Dec. 31, 2024, 12:26 p.m. ET Geoffrey Hinton, the prominent data scientist known as the “Godfather of artificial intelligence,” is backing Elon Musk in his legal attempt to block OpenAI from switching to a for-profit company. Hinton, who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics in October, is known for his work developing artificial neural networks, the foundation for AI. “OpenAI was founded as an explicitly safety-focused non-profit and made a variety of safety related promises in its charter,” Hinton said in a statement published on Monday by Encode, a youth-led advocacy group for human-centered AI, which promotes using AI to improve human abilities instead of replacing them. Geoffrey Hinton is backing Elon Musk in his legal attempt to block OpenAI from becoming a for-profit company. TT NEWS AGENCY/AFP via Getty Images “It received numerous tax and other benefits from its non-profit status,” Hinton added. “Allowing it to tear all of that up when it becomes inconvenient sends a very bad message to other actors in the ecosystem.” OpenAI was initially created as a nonprofit research lab in 2015 by chief executive Sam Altman, Musk and others. In 2019, OpenAI aimed to act more like a startup, so it created a capped-profit model with the nonprofit still controlling the whole company. Explore More