OpenAI’s plans to become a for-profit company have made a whistleblower worried that the firm could begin cutting corners on safety. Plus, the whole project just seems incredibly complex.

The AI start-up aims to restructure its core business model into a for-profit entity in order to reassure current and future investors.

OpenAI is negotiating a new $6.5 billion financing round that would value the company at $150 billion, but that’s contingent on the firm upending its corporate structure. That might be the reason three top technical leaders, including chief technology officer Mira Murati, left the company last week.

The project is also the reason William Saunders, a former research engineer at OpenAI, is speaking out about his concern that the company is moving this particular way and that Sam Altman, the CEO, would hold a hefty stake in the restructured business.

“I’m most concerned about what this means for governance of safety decisions at OpenAI,” Saunders told The Guardian. “If the non-profit board is no longer in control of these decisions and Sam Altman holds a significant equity stake, this creates more incentive to race and cut corners.”

OpenAI was founded as a non-profit entity committed to benefiting “all of humanity.” But Saunders believes that the race to build more powerful AI tech could ignore safety concerns.

Besides, according to the whistleblower who testified in the US Senate earlier in September, removing limits on profit would signal that OpenAI no...

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