Renowned worldwide, OpenAI is ardently committed to ensuring that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits humanity in the broadest way possible. This pursuit is two-fold, focusing on the development of AGI that is safe and beneficial, and striving to cultivate an environment where the benefits are widely obtainable. Recently, we've shared some insights into our diligent work towards our mission, shedding light on a few key facts around our association with Elon Musk. Further, we aim to clear the air on any unfounded allegations made by Elon.
In our early stages, we soon realized that building AGI requires a lot more resources than we initially anticipated. Elon Musk advocated for a significant initial funding commitment of $1B to OpenAI. Nevertheless, Elon's total donations along with other contributors, have so far raised less than $145M in funds.
As we ventured towards creating AGI, our calculations in 2017 brought us to a critical realization - AGI necessitates vast amounts of computational power. It became clear to us that we needed more capital to fulfil our mission - billions of dollars annually, which we didn't think we could raise with our non-profit structure.
Elon Musk, along with us, agreed that a for-profit entity might better equip us to gather the necessary resources. Amidst conversations around this structure, Elon expressed an interest in merging us with Tesla, or acquiring complete control. However, we ultimately couldn't agree to this as it opposes our mission of preventing any individual from having absolute control over OpenAI.
Regardless, our mission propels forward, enhancing and broadly distributing advantageous tools. Our technology is making strides in empowering people and improving their every day lives, even offering open-source contributions.
OpenAI has had a tremendous impact in various sectors globally. For instance, Albania is leveraging OpenAI's tools to expedite its EU accession by nearly 5.5 years. Furthermore, Lifespan, Rhode Island’s largest healthcare provider, is simplifying its surgical consent forms, dropping them from a college reading level to a 6th grade level using GPT-4, another milestone of our AI tech. Iceland is even using GPT-4 in an effort to preserve the Icelandic language.
We find it disheartening that our relationship with Elon, whom we deeply admired, has ended up here. However, our mission remains our top priority, and we're devoted to enhancing our systems and tools. We eagerly anticipate seeing how our technology will empower individuals world over.
Disclaimer: The above article was written with the assistance of AI. The original sources can be found on OpenAI.
