OpenAI’s for-profit pivot is not surprising

Silicon Valley—and the tech industry more generally—has long maintained an ethos of saving the world. The belief is so prevalent that it was mocked on HBO’s show Silicon Valley in a montage of startup founders all promising to “make the world a better place" with their ultra-niche product or service.

The latest news about OpenAI’s evolution, from non-profit research lab to an investor-friendly for-profit growth machine, is a stark reminder that the ‘mission’ shtick doesn’t last long in a region awash with money and dominated by incumbents. It’s time that job-hunting engineer and the rest of us become more wary of such feel-good pronouncements.

The tech industry has always been well-suited to grand narratives about changing the world. It’s not just that tech products have altered the way we live and work, but the rapid pace of those changes makes grand claims plausible. 

Also read: Turning OpenAI into a real business is tearing it apart

It’s easy to wrap broad, aspirational messaging around an abstract product like social media or AI. But over time, the side effects of these services become apparent.

Alphabet’s Google was founded with the motto “don’t be evil," then went on to dominate the online search market, collect egregious levels of personal data and sideline the members on its AI ethics research teams.

Meta Platforms Inc’s original mission was to “bring the world closer together," but Facebook has allowed misinformation and conspiracy theories to spread, polarizing us and trapping us in “echo chambers," while Instagram has dented young people’s mental health.

Twitter billed itself as a public town square and hub for free speech, but under Elon Musk’s ownership, this platform has amplified extremist views while gutting its trust and safety teams.

Framing yourself as ‘mission oriented’ has obvious advantages. The halo effect of benevolence attracts plenty of talented scientists and engineers. OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever once wrote in a 2016 email—published during the company’s legal spat with Musk—that the company should only really be “open" with its research in its early days “for recruitment purposes."

It also appeals to the press, potential investors and even regulators. Altman has often played up the company’s founding mission in public to generate goodwill. “Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return," the company’s first 2015 blog post still says.

Also read: OpenAI discusses giving Sam Altman 7% stake in for-profit shift

“It was clear early on that they weren’t going to be completely open despite their name," says Gary Marcus, professor emeritus at New York University and author of Taming Silicon Valley, who told me months before the release of ChatGPT that OpenAI was being too secretive about how it trained its models. “[Altman] gives people what they want to hear, and what they wanted to hear was, ‘We’re in the public interest’."

In the past week, it’s been reported that OpenAI will soon be pivoting to a more corporate structure, one in which its non-profit board will be shut down, a cap for investor profit will be removed and Altman himself will be granted as much as 7% equity in the firm, worth an estimated $6.5 billion.

Up until now, Altman has stated that he wouldn’t take equity, stressing OpenAI was meant to broadly benefit society. Meanwhile, leaders like chief technology officer Mira Murati, along with two other key executives, have been leaving.

None of this has stopped the company from doubling down on its ‘mission’ focused rhetoric. “We remain focused on building AI that benefits everyone, and we’re working with our board to ensure that we’re best positioned to succeed in our mission," an OpenAI spokesperson told Reuters this week.

Also read: Sam Altman’s $7 trillion AI plan: But then, how else can we save the world?

But it’s worth noting that Altman’s pivot isn’t an anomaly. It’s a recurring Silicon Valley theme of defining oneself with a lofty mission that’s eventually eclipsed by rapid growth and profit. In an ideal world, these companies would be more explicit about that endgame—they have a fiduciary duty to their investors after all.

But so long as they operate (for now at least) in a regulatory vacuum, tech firms will continue to paint a mirage about their objectives, one for which we should all become far more wary. If Altman’s latest actions make that more apparent, so much the better. ©bloomberg