The power of OpenAI, the fight that has captivated the technology and business world after the firing of co-founder Sam Altman seems to have come to an end, at least for the moment. But what is going to happen from now on?
It seems almost as if some praise is needed, as if OpenAI died and a new, but not necessarily improved, startup found itself in the middle of it. Altman, former president of Y Combinator, is back at the helm, but is his return justified? OpenAI's new board is off to a less diverse start (i.e., it's entirely white and male), and the company's founding philanthropic goals are in danger of being curtailed by more capitalist interests.
That's not to say 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 Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technologies. The board was technically linked to a non-profit organization that was majority owned by for-profit actors, with absolute decision-making power over the activities, investments and general direction over the for-profit part of OpenAI.
OpenAI's unusual structure was established by the company's co-founders, including Altman, with the best of intentions. The nonprofit's exceptionally brief (500-word) bylaws describe that the board must make decisions that ensure “that artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity,” leaving it up to board members to decide which is best. way to interpret that. Neither “profits” nor “income” are mentioned in this North Star document; Toner as reported in the WSJ He once told Altman's executive team that leading to OpenAI's collapse "would actually be consistent with the nonprofit's mission."
Perhaps this arrangement would have worked in some parallel universe. For years, it seemed to work pretty well for OpenAI. But once investors and other powerful partners got involved, things became… much more complicated.
Altman's firing unites Microsoft and OpenAI employees
After the board abruptly fired Altman on Friday without notifying anyone, including most of OpenAI's 770-person workforce, the startup's backers began expressing their discontent both privately and publicly.
Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, a major contributor to OpenAI, stood up presumably “furious” upon learning of Altman’s departure. Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, another backer of OpenAI, said on X (formerly Twitter) that the fund I wanted back to Altman. Meanwhile, Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital were said to be contemplating legal action against the board if weekend negotiations to reinstate Altman did not go as expected.
At that time, OpenAI employees They were not aligned with these investors according to external appearances. All of them, including Sutskever, in an apparent change of heart, signed a letter threatening the board with mass resignation if they chose not to reverse the decision and course. But you have to consider that these OpenAI employees had a lot to lose if OpenAI fell apart (job offers from Microsoft and Salesforce apart).
OpenAI had been in talks, led by Thrive, to possibly sell shares to employees in a move that would have increased the company's valuation from $29.000 billion to between $80.000 billion and $90.000 billion. Altman's sudden departure, and OpenAI's rotating cast of questionable interim CEOs, created no small amount of fear for Thrive, putting the sale in jeopardy.
Altman won the five-day battle, but at what cost?
Now, after several days of breathlessness, tension and news of all kinds, some kind of "resolution" has been reached. Altman, along with Brockman, who resigned Friday in protest of the board's decision, is back, though subject to a background investigation into concerns that precipitated his ouster. OpenAI has a new transition board that meets one of Altman's demands. And OpenAI will reportedly maintain its structure, with limits on investor profits and freedom for the board to make decisions that are not based on revenue.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff posted on X that “the good guys” won. But maybe it's premature to say.
Sure, Altman “won,” overcoming a board that accused him of “not being consistently truthful” with board members and, according to some reports, putting growth before mission. In an example of this supposed mischief, Altman it is said that it was criticized Toner for a paper she co-authored that presented OpenAI's security approach from a critical perspective, to the point where he attempted to oust her from the board. In another, Altman”enraged” to Sutskever as he teased the launch of AI-powered features at the first OpenAI developer conference.
The board gave no explanation even after repeated opportunities, citing possible legal challenges. And it's safe to say that they dismissed Altman in an unnecessarily histrionic way. But there's no denying that the directors might have had valid reasons for letting Altman go, at least depending on how they interpreted his humanist directive.
It seems likely that the new board will interpret that “humanist” directive differently.
Currently, the board of directors of OpenAI is formed by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, D'Angelo (the only holdover from the original board) and Larry Summers, the economist and former Harvard president. Taylor is an "entrepreneur's entrepreneur" and has co-founded numerous companies, including FriendFeed (acquired by Facebook) and Quip (through whose acquisition he came to Salesforce). Summers, meanwhile, has deep business and government connections, an asset for OpenAI, likely thought went into selecting him, at a time when regulatory scrutiny of AI is intensifying.
However, the directors don't seem like an absolute “win” to all observers, not if diversity of viewpoints was the intention. While six seats remain to be filled, the initial four set a fairly homogeneous tone; In fact, such a meeting would be illegal in Europe, where executive teams of companies reserve at least 40% of their board seats for women.
Why some AI experts are worried about OpenAI's new board
There are quite a few disappointed observations. And on the other hand, specialists, several AI academics turned to X to express their frustrations.
Noah Giansiracusa, a mathematics professor at Bentley University and author of a book on social media recommendation algorithms, takes issue with both the all-male makeup of the board and the nomination of Summers, who he says has a history of do unflattering comments about women.
“Whatever one's opinion of these incidents, the optics are not good, to put it mildly, especially for a company that has been leading the development of AI and reshaping the world we live in,” Giansiracusa said for text message. “What I find particularly concerning is that OpenAI's primary goal is to develop general artificial intelligence that 'benefits all humanity.' Given that half of humanity is women, recent events don't give me much confidence in this regard. Toner most directly represents the security side of AI, and this has often been the position women have been placed in, throughout history but especially in technology: protecting society from great damage while men get credit for innovating and ruling the world.”
Christopher Manning, director of the Sanford AI Lab, is a bit more charitable than Giansiracusa, but agrees with him in his assessment:
“The newly formed OpenAI board is presumably still incomplete. “However, the current board of directors, which lacks anyone with deep knowledge about the responsible use of AI in human society and is composed solely of white men, is not a promising start for such a large and influential AI company.”
I'm excited for OpenAI employees that Sam is back, but it feels very 2023 that our happy ending is three white men on a board charged with ensuring AI benefits all of humanity. Let's hope there is more to come soon. —Ashley Mayer (@ashleymayer) November 22th 2023
Inequity affects the AI industry, from managers that label data used to train generative AI models based on harmful biases that often appear in those trained models, including OpenAI models. Summers, to be fair, Has expressed concern about the potential harmful ramifications of AI, at least as it relates to ways of living. But critics 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 would.
It begs the question: Why didn't OpenAI try to recruit a well-known AI ethicist like Timnit Gebru or Margaret Mitchell to the initial board? “Were they not available”? Did they refuse? Or did OpenAI not make any initial effort? Maybe we will never know.
As stated in X, OpenAI considered Laurene Powell Jobs and Marissa Mayer for board positions, but they were considered too close to Altman. Condoleezza Rice was also proposed, but was ultimately ignored.
OpenAI has a chance to prove itself wiser and more worldly by selecting the remaining five board seats — or three, should Altman and a Microsoft executive fill one each (as has been rumored). If they don't take a more diverse path, what Daniel Colson, director of the AI Policy Institute think tank, has said at X may well be true: a few people or a single laboratory cannot be trusted to ensure that AI is developed responsibly.
We must not forget other aspects such as the technological and operational costs of OpenAI, which have been mentioned numerous times as, currently and in its growth process, not sustainable. Nor the fact that the people involved in a technology that is destined to change many aspects of people, companies, institutions and society have interests, in some cases multiple, in other business activities.
Perhaps at this moment, what I personally think requires reflection is that one person, accompanied by a handful of others and about 600 workers can move the needle so much. Once it is apparently consolidated, the society, economic, business and investment model should reflect.
This has only just begun, and we will have to be especially attentive to all the news, wait a few months, and carry out a consolidated analysis that allows us to see what real path is being taken.
