OpenAI’s Greg Brockman backs out of second $25 million donation to AI super PAC

OpenAI’s Greg Brockman backs out of second $25 million donation to AI super PAC

The New York Times reports:

The OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, have pulled out of a $25 million donation that they had planned to give to a leading artificial intelligence advocacy group, a sign of how sensitive the company has become to the growing backlash to A.I.

The group, a super PAC called Leading the Future, said last summer and repeated in later comments that the Brockmans planned to donate a total of $50 million, with the first $25 million in 2025 and a second $25 million this year. That second commitment has since wilted away.

Mr. Brockman’s retrenchment was never announced publicly. But inside OpenAI, the 38-year-old executive shared in June that he had no plans to make additional donations beyond the first $25 million.

“I also want to say that I feel terrible about the fact that LTF keeps reflecting on the company and become so much of a distraction for people here,” Mr. Brockman wrote that month in a Slack message obtained by The New York Times. “I’ve been thinking hard about how to turn the ship on it. We’ve donated $25m so far, and have no plans to donate more at this time.”

OpenAI has drawn fire for a host of safety concerns and the A.I. industry’s lobbying effort has attracted scrutiny in recent months. Some in the industry view Leading the Future as too dismissive of calls for A.I. safety, just as OpenAI tries to stake out a middle ground of sorts. Several ideological allies of the super PAC have also had issues with the group’s at-times aggressive tactics against opponents, including a high-profile effort against a New York congressional candidate.

In June, 10 days before Mr. Brockman’s internal message, OpenAI published an unusual blog post distancing itself from the super PAC.

“OpenAI does not direct the activities of LTF, or have visibility into their operations,” the San Francisco company wrote, adding in bold: “We want to be explicit: No outside political group speaks for OpenAI or represents our company’s views.” [Continue reading…]

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