The organization Encode has appealed to the court to support Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the transformation of OpenAI into a commercial company. In its address to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Encode stated that OpenAI’s shift to a commercial basis “undermines” its mission of safely developing and implementing advanced technologies for the public good.
Encode accused OpenAI of “appropriating AI profits and shifting the consequences onto all of humanity.” The organization emphasized that the courts must intervene to ensure that AI development serves the public interest. Encode’s position was supported by Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel Prize laureate for 2024, and Professor Stuart Russell of the University of California, Berkeley.
OpenAI, founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab, now has a hybrid structure. The company plans to convert its commercial division into a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation, leaving control with the nonprofit arm in exchange for shares. Musk, who was one of OpenAI’s initial investors, filed the lawsuit in November, accusing the company of abandoning its original mission.
