When they founded? Yes. The issue was that the big AI players (Google, Facebook, etc.) were keeping their models and training data secret. People (rightly, IMHO) saw this opaque development style as a risk. The OpenAI founders made a big splash by registering as a non-profit and declaring that they were going to do all their model training in public, and share the weights for everyone to use. In other words they were claiming to do something more like what Stability AI is today, except with a stronger legal non-profit organization.
Because of that framing, they poached a lot of very good talent and built one of the best AI teams that has ever been assembled. Then they perverted their corporate structure to be effective for-profit, and renegaded on open access to their trained models, turning into a bog standard service-oriented company.
Because of that framing, they poached a lot of very good talent and built one of the best AI teams that has ever been assembled. Then they perverted their corporate structure to be effective for-profit, and renegaded on open access to their trained models, turning into a bog standard service-oriented company.