New Poll Shows Californians In Favor of Attorney General Blocking OpenAI’s Transition to For-Profit Company
- Over 100,000 people back call to halt OpenAI’s transition to for-profit status.
- Billboards depicting Attorneys General Rob Bonta and Katherine Jennings as superheroes protecting us from profit-driven AI circulated outside state offices in Sacramento and Wilmington.
San Francisco, CA - A new YouGov poll commissioned by PeopleFor.AI indicates that Californians are 25 percentage points more likely to favor Attorney General Rob Bonta blocking OpenAI’s plan to transition from a non-profit to a for-profit company than they are to oppose it (of all those surveyed, 45% supported Bonta blocking the transition, 20% opposed that, and 35% didn't know enough to answer the question).
62% of Californians are more likely to vote for a governor that prioritizes AI safety compared to just 9% who say they would be less likely to vote for a governor who prioritizes AI safety.
The poll comes as Sam Altman plans to transition OpenAI to a public benefit corporation, threatening to hand over decisions about one of the most powerful and potentially dangerous technologies to a handful of investors driven by profits.
Similarly, Delawareans are 18 percentage points more likely to favor Attorney General Katherine Jennings intervening to prevent OpenAI’s shift to a for-profit model than they are to oppose it. (In total, 46% favored blocking the transition, 28% opposed such action, and 27% didn’t know).
The results signal to the Attorneys General that the public strongly favors AI safety measures, and it could even guide how people vote at the polls.
This new polling also comes as a petition opposing OpenAI’s transition has garnered over 100,000 signatures globally.
This week PeopleFor.AI installed billboards spotlighting the poll results outside of the Sacramento and Wilmington offices of Attorneys General Bonta and Jennings. The billboards, in the style of a comic strip, depict each of the officials as superheroes, fighting back against a profit-driven AI robot as Sam Altman looks on, shocked and disappointed.
The group is also flyering residents in surrounding neighborhoods to raise awareness.
Mitsy Dawn photography
Altman’s conflict of interest in the conversion has been widely reported. As OpenAI’s valuation soared to $157 billion following a $6.6 billion funding round in 2024, the CEO – who returned to power after briefly being fired by the board for not being honest in his communications with them – is likely to receive a substantial sum from the equity stakes tied to the for-profit switch. Meanwhile, the nonprofit, once the heart of OpenAI’s mission, will be relegated to a minority stakeholder role, with the board answerable to investors.
For more information please contact press@peoplefor.ai
Methodology and Poll Results: YouGov interviewed 476 residents of Delaware (DE) and 1089 residents of California (CA) separately who were then matched down independently to a sample of 400 (DE) and 1000 (CA) to produce the final datasets. The respondents were matched separately to a respective corresponding sampling frame on gender, age, race, and education. The sampling frame is a politically representative "modeled frame" of US adults, based upon the American Community Survey (ACS) public use micro-data file, public voter file records, the 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration supplements, the 2020 National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll, and the 2020 CES surveys, including demographics and 2020 presidential vote. The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores. The matched cases and the frame were combined and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education, and home ownership. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame and post-stratified according to these deciles. For CA, the weights were then post-stratified on 2020/2024 presidential vote choice as well as a four-way stratification of gender, age (4-categories), race (4-categories), and education (4-categories), to produce the final CA weight. For DE, the weights were then post-stratified on 2020/2024 presidential vote choice as well and then stratified using raking (iterative-proportion-fitting) on gender, age (4-categories), race (4-categories), and education (4-categories), to produce the final DE weight.
CALIFORNIA:
OpenAI for-profit change in focus
Would OpenAI becoming a for-profit company conflict with its focus on benefiting all of humanity?
It would focus less on benefiting everyone 49%
It would keep the same focus 13%
It would focus more on benefiting everyone 12%
Don't know 25%
Support CA AG block OpenAI switch to for-profit
Would you like the California Attorney General to block OpenAI's switch to a for-profit company? Yes 45%
No 20%
Don’t know 35%
Likelihood voting for governor prioritizing AI safety
How much more or less likely, if at all, would you be to vote for a governor that prioritizes AI safety and protection from AI harms?
Much more likely 32%
Somewhat more likely 30%
Neither more or less likely 29%
Somewhat less likely 3%
Much less likely 5%
DELAWARE:
OpenAI for-profit change in focus
Would OpenAI becoming a for-profit company conflict with its focus on benefiting all of humanity?
It would focus less on benefiting everyone 53%
It would keep the same focus 15%
It would focus more on benefiting everyone 12%
Don't know 20%
Support DE AG block OpenAI switch to for-profit
Would you like the Delaware Attorney General to block OpenAI's switch to a for-profit company?
Yes 46%
No 28%
Don’t know 27%