Introduction to OpenAI’s Mission

OpenAI is not a normal company and never will be. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. When we started OpenAI, we did not have a detailed sense for how we were going to accomplish our mission. We began by gathering around a kitchen table, wondering what research we should do, without contemplating products or a business model. At that time, we couldn’t even imagine the direct benefits of AI being used for medical advice, learning, productivity, and much more, or the needs for hundreds of billions of dollars of compute to train models and serve users.

The Early Days of OpenAI

We did not really know how AGI was going to get built or used. Many people could imagine an oracle that could tell scientists and presidents what to do, and although it could be incredibly dangerous, maybe those few people could be trusted with it. A lot of people around OpenAI in the early days thought AI should only be in the hands of a few trusted people who could “handle it”. However, we now see a way for AGI to directly empower everyone as the most capable tool in human history.

The Path to Democratic AI

If we can empower everyone with AGI, we believe people will build incredible things for each other and continue to drive society and quality of life forward. It will, of course, not be all used for good, but we trust humanity and think the good will outweigh the bad by orders of magnitude. We are committed to this path of democratic AI. We want to put incredible tools in the hands of everyone and are amazed and delighted by what they are creating with our tools. We want to open source very capable models and give our users a great deal of freedom in how we let them use our tools within broad boundaries.

Building a Brain for the World

We want to build a brain for the world and make it super easy for people to use for whatever they want, subject to few restrictions. People are using ChatGPT to increase their productivity as scientists, coders, and much more. They are using ChatGPT to solve serious healthcare challenges and learn more than ever before. People are using ChatGPT to get advice about how to handle difficult situations. We are very proud to offer a service that is doing so much for so many people; it is one of the most direct fulfillments of our mission we can imagine.

Evolution of OpenAI’s Structure

It is time for us to evolve our structure. There are three things we want to accomplish:

• We made the decision for the nonprofit to stay in control after hearing from civic leaders and having discussions with the offices of the Attorneys General of California and Delaware.
• The for-profit LLC under the nonprofit will transition to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) with the same mission.
• Instead of our current complex capped-profit structure, we are moving to a normal capital structure where everyone has stock.

The Future of OpenAI

The nonprofit will continue to control the PBC and will become a big shareholder in the PBC, giving the nonprofit resources to support programs so AI can benefit many different communities, consistent with the mission. As the PBC grows, the nonprofit’s resources will grow, so it can do even more. We’re excited to soon get recommendations from our nonprofit commission on how we can help make sure AI benefits everyone—not just a few.

Conclusion

We believe this sets us up to continue to make rapid, safe progress and to put great AI in the hands of everyone. Creating AGI is our brick in the path of human progress; we can’t wait to see what bricks you will add next.