The defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX is attempting to obtain details on millions of dollars in payments it previously made to the Center for AI Safety (CAIS), a charity dedicated to AI safety.
The attorneys for FTX stated in a bankruptcy court statement on October 25 that the company had donated $6.5 million to CAIS between May and September 2022—months before the fall of the cryptocurrency exchange and its subsequent bankruptcy.
To get information on whether CAIS received payments, cash, communications, or entered into agreements or contracts with FTX, its affiliates, and previous executives, FTX wants a Delaware Bankruptcy Court judge to grant the subpoenas.
According to the correspondence, in early October, the two businesses exchanged emails and a phone call in August, during which CAIS allegedly denied their requests to voluntarily give an accounting connected to the transactions.
The request by FTX to look into CAIS is probably a component of its attempts to get money back to compensate its creditors and clients who were affected by its failure in November 2022. In a report from June, FTX said that it had recovered almost $7 billion and that it still required $1.7 billion to reimburse customer payments that it claims were misused.
The most well-known thing about CAIS is probably their May open statement on AI risk, which stated that extinction risk mitigation from AI should be given equal priority to nuclear war. Several well-known people, including the “Godfather” of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, signed the declaration.
The FTX Foundation, the FTX Future Fund, FTX Philanthropy, and “any officer, director, contractor or employee” of FTX are among the parties from whom CAIS is requested by FTX to submit a variety of transactions, documents, and conversations.
Additionally, correspondence from co-founders Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang, Bankman-Fried’s brother Gabriel Bankman-Fried and father Joseph Bankman, former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, and former FTX attorneys Can Sun and Daniel Friedberg are particularly requested.
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