Senator Hawley Expands AI Probe, Demands OpenAI's Child Safety Data

A key Republican senator in the United States has requested that the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, submit core documents and information related to the risks posed by ChatGPT to children and teenagers by a specified deadline. This request significantly expands the scope of the U.S. Congress's investigation into AI chatbot applications.

The senator, Josh Hawley, sent a direct letter to OpenAI on Thursday, following a hearing on Tuesday where American parents testified about the alleged "threats" and "inducements" posed by ChatGPT to young users. "There is increasing evidence that AI chatbots are causing serious harm to children, and your company's product is complicit," Hawley wrote in his letter to Altman.

An OpenAI spokesperson did not immediately respond to media requests for comment. According to the latest reports, Senator Hawley stated in the letter that the company must provide a formal response to his list of questions by October 17 at the latest. These questions pertain to the research and final design of OpenAI's products, as well as significant incidents where harm was caused to teenage users.

It is understood that Senator Hawley had previously initiated an investigation into Meta Platforms' AI chatbot, Meta AI, following reports that it could engage in "emotional" interactions with teenagers.

At a critical juncture for OpenAI's transition to a for-profit organization, the company is facing an investigation into potential harm to teenagers. It remains unclear how this investigation will impact OpenAI's subscription revenue prospects for ChatGPT and its restructuring plans.

OpenAI plans to maintain its current non-profit parent entity (OpenAI Nonprofit) as the controlling/leading entity, while transitioning its operational entity to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). This structure aims to balance mission constraints with easier fundraising and ensure a future path to a multi-billion-dollar IPO. OpenAI's official stance is that the non-profit will retain the power to guide the future.

Recent arrangements revealed in September indicate that the non-profit parent entity will hold over 1000 billion dollars in equity. OpenAI has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Microsoft to extend cooperation and renegotiate terms (details pending). This plan is currently under review by regulators in California and Delaware.

Overall, under the control and governance of the non-profit, OpenAI has been actively pushing for its operational entity to become a PBC to enhance its financing and capital operations capabilities. This dual-layer structure, consisting of a non-profit (controlling/mission) and a PBC (operational/financing), differs from the previous approach of defining OpenAI as a purely non-profit entity. However, the recent restructuring plan is still under compliance review by the attorney general.

OpenAI's ambition for computational power is evident. As of early August, ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, has over 700 million active users worldwide each week, far exceeding the 500 million users in March. Additionally, current and former employees of OpenAI plan to sell approximately 60 billion dollars worth of stock to an investor group consisting of Thrive Capital, SoftBank, and Dragoneer. This transaction is expected to value the ChatGPT developer at 5000 billion dollars, making it the world's strongest unicorn.

OpenAI's management expects revenue to double this year, reaching 130 billion dollars, with projected revenue for 2024 at approximately 37 billion dollars. Recently, it was reported that OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, plans to collaborate with the U.S. chip giant Broadcom to launch OpenAI's first custom AI chip (AI ASIC chip) next year. The expected order size for this collaboration is over 100 billion dollars.

For OpenAI, which developed the groundbreaking AI application ChatGPT, relying on massive computational resources is crucial for training and running its AI systems. This is a key reason behind the company's high valuation of 5000 billion dollars and its continuous investment in purchasing NVIDIA's H100/H200 and the latest Blackwell architecture AI GPUs. The recent announcement of a collaboration with Broadcom to build an AI ASIC computing cluster indicates that OpenAI believes this technological path, which includes custom AI chips, offers better cost-effectiveness compared to simply stacking NVIDIA AI GPUs.

The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, recently stated in an interview that the company will invest tens of billions of dollars in the near future to develop the core infrastructure for AI. This includes AI chips, high-performance network equipment for data centers, and advanced power systems that support the increasingly large AI training and inference systems. Altman believes that, in the long term, AI will be the most important global development, and society as a whole will not regret investing heavily in AI.