“OpenAI Charter: Our Charter Describes the Principles We Use to Execute on OpenAI’s Mission”, 2018-04-09 (; backlinks):
OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity.
We will attempt to directly build safe and beneficial AGI, but will also consider our mission fulfilled if our work aids others to achieve this outcome.
To that end, we commit to the following principles:
Broadly distributed benefits: …Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity.
We anticipate needing to marshal substantial resources to fulfill our mission, but will always diligently act to minimize conflicts of interest among our employees and stakeholders that could compromise broad benefit.
Long-term safety: …We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions.
Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project.
We will work out specifics in case-by-case agreements, but a typical triggering condition might be “a better-than-even chance of success in the next two years.”
Technical leadership
Cooperative orientation