Anthropic announced today that it is creating a "public benefit fund," which the company says will give it "increased flexibility and scale" to support projects for societal good - presumably a phrase that tested well with focus groups.

The structure is straightforward enough on paper: Anthropic will commit 5% of its shares to the fund, set up as a wholly-owned entity within the company, with the option to contribute an additional 2% for every 50% increase in Anthropic's value. So the better Anthropic does, the more it theoretically gives - a formula that sounds generous until you remember who's doing the math.

As for how the money might actually be spent, Anthropic offered some broad-strokes ideas, such as "large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific populations." Which is to say: money will go to nonprofits, or to people. The details, as ever, are where the devil and the governance live.

There's also the small matter of AI's impact on the job market, which Anthropic has already committed $200 million to study. But the company noted that "given the pace of AI progress, bolder approaches may be needed. The Fund will have the versatility to pursue them." Versatility, in this context, being a polite word for "we haven't decided yet."

The announcement lands as the AI industry faces increasingly negative public sentiment - something CEO Dario Amodei has described as "fundamentally a crisis of trust." Nothing rebuilds trust like a fund whose structure and governance will be explained at some later, more convenient date.

Speaking of which: if you're wondering who will actually decide which public benefits are worth funding, Anthropic said it will share more information about structure and governance in the coming months. Until then, the fund exists, the shares are committed, and the decision-making remains a mystery - which is, one suspects, exactly the kind of flexibility the company had in mind.