more demand to use AI tools than we thought there would be,” said Altman. Access to more capital facilitates Openai, mergers and acquisitions, “and other normal things that companies would do,” said Altman.

The co-founders of Openaai, including Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, originally started as a non-profit research laboratory in order to safely build up the artificial intelligence for humanity mentioned as artificial general intelligence or AGI. Almost a decade later, Openaai reported its market value of 300 billion US dollars and has 400 million weekly users of Chatgpt, its flagship product.

Openaai outlined plans for the first time last year to convert its core government structure, but opposed a number of challenges. One of them is a lawsuit by Musk, which accuses the company and Altman, to have betrayed the founding principles, prompted Musk to invest in the charity and tried to block the conversion to a profit amount. A federal judge rejected some of Musk's claims last week and allowed others to continue on a procedure for the next year.

Openaai also stood by the top criminal prosecution officers in Delaware, where the company is registered, and in California, where it operates from a headquarters in San Francisco. The office of the California General Prosecutor said in a statement that it had checked the plan and: “This remains a persistent matter – and we continue to lead with open AI.”

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The General Prosecutor's Office in Delaware did not immediately return a request for comments.

A number of supporters, including former Openai employees and other charity organizations, had used the California Attorney General Rob Bonta and the Attorney General of Delaware, Kathy Jennings, both Democrats, with their authority to protect the non -profit purposes of Openai and the blocking of the planned restructuring.

Some, including the AI ​​pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, who won a Nobel Prize last year, were concerned about what happens if the chatt manufacturer fulfills his ambition to build AI that exceeds people but is no longer responsible for his public mission to protect this technology from shy damage.

Several other companies for artificial intelligence have decided to include as public performance companies such as Anthropic and Xai, Musks. However, Openaai would remain unique in that its public performance society would continue to be controlled by the board of the non -profit organization.

Altman said it would be “easier” to collect money if Openai were a “normal company”, but given his mission “We don't want to be a completely normal company, and we believe that this is far above the measurement of what we need to collect donations.”

Altman said he still expected a large investment by the Japanese technology -giant Softbank Group, which in February announced plans for the establishment of a joint company with Openai for the regulations of AI services.

The largest investor in the company in recent years has been Microsoft, which will be rescued on Monday.

Page Hedley, a former Openai employee who led a petition to comply with the non-profit reversal, said that he was pleased that Openaai listened to the concerns of the leaders of civil society, but I was concerned about the details.

“The non-profit mission is about the fact that this technology benefits the public and not the shareholders,” said Hedley, former political and ethics consultant at Openaai. “The premise of the foundation of Openai was that these interests may differ significantly into the development, property or control of the technology. That is at stake.”

A charity organizations based in California renewed their call for California General Prosecutor on Monday to examine and questioned whether the planned new business structure of Openai would carry out their charitable mission.

“If Openaai is really obliged to use humanity, it should transfer its charitable assets to an independent public trust that is completely separated from profit -oriented interests,” says a statement by Fred Blackwell, CEO of the San Francisco Foundation.

Rose Chan Loui, a non -profit tax lawyer who studied Openais structure, said that every change must allow the non -profit organization to maintain control over the development of technology.

“If you are not the majority shareholder, control would have to be given by excessive voting rights on certain topics,” said Chan Loui, the Executive Director of the Lowell Milken Center for Philanthropy and non -profit organizations at UCLA Law.

This is possible, but can exercise investors who want to exercise their right to influence the direction of the company.