OpenAI skeptics ask AG Bonta to investigate execs’ ties to semiconductor company
Advocacy coalition EyesOnOpenAI is asking Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate a recent contract between OpenAI and semiconductor company Cerebras Systems that the group says bolsters its earlier arguments that OpenAI has abandoned its philanthropic mission.
EyesOnOpenAI, a coalition of AI-skeptical groups, previously called on Bonta multiple times starting last year to investigate OpenAI after the company restructured last fall from a nonprofit to a public benefit corporation. This time, the group pointed to a recent agreement Cerebras and OpenAI entered into, for the AI behemoth to purchase computing infrastructure and hardware from Cerebras, as evidence of senior OpenAI leadership’s “self-dealing” and trying to shirk its duty to protect its charitable assets.
OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Director Adam D’Angelo, Chief Executive Sam Altman, and co-founder Ilya Sutskever are listed as investors on Cerebras’ website, which EyesOnOpenAI says boosts its argument that the company allows its executives to shirk their duty to disclose their ties to companies with which OpenAI does business.
EyesOnOpenAI called their ties to Cerebras, which were disclosed in a recent petition to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for Cerebras to go public, “evidence of self-dealing” in a letter the group sent to Bonta’s office Tuesday.
“By all indications, (Altman, D’Angelo, Brockman and Sutskever’s) equity holdings in Cerebras constitute material interests in the counterparty to the transaction which not only trigger OpenAI’s Policy (to disclose financial ties), but also the procedures set forth in (California) Corporations Code section 5233 to approve a self-dealing transaction,” the letter read.
OpenAI first launched as a nonprofit in 2015 in San Francisco. Since then, it has grown to become one of the wealthiest companies in the world, and its founders and executives have promised to use its resources to fund cures for Alzheimer’s and other public benefits.
Legislators have also begun scrutinizing OpenAI for its ChatGPT model’s interactions with underage children and the role it may have played in encouraging teenagers to commit suicide, some of whose parents are now suing OpenAI.
OpenAI and Altman recently triumphed over Elon Musk, the Tesla executive who was an early investor in OpenAI until 2018. A jury tossed Musk’s lawsuit last week, deciding that he had waited too long to file a lawsuit claiming that OpenAI had deceived him by accepting his money and then reneging on its original nonprofit mission.
The lawsuit’s collapse will now allow OpenAI a smoother pathway to an initial public offering. Musk’s rival SpaceX company is also expected to go public soon.
EyesOnOpenAI cited the lawsuit in its letter to Bonta, which asks his office to investigate the Cerebras-OpenAI contract and whether OpenAI withheld details from his office; compel OpenAI to produce any documents that may shed light on the alleged conflicts of interest; and reaffirm that OpenAI’s current structure is strong enough to provide executive oversight.
