alt Hacker NewsThanks for the correction! I was mixing up "Public Benefit Corporation", which is a legal offering by state governments, and "B-Corp", which is a non-profit that certifies wholesome for-profit firms like the Tillamook Dairy Cooperative.
I'd stand by the general assertion that it's little more than a pinky promise because they merely have to "balance" the concerns according to "any reasonable person"--an extremely weak-seeming obligation to this non-lawyer--but it's certainly much more impactful than I thought, namely:
Sections 365 (b) and (c) provide broad protection to directors of public benefit corporations against claims based on interests other than those of stockholders
Good on you, Anthropic! In this specific case I believe in the director(s) a lot more than I believe in the shareholders ethics-wise, so it seems like a perfect choice. They can always fire him/them I suppose, but truly catastrophic AI risks would move faster than that, anyway.
Yes, this is the real legal accomplishment of B-Corps!
By law and precedent a C-Corp’s only obligation is to shareholders, thanks to a case from almost a century ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.#:~:t....
A B-Corp was the first and somewhat successful attempt to create a legal framework where company executives are allowed to work on behalf of all their stakeholders without it creating an automatic basis for a suit.
Generally, people who care very deeply about a thing bring a higher ethical standard than any regulatory body can impose.