Harvard Law Review Warns Anthropic and OpenAI Governance Structures Risk Amoral Drift on AI Safety

Harvard Law Review

A January 2026 Harvard Law Review article examines the novel corporate governance structures adopted by AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic, concluding that these arrangements may be insufficient to sustain meaningful AI safety commitments over time. The analysis focuses in particular on Anthropic's charter, which grants safety-focused Class T trustees the power to elect three of five board directors either after May 24, 2027, or once the company reaches $6 billion in cumulative investment. The article argues that structural mechanisms designed to counterbalance profit motives are vulnerable to gradual erosion, a phenomenon the authors term amoral drift. For enterprise compliance teams, the research signals that reliance on voluntary governance commitments by AI vendors cannot substitute for independent due diligence on safety and accountability practices. Organizations procuring AI systems from these companies should monitor whether governance structures remain intact and enforceable as commercial pressures intensify.