Geoffrey Hinton, widely regarded as the “godfather of AI” for his pioneering work in neural networks, is backing Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit entity, according to a report by Business Insider.
Hinton, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in October 2024, spent over a decade at Google before resigning in May 2023. In a statement released by Encode, a youth-led advocacy group for human-centered AI, Hinton expressed concerns about OpenAI’s shift from its original mission.
“OpenAI was founded as an explicitly safety-focused non-profit and made a variety of safety-related promises in its charter,” Hinton said. He emphasized that OpenAI had benefited from tax advantages and other incentives as a nonprofit, adding, “Allowing it to tear all of that up when it becomes inconvenient sends a very bad message to other actors in the ecosystem.”
Encode filed an amicus brief on Friday in support of Musk’s legal efforts to block OpenAI’s transformation.
Hinton has also voiced criticism of OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, accusing him of prioritizing profits over safety. He described Altman’s approach as “unfortunate” and misaligned with the organization’s founding principles.
OpenAI, launched in 2015 as a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring the safe development of artificial intelligence, has recently made strides toward becoming a for-profit entity. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI but left its board in 2018, has been vocal about opposing this shift.
In his lawsuit, Musk accused OpenAI of abandoning its nonprofit mission by partnering with Microsoft and alleged that its executives “deceived” him into co-founding the organization by leveraging his concerns about AI’s existential risks. Although the lawsuit was withdrawn in June, Musk refiled it in August.
The legal battle highlights growing tensions within the AI community about balancing profit motives with ethical and safety considerations in developing transformative technologies.
