On Tuesday, tech developer OpenAI announced a new Safety and Security Committee helmed by senior executives following the resignation of two members of their previous oversight board which was disbanded in their wake.
The Safety and Security Committee will advise the board of OpenAI “on critical safety and security decisions for OpenAI projects and operations,” according to the firm’s press statement. This comes just after OpenAI announced they have begun developing their “next frontier model.”
It will be led by directors Bret Taylor (chair of the OpenAI board), Adam D’Angelo, Nicole Seligman, and Sam Altman (CEO).
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The outgoing oversight analysts were Jan Leike and co-founder Ilya Sutskever, who both left on May 14th. As they were the two leaders of the oversight board, the body was subsequently dissolved when they resigned.
“After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI. The company’s trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous,” Sutskever wrote. “It was an honor and a privilege to have worked together, and I will miss everyone dearly.”
After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI. The company’s trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous, and I’m confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial under the leadership of @sama, @gdb, @miramurati and now, under the…
— Ilya Sutskever (@ilyasut) May 14, 2024
“This is very sad to me; Ilya is easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field, and a dear friend,” Sam Altman wrote on X.
Leike quit with a two-word post. He had written previously in May that OpenAI’s “safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products.” Altman took to social media to sat he was sad to see Leike go and that the company has “a lot more to do.”
I resigned
— Jan Leike (@janleike) May 15, 2024
As Valuetainment previously reported, OpenAI was embroiled in a back-and-forth of resignations when Sam Altman was fired from the company only to be invited back in a matter of days. In between these two days, multiple top brass resigned in protest of the board decision, and two interim CEOs were appointed in rapid succession. After the debacle concluded, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and former SalesForce CEO Bret Taylor were appointed to the board to serve as “adults in the room.”
There have been concerns about the rapidity at which AI is developing toward AGI, and lingering fears about what threats this tremendous brainpower could pose if directed toward the wrong tasks. In fact, these concerns have been with OpenAI since the beginning.
OpenAI was formed by a cohort of tech developers; among its original board members was Elon Musk. Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others pledged a collective $1 billion in 2015 (but only $130 million was collected). Musk resigned in 2018 citing conflict of interest over Tesla self-driving AI; it is unclear if there was drama behind the scenes. When OpenAI converted from a nonprofit structure—which was its status when Elon donated $50 million—to a for-profit structure, Musk raised concerns about the legality of the move, and took the opportunity to raise awareness about the potential dangers of AI:
“The reason OpenAI exists at all is because I used to be really close friends with Larry Page and stay at his house in Palo Alto. We would talk late in the night about AI safety, and my impression was that Larry wasn’t taking AI safety seriously enough. He really seemed just focused on achieving digital superintelligence — essentially a Digital God, if you will, and as soon as possible. This is not good.
So I thought, ‘What is the furthest thing from Google?’ which would be a fully open nonprofit. So the ‘open’ in OpenAI stands for open source and transparency so people know what is going on. I’m normally in favor of for-profit companies, but the idea was not to be a profit-maximizing demon from hell that never stops. So that is why OpenAI was founded.
Very, unfortunately, they decided to become a for-profit company.”
The new safety board will be taking stock of the company’s processes and safety protocols over the next 90 days and will be preparing a report with recommendations for the board of directors. OpenAI will then provide an update about its new safety structures after the report.
Shane Devine is a writer covering politics and business for VT and a regular guest on The Unusual Suspects. Follow Shane’s work here.
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