Matt O’Brien
Openai has appointed Labour Party leader Dolores Huerta and three others to a temporary advisory committee seeking to move the charity of the artificial intelligence company into mandatory businesses.
Fuerta, who turned 95 last week, founded the first farmworkers union with Cesar Chavez in the early 1960s and now speaks about the direction of a charitable initiative that says the opening “considers both AI promises and risks.”
The group only takes 90 days to make a proposal.
“She recognizes the importance of AI in today’s world, and anyone who has been paying attention for the past 50 years knows that this conversation will be empowering,” said Daniel Zingale, convener of Openai’s new nonprofit committee and former advisor to three California governors.
Huerta’s advice is not binding, but the presence of social activist icons could be influential as Openai CEO Sam Altman attempts to restructure the San Francisco company’s corporate governance.
Another coalition of labor leaders and nonprofits recently investigated the open by Democratic state attorney general Rob Bonta, halting the proposed conversion, “profit-led hunger to power protects billions of dollars as profit-led hungers as conflicts of interest.”
Openai, the maker of ChatGpt, began in 2015 as a non-profit research institute dedicated to building safer AI than humans who benefit humanity.
It later formed a for-profit arm and shifted most of its staff there, but is still managed by a nonprofit board of directors. Now, they are trying to convert them into more fully for-profit organizations, but face many hurdles, including getting approval from the California and Delaware Attorney General and the possibility of acquiring priced assets from nonprofits.
Supported by Japanese tech giant SoftBank, Openai said last month it was working on raising $40 billion in funding, bringing it to $300 billion.
Fuerta will be joined by former Spanish media executive Monica Rozano on the new advisory committee. Robert Ross, recently retired president of the California Fund. Jack Oliver, a lawyer and longtime Republican campaign fundraiser. Zingale, the group’s convener, is a former aide to the California governor, including Democrat Gavin Newsom and Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“We are interested in how we place the power of AI in the hands of everyday people and the community organizations that serve them,” Zingale said in an interview Wednesday. “If AI is going to bring about a Renaissance, or a Dark Age, these are people who want to scale in favor of humanity.”
Associated Press and OpenAI have licenses and technology agreements that allow OpenAI to access some of the AP’s text archives.
Original issue: April 16, 2025, 2:58pm EDT
