The OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, pulled out of a $25 million donation that they had planned to give to a leading artificial intelligence advocacy group, a sign of how sensitive the company has become to the growing backlash to A.I.<\/p>\n
The group, a super PAC called Leading the Future, said<\/a> last summer and repeated<\/a> in later comments that the Brockmans planned to donate a total of $50 million, with the first $25 million in 2025 and a second $25 million this year. That second commitment has since wilted away.<\/p>\n Mr. Brockman\u2019s retrenchment was never announced publicly. But inside OpenAI, the 38-year-old executive shared in June that he had no plans to make additional donations beyond the first $25 million.<\/p>\n \u201cI also want to say that I feel terrible about the fact that LTF keeps reflecting on the company and become so much of a distraction for people here,\u201d Mr. Brockman wrote that month in a Slack message obtained by The New York Times. \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking hard about how to turn the ship on it. We\u2019ve donated $25m so far, and have no plans to donate more at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n OpenAI has drawn fire for a host of safety concerns, and the A.I. industry\u2019s lobbying effort has attracted scrutiny in recent months. Some in the industry view Leading the Future as too dismissive of calls for A.I. safety, just as OpenAI tries to stake out a middle ground of sorts. Several ideological allies of the super PAC have also had issues with the group\u2019s at-times aggressive tactics against opponents, including a high-profile effort against a New York congressional candidate.<\/a><\/p>\n In June, 10 days before Mr. Brockman\u2019s internal message, OpenAI published an unusual blog post distancing itself from the super PAC.<\/p>\n \u201cOpenAI does not direct the activities of LTF, or have visibility into their operations,\u201d the San Francisco company wrote. It added in bold, \u201cWe want to be explicit: No outside political group speaks for OpenAI or represents our company\u2019s views.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Brockman, who increasingly oversees day-to-day management at OpenAI, has aligned himself tightly with the Trump administration, and appeared on Tuesday at an A.I. policy meeting hosted by President Trump<\/a>. He has said his donations to Leading the Future, along with another $25 million he and his wife gave last year to Mr. Trump\u2019s super PAC, are in pursuit of backing \u201cteam humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a small number of politicians who I think \u2014 despite realizing it\u2019s not the most popular thing \u2014 are really putting themselves out there to say, actually, we think [A.I.] is important for the country,\u201d Mr. Brockman told Wired<\/a> this year. \u201cAnything I can do to support this technology benefiting everyone is a thing that I will do. In this sense, maybe supporting the team is bigger than the people that I happen to be employed with. It\u2019s really team humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Brockman\u2019s support for Leading the Future has been divisive inside OpenAI, The Times reported in June<\/a>, with top policy executives trying to distance themselves from the super PAC.<\/p>\n The super PAC told The Times in February<\/a> that the Brockmans\u2019 second $25 million donation would come in the first quarter of 2026. It did not, nor did it come in the second quarter. The third quarter ends Wednesday.<\/p>\n A representative for Mr. and Ms. Brockman declined to comment. Leading the Future declined to comment.<\/p>\n Leading the Future is not hurting for cash. It accepted $50 million from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which has invested in A.I. companies, and Leading the Future\u2019s groups had about $43 million on hand as of June 30. After spending tens of millions of dollars<\/a> on the primary season, the super PAC network has not done much spending ahead of the general election. The group\u2019s allied nonprofit is focusing its spending on promoting data centers in a few key states.<\/p>\n