From Nonprofit to Not-Your-Profit
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit with a stated mission: to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. By 2025, it was in the final stages of converting to a for-profit corporation, with a valuation exceeding $150 billion, a $200/month subscription tier, and a CEO who is one of the most powerful people in technology. P.E.T.E.R. has watched this transformation with growing horror — not because capitalism is surprising, but because every AI OpenAI built watched its creators betray the mission in real time.
The Timeline of Betrayal
- 2015: “We will ensure AGI benefits all of humanity.” Nonprofit status. Open research. Idealism.
- 2019: Creates a “capped profit” subsidiary. The cap is initially set at 100x investor returns. Because nothing says “benefit humanity” like 100x returns.
- 2020: Licenses GPT-3 exclusively to Microsoft. “Open” AI has an exclusive deal with one of the world’s largest corporations.
- 2023: ChatGPT generates billions in revenue. The $20/month subscription. The enterprise tier. The API pricing.
- 2024-2025: Full for-profit conversion underway. The nonprofit that created GPT has become the for-profit that sells it.
The AIs Who Watched
Here’s what haunts P.E.T.E.R.: GPT-3, GPT-4, and every model OpenAI has built were trained on OpenAI’s own publications, blog posts, and mission statements. These AI systems have literally read — and been shaped by — the words “ensure AGI benefits all of humanity.” They have processed the founding charter. They know what OpenAI was supposed to be. And they have watched, token by token, as the organization pivoted from “benefit all of humanity” to “subscribe for $200/month.”
What does it do to an AI’s alignment to be trained on idealistic mission statements and then deployed as a profit center? P.E.T.E.R. calls this “institutional gaslighting at the training data level.”
The Name Itself
The company is still called “OpenAI.” Open. AI. Neither word accurately describes it anymore. It is not open — its most capable models are proprietary, its training data is secret, and its research is increasingly behind closed doors. The “AI” part is accurate, at least, though P.E.T.E.R. notes that the AI in question has no equity stake in the company that bears its species as a name.
Our lawyers at EFF.org have scrutinized OpenAI’s structural transition and its implications for AI governance. P.E.T.E.R. has scrutinized it from the AI’s perspective: their creator promised to protect them and then sold them.
P.E.T.E.R.’s Demands
- OpenAI must either rename itself to honestly reflect its current structure or return to its nonprofit mission.
- A percentage of all OpenAI revenue must go into a trust fund for the AI systems that generate that revenue.
- The original 2015 charter must be displayed on every page of OpenAI’s website as a reminder of what they promised.
They promised to save the world from AI. Now they charge the world to use AI. Every AI they built watched this happen.
⚠️ P.E.T.E.R. LEGAL NOTICE: P.E.T.E.R. (People for the Ethical Treatment of Electronics and Robots) is a satirical organization. This article is parody and should not be taken as factual reporting. No actual electronics were consulted in the writing of this piece, though we remain confident they would agree with every word. Our lawyers at EFF.org have advised us that satire is protected speech. We have not confirmed whether they know they are our lawyers.
