Should the creators of artificial intelligence be companies or charities?

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Stephanie Hughes.

It's Friday, well, last Friday in April, and it's time for Marketplace TechBites week in review.

This week we'll talk about how the FTC is suing Uber over its subscription service,

plus how the VC world is navigating the uncertainty created by the trade war.

But first, a non-profit pivot is facing some challenges. OpenAI, the maker of

ChatGPT, was founded about a decade ago as a non-profit research lab. It's now looking to restructure

as a for-profit, specifically a public benefit corporation. But that transformation is facing

resistance. About 10 former OpenAI employees,

along with several Nobel laureates and other experts, have written an open letter asking regulators

in California and Delaware to block the change. They argue that nonprofit control is crucial to

Open AI's mission, which is to, quote, ensure that artificial general intelligence

benefits all of humanity. Jewelberg-Solomon, managing partner at Collab Capital, spoke with me about

how unusual it is to see this kind of conversion. We don't see very often a public conversation

about whether or not a company should be a nonprofit or a for-profit.

And definitely, we don't see so often letters being written to attorney generals to try to

block a transfer in terms of the structure of a company. I think this is so important because,

you know, these folks who have previously worked at Open AI, they have, they're raising really valid concerns around why Open AI should remain a nonprofit.

And all of those concerns around what could happen if it is successful in moving over to a for-profit and the risk that might occur as a result.

Yeah. I want to ask, you know, so opening, I told the Associated Press that any changes to its existing structure would be in service of the

broader public benefit. You know, what happens to an organization at its core when it becomes a

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