The power of OpenAI The battle that gripped the tech industry has finally come to an end, at least for the time being, after co-founder Sam Altman was fired. But what should we think about it?
It feels as if a eulogy is needed, as if OpenAI has passed away and a new, not necessarily improved, startup stands in its midst. Former Y Combinator president Altman is back at the helm, but is his return justified? OpenAI’s new board is off to a less diverse start (i.e., all white and male), putting the company’s original philanthropic purpose at risk of being exploited by more capitalist interests. There is.
That doesn’t mean the old OpenAI was perfect.
As of Friday morning, OpenAI’s board of directors consisted of six people: Altman, OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, and technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley. Quora CEO Adam DiAngelo and Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology Director Helen Toner. This board is technically tied to the nonprofit organization that owns a majority stake in OpenAI’s for-profit arm, giving it absolute decision-making authority over OpenAI’s activities, investments, and overall direction. had.
OpenAI’s unusual structure was established with the best of intentions by the company’s co-founders, including Altman. The nonprofit’s very short (500 word) charter outlines that the board will make decisions to ensure that “artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity,” and how it is interpreted. It is up to the board members to decide what is best. There is no mention of “profits” or “revenue” in this North Star document.toner reportedly Altman’s management once told Altman that causing OpenAI’s collapse was “actually… [nonprofit’s] Mission. “
Perhaps this arrangement would have worked in a parallel universe. For years, OpenAI seemed to have enough going for it. But things got even more complicated when investors and powerful partners got involved.
Microsoft and OpenAI employees unite over Altman’s firing
On Friday, the startup’s supporters began voicing their displeasure both internally and externally after the board abruptly fired Altman without notifying nearly anyone, including most of OpenAI’s 770 employees.
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, a key contributor to OpenAI, said: reportedly He was “furious” when he learned of Altman’s resignation. Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, another of his OpenAI backers, said on X (formerly Twitter) that the fund: I wanted Altman is back. Meanwhile, Thrive Capital, the aforementioned Khosla Ventures, Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital are considering legal action against Altman’s board if negotiations over the weekend to reinstate him are unsuccessful. It is said that there are.
Well, that wasn’t the case with OpenAI employees. not aligned With investors seen from the outside. On the contrary, people close to all of them, including Mr. Sutskever, who apparently had a change of heart, signed a letter threatening mass resignations from the board if they did not change course. But you have to consider that if OpenAI collapses, these OpenAI employees stand to lose a lot. Microsoft and sales force aside.
Led by Thrive, OpenAI was considering the possibility of selling employee stock in a move that would raise the company’s valuation from $29 billion to between $80 billion and $90 billion. Mr. Altman’s sudden departure and OpenAI’s questionable replacement casting of an interim CEO left Thrive in limbo and threatened to sell it.
Altman won the five-day battle, but at what cost?
But now, after several breathless days, some sort of resolution has been reached. Mr. Altman, along with Mr. Brockman, who resigned on Friday in protest of the board’s decision, has been reinstated despite being subject to a background investigation into the concerns that led to his firing. OpenAI has a new migration board that fulfills one of Altman’s requests. OpenAI will reportedly maintain a structure in which investor profits are capped and the board is free to make decisions that are not profit-driven.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff posted to X that the “good people” won. But it may be too early to say that.
Indeed, Mr. Altman “won” by defeating a board that said otherwise. [being] It has been consistently candid with its board members and, according to some reports, prioritized growth over mission. As an example of this alleged fraud, Altman said: It is said that it was Toner criticized Toner over a paper she co-authored that cast OpenAI’s approach to safety in a critical light, going so far as to try to have her removed from the company’s board of directors. In another article, Altman said:I was furious” Sutskever rushed to announce AI-powered features at OpenAI’s first developer conference.
The board did not provide an explanation despite multiple opportunities, citing potential legal challenges. And it’s safe to say they fired Altman in an unnecessarily histrionic way. But there’s no denying that the directors may have had good reason to drop Altman, at least depending on how they interpreted their humanitarian directives.
The new Council is likely to interpret the directive differently.
OpenAI’s board of directors currently consists of former Salesforce co-CEO Brett Taylor, D’Angelo (the only remaining member of the board), and economist and former Harvard University president Larry Summers. Taylor is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur, co-founding numerous companies including FriendFeed (acquired by Facebook) and Quip (through which he joined Salesforce). Meanwhile, Summers has deep ties to business and government, which has been an asset to OpenAI, and will likely change his mind about his selection amid increased regulatory scrutiny of AI. I guess it was.
However, even if diverse perspectives were intended, it doesn’t seem like a complete “win” for the directors to this reporter. Six seats are still unfilled, but his first four seats have a fairly homogeneous feel. Such committees are actually illegal in Europe. make it mandatory Companies reserve at least 40% of board seats for female candidates.
Why some AI experts are concerned about OpenAI’s new board of directors
I’m not the only one disappointed. Today, many AI scholars have complained about his X.
Noah Jansiracusa, a math professor at Bentley University and author of a book on social media recommendation algorithms, took issue with both the all-male board and Summers’ appointment. They point out that Summers has a history of making nominations in the past. unpleasant remark About women.
“No matter who judges these incidents, the optics are poor, to say the least, especially for the companies that have led the way in AI development and reshaped the world we live in,” Giansiracusa said in a text message. mentioned in. “What I particularly take issue with is that OpenAI’s primary purpose is to develop artificial general intelligence that will ‘benefit all of humanity.’ This doesn’t give me much confidence. Toner most directly represents the safety side of AI, and this is very often the position that women have been in throughout history, especially in the tech industry. It is about protecting society from great harm while men get the credit for innovating and dominating the world.”
Christopher Manning, director of Sanford’s AI Lab, agrees with Jansiracusa, although he is a little more charitable.
“The newly formed OpenAI board is probably still incomplete,” he told TechCrunch. “Nevertheless, the current board membership, which is comprised entirely of white men and lacks anyone with deep knowledge of the responsible use of AI in human society, is a challenge for such an important and influential AI company. Not a promising start.”
Inequality plagues the AI industry. annotator Someone who labels the data used to train a generative AI model with harmful biases that are common in that trained model; Contains OpenAI models. Summers, to be fair; have They expressed concern about the potentially harmful effects of AI, at least as they relate to livelihoods. But critics I spoke to found it hard to believe that OpenAI’s current board would consistently prioritize these issues, at least not in the way a more diverse board would. I feel it.
That begs the question. Why didn’t OpenAI hire prominent AI ethicists like Timnit Gebru or Margaret Mitchell to its first board? Were they “unavailable”? Did they say no? Or did OpenAI never make the effort in the first place? Perhaps we will never know.
reportedly, OpenAI considered Laureen Powell Jobs and Marissa Mayer as board candidates, but they were determined to be too close to Altman. Condoleezza Rice’s name was also floated, but was ultimately passed over.
OpenAI has a chance to prove itself smarter and more global in picking the remaining five board seats — or (as rumored) Altman and Microsoft. If each of these executives gets one, then there will be three. Daniel Colson, director of the think tank AI Policy Institute, wonders what will happen if they don’t move in more diverse directions. Said on X may possibly be true. We cannot rely on a few people or one lab to ensure that AI is developed responsibly.
Updated 11/23 11:26am ET: We’ve embedded a post from Timnit Gebru and information from OpenAI’s report on potential female board candidates.