OpenAI’s restructuring may serve as a test case for how society oversees the work of organizations with the potential to both provide benefits and harm humanity.

OpenAI, the maker of the most popular AI chatbot, used to say it aimed to build artificial intelligence that “safely benefits humanity, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,” according to its 2023 mission statement. But the ChatGPT maker seems to no longer have the same emphasis on doing so “safely.”