On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that it has procured a board seat without voting rights at OpenAI. This move alleviates some of the remaining queries about the tech giant's involvement with the startup following a period of destabilization that saw the controlling non-profit board terminate and then revive the CEO, Sam Altman.
Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it would have a non-voting board seat at OpenAI, clearing up questions about its involvement after a tumultuous month. The software giant had already invested $13 billion into OpenAI, and integrated its AI models into Office and other Microsoft products, but had not previously had an official representative on OpenAI's board. Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, stated in a note to staff on the startup's website that he was satisfied with the decision to partner with Microsoft and that no employees left during the upheaval. To build out its board of directors, OpenAI has named former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo. Mira Murati will resume her role as CTO, with Greg Brockman returning as president. Taylor announced that he wishes to strengthen the company's corporate governance and will step down from the board after the new members have been installed. Microsoft chose not to reveal who will observe from their board seat at OpenAI.
At the time when Altman was removed, all board members, including the cofounder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, had left the board with the exception of D'Angelo. The reasons for Altman's firing remain uncertain; though the board claimed a lack of transparency, other possibilities such as disagreements about "AI safety" and debates over whether OpenAI should slow its growth of powerful AI dubbed AGI could have been a factor.
On Wednesday, Helen Toner, on board since 2021, announced her resignation on X. In her statement, she made sure to clarify, "our decision was about the board's capacity to adequately monitor the company, which was our responsibility. Even though there has been speculation, our motivation was not to stifle OpenAI's progress." Toner, director of strategy for Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology for nearly five years and a part of the University of Oxford's Center for the Governance of AI, gave a talk to the effective altruism community and participated in its discussion forum. To the Journal of Political Risk she commented last year, "Constructing AI systems that are safe, reliable, equitable, and interpretable is an immense open problem. Those building and using AI must accept that beating their competitors to the market or the battlefield will be pointless if the systems they are fielding are vulnerable, hackable, or unstable."
Altman mentioned Toner's and Tasha McCauley's resignations in his post on X. McCauley, a board member since 2018 and an adjunct senior management scientist at Rand Corporation, had also resigned. Altman mentioned, "The best interests of the company and the mission always come first. It is clear there were miscommunications between me and certain board members. From my part, it is extremely important to gain from this experience and put those learnings into practice as the company moves on. I am in support of the board's independent examination of all recent events. I am grateful to Helen and Tasha for their contributions to making OpenAI a stronger entity."
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