“OpenAI-Backed Nonprofits Have Gone Back on Their Transparency Pledges”, Paresh Dave2024-06-17 (OA)⁠:

2 organizations that supported unconditional cash grants told Wired that they will no longer disclose their financial statements and internal policies. Their stance follows a similar denial by OpenAI.

A Sam Altman-funded nonprofit studying the effects of giving monthly checks of up to $1,217.75^$1,000₂₀₁₇ to lower-income households in the US espouses transparency in its operations. “We aim to share data, findings, and insights widely”, OpenResearch says on its website, which describes its work as a “public good”.

But like at least two other Altman-linked organizations—OpenAI and UBI Charitable—OpenResearch has decided to withhold information about its finances and governance. In several years of filings to US tax authorities since their founding, each of the organizations has answered a question about their voluntary disclosure of financial statements, governing documents, and conflict-of-interest policies by stating that the public can review them upon request. It remains unclear whether anyone took them up on the offer in those years.

When Wired requested those records, spokespeople for OpenAI in December and OpenResearch and UBI Charitable this month said their policies had changed, and up-to-date documents would not be disclosed. OpenResearch spokesperson Sourav Das only shared an undated and likely outdated conflict-of-interest policy bearing its old name, while UBI Charitable, which supports programs that offer unconditional cash transfers, didn’t turn over any records.

Both organizations claim their past statements on IRS forms were meant to underscore that they share documents they are required to under law, such as the filings themselves and their original applications to secure an exemption from paying taxes. But there’s already a wholly separate question on the form about access to documents that must be legally disclosed.

A UBI Charitable spokesperson responding with an unsigned email from an account titled “UBI Admin” didn’t respond to follow-up questions about their identity and additional explanation on why records hadn’t been provided. OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood says Altman has no formal role at UBI Charitable.

…Altman chairs OpenResearch’s board but has provided “total independence” to the organization, Rhodes recently told Fortune. Yet he is entangled in other ways. OpenResearch was $14.5 million in debt to Altman as of the end of 2022 to repay about $14 million he had personally loaned the organization, according to the organization’s filings to the IRS to stay exempt from paying taxes. OpenAI also contributed at least $75,000 in a grant to OpenResearch.

Its IRS filings, which span 2016^–₆2022, maintained that the nonprofit would release records that it’s not under obligation to do so. Das, the spokesperson, says the 2023 filing will clarify that OpenResearch is “happy to provide information required to be shared publicly if it is not available” on websites where the IRS and state of California publish required disclosures.

Neither database mandates nor generally contains up-to-date versions of the records that UBI Charitable and OpenResearch had said they provided in the past.

The original YC Research conflict-of-interest policy that Das did share calls for company insiders to be upfront about transactions in which their impartiality could be questioned and for the board to decide how to proceed.

Das says the policy “may have been amended since OpenResearch’s policies changed (including when the name was changed from YC Research), but the core elements remain the same.”

…UBI Charitable doesn’t appear to have a website but shares a San Francisco address with OpenResearch and OpenAI, and OpenAI staff have been listed on UBI Charitable’s government paperwork. Its 3 Form 990 filings since launching all state that records including governing documents, financial statements, and a conflict-of-interest policy were available upon request.

Rick Cohen, chief operating and communications officer for National Council of Nonprofits, an advocacy group, says “available upon request” is a standard answer plugged in by accounting firms. OpenAI, OpenResearch, and UBI Charitable have always shared the same San Francisco accounting firm, Fontanello Duffield & Otake, which didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Miscommunication or poor oversight could lead to the standard answer about access to records getting submitted, “even if the organization wasn’t intending to make them available”, Cohen says.