Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, once again has a seat at the table (or rather, on the board of directors).
OpenAI today Announced that Altman will rejoin the company's board of directors several months after losing his position and being removed as CEO of OpenAI.
Joining him are three new members, former Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former Sony Entertainment President Nicole Seligman and Instacart CEO Fidji Simo, raising the OpenAI board of directors to seven people.
Members of the transitional board (the board formed after Altman's ouster in November) will not resign with the appointment of Desmond-Hellmann, Seligman and Simo. Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, and Larry Summers, an economist and former Harvard president, will remain in their roles on the OpenAI board, as will Dee Templeton, an observer of the board appointed by Microsoft.
The appointment of the four new board members (and Altman's re-election) comes after OpenAI received criticism for the all-male makeup of its board and the nomination of Summers, who has a history of making unflattering comments about women. The Congressional Black Caucus pointed out the board's lack of diversity in a letter sent in January, noting the importance of the Black perspective in creating tools to help mitigate ai bias.
The expanded OpenAI board is certainly diverse, at least in terms of background.
Desmond-Hellmann, in addition to leading the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for six years, was previously chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco and previously president of product development at Genentech, where she helped develop gene-targeted cancer drugs. Desmond-Hellmann is an oncologist by training, certified in both internal medicine and medical oncology,
Seligman, an attorney and corporate director, received national attention for her representation of Lt. Col. Oliver North during the Iran-Contra hearings and President Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial. Seligman was a venture capitalist and general counsel for Sony before rising through the ranks to become CEO of Sony Corporation and president of Sony Corporation of America.
As for Fidji Simo, before becoming CEO of Instacart, she was head of the Facebook app at Facebook and vice president of video, games and monetization. Simo she also co-founded (and is currently president of) the Metrodora Foundation, a health clinic and research institute.
“Sue, Fidji, and Nicole have experience leading global organizations and navigating complex regulatory environments, including experience in technology, nonprofit, and board governance,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post. “They will work closely with current board members Adam D'Angelo, Larry Summers and Bret Taylor, as well as Sam and OpenAI senior management.”
The board expansion and Altman's reinstatement comes after an investigation by the law firm WilmerHale, retained by OpenAI, which concluded that Altman's removal was a “consequence of a breakdown in the relationship and loss of trust” between Altman and the previous board (according to the associated press). OpenAI, speaking to the Associated Press, said that during the investigation, WilmerHale conducted dozens of interviews with the company's former board of directors, current executives, advisers and other witnesses and reviewed thousands of documents and other corporate actions.
Probably not everyone at OpenAI would agree.
New York Times technology/openai-executives-role-in-sam-altman-ouster.html”>inform earlier this week painted a picture of a manipulative Altman: a leader who often told people what they wanted to hear to seduce them into supporting his decisions, but who undermined their credibility when challenged. Both OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and Ilya Sutskever, a former OpenAI board member and the startup's chief scientist, reached out to former OpenAI board members to express concern about Altman's behavior ahead of his dismissal last year, according to The Times.
