AI’s public ‘benefit’ facade
Hey everyone,
We were in New York City last week for Climate Week, and it was full on — in the best way. In case you missed it, we hosted a live show on the data center boom with three incredible organizers from resistance efforts across the country, all fighting the AI-fueled land grab. Big thanks to everyone who came through in-person or tuned in from home.
→ Watch the show here
→ Listen to the conversation here
If you like what you hear, share it with the people in your life watching the AI hype machine and asking, “Wait — who asked for this?” The more eyes and ears on this, the better.
And if you’re interested in bringing a live show to your city or community, hit reply and let us know.
Coming out of Climate Week, I was left wondering about how AI companies use the language of ‘benefit’, and how that narrative device buys them time to burn fossil fuels while they frantically seek market fit.
Earlier this year, I had the great pleasure of facilitating the REALML community in Mexico City, where we challenged the use of concepts like ‘humanity’ and ‘benefit’ in AI discourse. Shazeda Ahmed led a sharp provocation on benefit as a rhetorical device. Who does it serve? What does it hide? What is it really for?
That conversation got us thinking, so our Research Manager, Hanna Barakat, did some digging into the idea of public benefit corporations (sidenote: huge congrats to Hanna for starting her PhD program last month!). We started by asking how the hell an organization like Anthropic — partnered with the Department of Defense to integrate knowingly faulty technology into weapons of war — can be a public BENEFIT corporation.
And maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I was shocked to learn that xAI was also set up as a PBC. Musk has since ditched the status - for reasons I’m guessing have nothing to do with shame or moral clarity. Now Sam Altman is trying to convert OpenAI’s 501c3 governance structure to a PBC.
As far as we can tell, these corporate forms don’t confer tax benefits, so why do the AI CEOs want them? What’s in it for them?
It appears to be part of this ‘benefit’ sleight of hand: offer the public vague ideas of benefit, distract from the real harms, and deflect the tough question: is all of this actually worth it?
It feels like a great moment to challenge the narrative that these companies are net beneficial to society.
If you or your organization are interested in better understanding the legal implications of these statuses or in building strategies to call out these hollow claims of benefit, hit reply and let us know. We might convene a group around it to explore further if it’s of interest.
Alix