OpenAI's Charter includes a clause about assisting other organizations to advance safety instead of racing with them in late-stage AGI development.
Resolved true The record shows it happened or was so.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.
What would count as true or false
Judged as of 2023-02-24. True if OpenAI's published Charter (2018) contains a clause saying that, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before OpenAI, OpenAI commits to stop competing with it and start assisting it, framed around late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for safety precautions. Mostly true if the clause exists but differs in a minor detail from the description (e.g. it is conditional on the other project being value-aligned). Mostly false if the Charter has only a general cooperation or safety statement without the assist-instead-of-race commitment. False if no such clause exists.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (3)
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E1 AI Lab Watch · 21 July 2023
“We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project.”
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E2 OpenAI's "Planning For AGI And Beyond" Astral Codex Ten · 1 March 2023
“We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project.”
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E3 Sam Altman has five new principles for OpenAI: Here's what's different from the 2018 charter - The Times of India The Times of India · 28 April 2026
“The 2018 charter had an unusual pledge: if a safety-conscious rival got close to building AGI first, OpenAI would stop competing and help them instead.”
Reasoning
E1 and E2 are two independent sources, both from 2023. They reproduce the same Charter text: concern that "late-stage AGI development" could become "a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions," and a commitment to "stop competing with and start assisting" a value-aligned, safety-conscious project that comes close to building AGI first. E4 confirms that this pledge was part of the 2018 charter. This is exactly the clause the criteria describe for a true verdict, so the claim holds as of 2023-02-24.
Cite this claim
Sam Altman, “OpenAI's Charter includes a clause about assisting other organizations to advance safety instead of racing with them in late-stage AGI development.” (said 24 February 2023). Verdict: resolved true. Reliability API, claim c_1864d4035fa5, method 0.1.0+c876030c, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_1864d4035fa5
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Sam Altman
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Mostly true
“The very end of 2015, we announced it, and then the first day of work was like January of 2016.”
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Resolved true
“I was always an AI nerd. I was a real sci-fi nerd as a kid.”
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Mostly true
“he later decided that we weren’t on a trajectory to be successful and he didn’t want to.”
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Resolved true
“He helped us start OpenAI.”
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Resolved true
“When we started, it was four and a half years before we had our first product and it was very uncertain.”
When OpenAI started, it took four and a half years before it had its first product.
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.