One of the main problems AI technology has brought about are the companies that own them. AI, like any technology, can be used for good or ill. Ultimately it will be the companies that own them who make that decision. Open AI, one of the most prominent AI companies, has an increasingly fraught record including worker abuse and hypocrisy. This company and others like it should be a concern to those following AI’s development.

Open AI — the parent company of Dall-E 2, and ChatGPT — is owned by numerous venture capitalists. Among the founders are Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, though Musk has since resigned from the board. Microsoft has since invested $10 billion into Open AI. Musk and Thiel have controversial records beginning in their days at PayPal.

The CEO of OpenAI is Sam Altman. Unlike billionaire counterparts Thiel and Musk, Altman is only a millionaire. This should be compared with the $47,406 average salary of Visual Artists, whom Altman’s AI allegedly steals from, and is below the estimated median salary of $54,132 for American workers. This flies in the face of Open AI’s advertised beliefs:

“We commit to use any influence we obtain over AGI’s (Artificial General Intelligence) deployment to ensure it is used for the benefit of all, and to avoid enabling uses of AI or AGI that harm humanity or unduly concentrate power,” the Open AI Charter reads.

This hypocrisy is deepened by reporting from Time that Open AI contracted Kenyan workers at $2 an hour to filter out inappropriate content from its chatbot, GPT-3. ChatGPT’s forebearer GPT-3 frequently produced toxic texts and images including sexual abuse of children, torture, bestiality and other horrific imagery.

“That was torture,” a Kenyan worker told Time. “You will read a number of statements like that all through the week. By the time it gets to Friday, you are disturbed from thinking through that picture.”

Reuters has projected that Open AI will be making $1 billion in revenue by 2024. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Open AI has been in talks valuing the company at $29 billion. With this projected value, it won’t be long before a bigger, less regulated company comes along to buy it. The venture capitalists in OpenAI have shown they are willing to go against their own charter, abuse their contracted workers and still make millions. With companies like OpenAI having ownership of these AI, more of these concerning developments are sure to come.

Edited by Molly Gibbs | mgibbs@themaneater.com
Copy edited by Shirin Rekabdar-Xavier and Mary Philip