Considering all the controversy OpenAI generated as a capital-intensive startup founded as a non-profit organizationyou’d think today’s AI-focused founders would like to avoid this management structure.
In reality, nevertheless, the variety of nonprofit AI startups is growing at a rapid pace. Nonprofit Accelerator Fast forward This 12 months, greater than a third of applicants to the newest class were artificial intelligence corporations, he said. They apply this technology in areas similar to education, healthcare and critical infrastructure.
As we noted a few months ago, tech nonprofits They’re actually not that unusual. Although most entrepreneurs select for-profit business models, some find them inappropriate. This applies to such famous names as e.g Wikipedia, MozillaAND Khan academythat operate as non-profit organizations.
As the OpenAI drama continues to unfold, we thought it was time to attach with the co-founder of Fast Forward Kevin Barenblat about the lessons learned and the likely scale of growth for more AI nonprofits.
OpenAI looks like a unique case
According to Barenblat, OpenAI is a unique case. This is an unprecedented achievement for a for-profit startup $10 billion financing deal With Microsoft — let alone a nonprofit organization (albeit one with a for-profit subsidiary). It’s also unusual for an apparently nonprofit company to develop technology that is perceived to have such high business value.
“In the beginning, the idea was that AI was both an opportunity and a threat,” he said. The idea behind non-profits was that the advantages would accrue to humanity, not profit maximization.
He noted that what happened many years ago made the mission very expensive. “They decided that this path would require capital that would be difficult to obtain within a nonprofit organization. And that’s how we got to where we are.”
Newer AI-powered nonprofits
There are many AI nonprofits today, most of which expect they will not need or have the opportunity to lift billions at scale.
Instead of focusing on developing core enabling technologies, many people are working on existing generative AI platforms. For example Play Laboratoryparticipant in the Fast Forward accelerator focusing on AI-enabled tools for teachers and students, allowing users to decide on Anthropic or OpenAI models for creating learning experiences.
Meanwhile, when it involves healthcare, based in Boston Restart RX has raised at least $1 million on its mission to rapidly develop reasonably priced cancer treatments using repurposed generic medicines, artificial intelligence technologies and progressive financing models.
Another non-profit organization based in India Workincreases the variety of jobs for residents of rural areas who provide linguistic data to automatic speech recognition systems.
More broadly, around the world dozens of organizations, including nonprofits, academic groups, and research centers, are dedicated to working toward an ethical approach to artificial intelligence. Some of them that got here to light during our evaluation include:
- Algorithmic watchbased in Berlin and Zurich, focuses on promoting algorithms and artificial intelligence that enhance “justice, democracy and sustainable development.”
- JoyEducationa virtual clinic for students with reading difficulties, uses AI voice technology to adapt its curriculum.
- Earth05a start-up non-profit organization from Barcelona desires to implement artificial intelligence as part of worldwide water conservation efforts.
Business models in the era of AGI
While we may (or may not) be far from achieving artificial general intelligence, it’s clearly not too early to fret about what sorts of business ventures it would power.
As with virtually any transformative technology, if it falls into the flawed hands – or even well-meaning but misguided hands – it could have disastrous consequences. It’s no surprise, then, that there is a growing variety of founders attempting to harness the guarantees of AI for useful purposes.