On 11 December 2015 OpenAI was announced as a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Sam Altman and Elon Musk were co-chairs, and backers pledged a total of US$1 billion.
What happened
- OpenAI said its goal was to advance digital intelligence in the way most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, without the pressure of generating a financial return.
- Ilya Sutskever was named research director and Greg Brockman chief technology officer.
- The US$1 billion in pledges came from backers including Altman, Brockman, Musk, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Amazon Web Services, Infosys, and YC Research.
- The organisation said it would share its research openly, and it launched with a team of researchers and advisers from academia and industry.
Why it mattered
OpenAI went on to release GPT models and ChatGPT and became central to the generative AI boom. Its later move away from a purely non-profit structure became a point of dispute among its founders.
Lessons for organisations
When organisations adopt AI tools, they should look at the governance, ownership, and incentives of their providers as well as the technology. These factors affect how data is handled and how stable a service will be.
Sources: TechCrunch, CNBC
Part of our Top stories archive of headline-making events in information security, privacy, and AI. If you would like help applying the lessons to your organisation, contact us.
