The power of OpenAI The conflict that gripped the tech world following the ouster of co-founder Sam Altman has finally come to an end — at least for now. But what do you do with it?
It feels as if some eulogies are needed – like the death of OpenAI and a new, but not necessarily improved, startup standing in the middle of it. Altman, the former Y Combinator boss, is back in office, but is his return justified? OpenAI’s new board is off to a less diverse start (i.e., entirely white and male), and the company’s founding philanthropic goals are at risk of being co-opted by more capitalist interests.
This is not to say that the old OpenAI was perfect by any means.
As of Friday morning, OpenAI had a six-person board of directors — Altman, OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, and Helen Toner, director of the George Center. Town of Security and Emerging Technologies. . The board was technically tied to a non-profit organization that owned a majority stake in the for-profit side of OpenAI, with ultimate decision-making power over OpenAI’s for-profit activities, investments, and overall direction.
OpenAI’s unusual structure was created by the company’s founders, including Altman, with the best intentions. The nonprofit’s exceptionally brief (500-word) charter states that the board makes decisions that ensure “artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,” and leaves it up to board members to decide how best to interpret that. Neither “profit” nor “revenue” is mentioned in this North Star document; ink It said He once told Altman’s executive team that causing OpenAI to collapse “would actually be consistent with… [nonprofit’s] a task.”
Perhaps this arrangement would have worked in some parallel universe; For years, it seemed like it worked well enough in OpenAI. But once powerful investors and partners got involved, things became more difficult.
Altman’s firing unites Microsoft and OpenAI employees
After the board abruptly suspended Altman on Friday without notifying almost anyone, including the bulk of OpenAI’s 770-person workforce, the startup’s backers began voicing their discontent in both the private and public sectors.
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, was one of the key collaborators on OpenAI Allegedly “Angry” when he learned of Altman’s departure. Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, another OpenAI backer, said on X (formerly Twitter) that the fund required Altman’s return. Meanwhile, Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, Tiger Global Management and the aforementioned Sequoia Capital are said to be considering legal action against the board if negotiations don’t go ahead over the weekend to reinstate Altman.
Now, the OpenAI employees weren’t like that Not aligned With these investors from outward appearances. On the contrary, those close to them all – including Sutskever, in an apparent change of heart – signed a letter threatening the board with en masse resignation if they chose not to reverse course. But one must take into account that these OpenAI employees have a lot to lose if OpenAI collapses – job offers from Microsoft and Sales force Aside.
OpenAI has been in discussions, led by Thrive, to potentially sell employee shares in a move that would boost the company’s valuation from $29 billion to between $80 billion and $90 billion. Altman’s abrupt exit — and OpenAI’s rotating cast of questionable interim CEOs — has given Thrive cold feet, putting the sale in jeopardy.
Altman won the five-day battle, but at what cost?
But now, after several worrying days, some form of solution has been found. Altman — along with Brockman, who resigned Friday in protest of the board’s decision — are back, albeit under a background investigation into the concerns that precipitated his ouster. OpenAI has a new transition board that meets one of Altman’s demands. OpenAI will reportedly retain its structure, with a cap on investor profits and the board given the freedom to make decisions that are not revenue-driven.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff posted on X that the “good guys” won. But it may be too early to say that.
Sure enough, Altman “won,” beating the board that accused him of “no.” [being] “Consistently honest” with board members and, according to some reports, puts growth above mission. In one example of this alleged rogue, Altman was It was said that it was Toner was criticized for a paper she co-authored that shed light on OpenAI’s approach to safety — so much so that he tried to push her off the board. And at the end of Altman’sangrySutskever by accelerating the launch of AI-powered features at the first OpenAI developer conference.
The board has not clarified its position even after repeated opportunities, citing potential legal challenges. It’s safe to say they fired Altman unnecessarily theatrically. But it’s undeniable that the directors may have had good reasons to let Altman go, at least depending on how they interpreted their humanitarian directives.
It seems likely that the new board will interpret this guidance differently.
Currently, OpenAI’s board of directors consists of former Salesforce co-CEO Brett Taylor, D’Angelo (the only person remaining from the original board) and Larry Summers, an economist and former Harvard University president. Taylor is an entrepreneur and has co-founded several companies, including FriendFeed (acquired by Facebook) and Quip (through which he came to Salesforce). Meanwhile, Summers has deep connections in business and government — an asset to OpenAI, the thinking went into selecting him, at a time when regulatory scrutiny of AI is intensifying.
The directors don’t seem like an outright “win” to this reporter, not if diverse viewpoints were the intention. While six seats have not yet been filled, the first four give a fairly homogeneous feel; Such a council would in fact be illegal in Europe, which would… States Companies reserve at least 40% of their board seats for female candidates.
Why are some AI experts concerned about OpenAI’s new board?
I’m not the only one who is disappointed. A number of AI academics turned to X to express their frustrations earlier today.
Noah Gianciracosa, a mathematics professor at Bentley University and author of a book on social media recommendation algorithms, objects to both the male makeup of the board and the nomination of Summers, who he notes has a history of making decisions. Unpleasant statements About women.
“Whatever one interprets these incidents, the overall outlook is not good, to say the least — especially for a company that has been leading the way in developing artificial intelligence and reshaping the world we live in,” Giansiracusa said via text message. “What I find particularly troubling is that OpenAI’s main goal is to develop artificial general intelligence that benefits all of humanity. Since half of humanity is women, recent events do not give me a great deal of confidence in this regard. Toner directly represents the safety aspect of Artificial intelligence, this is the position that women have been put in often, throughout history but especially in technology: protecting society from serious harm while men get the credit for innovation and ruling the world.
Christopher Manning, director of the Sanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, is a little more charitable than Giansiracusa in his assessment — but he agrees:
“Presumably, the newly formed OpenAI board is still incomplete,” he told TechCrunch. “However, the current board membership, which lacks anyone with deep knowledge about the responsible use of AI in human society and consists of only white males, is not a promising start for such an important and influential company in the field of AI.”
Inequality plagues the AI industry, from Annotation who classify the data used to train generative AI models for harmful biases that often appear in those trained models, Including OpenAI models. Summers, to be fair, he have They expressed concern about the potentially harmful consequences of AI – at least as it relates to livelihoods. But critics I spoke with find it hard to believe that a board like OpenAI’s current one would consistently prioritize these challenges, at least not in the way a more diverse board might.
This raises the question: Why didn’t OpenAI try to appoint a well-known AI ethicist like Timnit Gebru or Margaret Mitchell to its initial board? Were they “unavailable”? Did they refuse? Or did OpenAI just not make the effort in the first place? Maybe we’ll never know.
It said, OpenAI considered Laurene Powell Jobs and Marissa Mayer for board roles, but they were considered too close to Altman. Condoleezza Rice’s name was also floated, but ultimately passed over.
OpenAI has a chance to prove itself wiser and more global in choosing the five remaining board seats — or three, if Altman and a Microsoft executive each get one seat (as has been rumored). If they don’t go down a more diverse path, what does Daniel Coulson, director of the AI Policy Institute, say? He said On
Updated 11/23 at 11:26 AM ET: Included is a post from Timnit Gebru and information from a report about potential women OpenAI board members.