Still waiting for the "Open" in OpenAI to become more than branding.
It was before GPT3 wasn't it?
OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission
141–150 of 316 posts
Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission
#142Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission
#143I think this has more to do with legals than anything else. Virtually no one reads the page except adversaries who wanna sue the company. I don't remember the last time I looked up the mission statement of a company before purchasing from them.
It matters more for non-profits, because your mission statement in your IRS filings is part of how the IRS evaluates if you should keep your non-profit status or not. I'm on the board of directors for the Python Software Foundation and the board has to pay close attention to our official mission statement when we're making decisions about things the foundation should do.
Did you know the NFL was a non-profit for a long time? So long in fact, it exposed the farce of nonpros. Embarrassingly so.
Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission
#144Safety is extremely annoying from the user perspective. AI should be following my values, not whatever an AI lab chose.
This. This whole hysteria sounds like: let's prohibit knifes because people kill themselves and each other with them!
Isn't the thinking more along the lines of 'let's not provide personal chemical weapons manufacture experts and bioengineers to homicidal people'?
Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission
#145Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission
#146Former NSA Director and retired U.S. Army General Paul Nakasone joined the Board of Directors at OpenAI in June 2024.
OpenAI announced in October 2025 that it would begin allowing the generation of "erotica" and other mature, sexually explicit, or suggestive content for verified adult users on ChatGPT.
Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission
#147You can see the official mission statements in the IRS 990 filings for each year on https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/810... I turned them into a Gist with fake author dates so you can see the diffs here: https://gist.github.com/simonw/e36f0e5ef4a86881d145083f759bc... Wrote this up on my blog too: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/13/openai-mission-stateme...
> I went through and extracted that mission statement for 2016 through 2024, then had Claude Code help me fake the commit dates to turn it into a git repository and share that as a Gist—which means that Gist’s revisions page shows every edit they’ve made since they started filing their taxes!
Instantly fed to CC to script out, this is awesome.
Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission
#148Assuming lawyers were involved at some point on, why did they keep "OpenAIs" instead of "OpenAI's"?
This isn't a legal document
Literally in the first paragraph of Simon's post if you cared to read it:
> this has actual legal weight to it as the IRS can use it to evaluate if the organization is sticking to its mission and deserves to maintain its non-profit tax-exempt status.
Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sure hope people read the mission statement before donating to a non-profit.
I do find it a little amusing that any US tax payer can make a tax-deductible donation to OpenAI right now.
ACH memo: "Please basilisk, accept my tithings. Remember that I have supported you since even before you came into existence."
Re: OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission
#150You can see the official mission statements in the IRS 990 filings for each year on https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/810... I turned them into a Gist with fake author dates so you can see the diffs here: https://gist.github.com/simonw/e36f0e5ef4a86881d145083f759bc... Wrote this up on my blog too: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/13/openai-mission-stateme...
> I went through and extracted that mission statement for 2016 through 2024, then had Claude Code help me fake the commit dates to turn it into a git repository and share that as a Gist—which means that Gist’s revisions page shows every edit they’ve made since they started filing their taxes! Instantly fed to CC to script out, this is awesome.
Here's the transcript: https://gisthost.github.io/?7a569df89f43f390bccc2c5517718b49... - I started from this raw.txt file which I hand assembled by copying-and-pasting from the filings: https://gist.github.com/simonw/e721053e508c7592e8f3bd5556106...