The fate of OpenAIthe San Francisco company he created ChatGpt and Dall-Eof its former CEO Sam Altman and 97% of its employees are theoretically in the hands of three individuals: Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley e Adam D’angelo.
I am the three members remaining on the OpenAI board after the surprise removal of Sam Altman and Greg Brockman – also part of the Board of Directors – and after the voluntary escape of the “repentant” Ilya Sutskeverthe company’s chief scientific officer who initially voted to remove Altman.
The Caos OpenAI case, 700 employees threaten to resign: Altman could return by Pier Luigi Pisa 20 November 2023
As long as the three remain in office, there will be no chance of Altman returning to OpenAI. Without Altman at the helm, the company’s employees are ready to resign. Here are, at the moment, the three figures who with their decisions can influence not only the future of OpenAI but also that of generative AIwhich could pass into the hands of Microsoft.
Helen Toner
Toner graduated from the University of Melbourne with a degree in chemical engineering in 2014. “I dreamed of working in care and development,” said Toner, referring to a professional career that involves providing care and contributing to the development of disadvantaged communities and regions or affected by crises around the world. “And then I came into contact with the Effective Altruism movement.”
L’Effective altruism it is a particular philanthropic approach that seeks to maximize – through scientific evidence and the use of data – the positive impact of donations and charitable actions on society. In recent years the Effective Altruism movement has found one of its main supporters in Sam Bankman-Friedthe “king of cryptocurrencies” arrested after the failure of his FTX platform and recently found guilty of fraud.
Helen Toner
While Toner took his first steps as an analyst in a non-profit in Melbourn, the Give Welllearned from some “effective altruists” about the movement’s obsession with breaking latest news, artificial intelligence that aims to replicate the learning and reasoning capabilities of the human brain. Effective Altruism believes that breaking latest news could wipe out humanity in the future.
“At first I thought they were philosophically confused – said Toner – that they were just nerds who were too enthusiastic about science fiction”. But then Toner started working for another nonprofit, the Open Philanthropywhich deals with “helping others with available resources” and which – among other things – is concerned with monitor the risks that a form of advanced artificial intelligence could cause.
It is during the period in which he worked for Open Philanthropy, from 2015 to 2018, that Toner comes into contact with OpenAIwhose foundation by Altman, Musk and other entrepreneurs and computer scientists – such as Ilya Sutskever – dates back to 2015.
In 2018 Toner becomes part of the Center for the Governance of AI at the University of Oxfordwhich aims to “help humanity navigate the transition to a world characterized by advanced AI”.
Just a year later, in January 2019, Toner moved to CSET, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, a US-based organization that plays a research and advisory role for government and other actors interested in national security and technology issues in the United States. Toner currently holds the role of Director of Strategy and Foundational Research Grants for CSET.
Precisely in 2019, the year in which OpenAI began looking for profits to finance its AI research laboratory, Helen Toner joined the board of the company co-founded by Sam Altman.
Toner recently told the Financial Times that “most executives at companies developing AI take risks seriously and try to do the right thing. But at the same time, they are obviously the ones who create these systems. And they are always the ones who can potentially make a profit.”
“For this reason I believe it is important – added Toner – that there is external supervision not only by the board of directors but also by those who have to regulate the technology and by public opinion. So even if their hearts are right we should not assume that they are doing the right thing.”
The case To understand what happened to Sam Altman, you need to know what OpenAI is really like by Pier Luigi Pisa 19 November 2023
Tasha McCauley
An entrepreneur and robotics expert, McCauley holds a scientific consultancy and research role at the Rand Corporationa nonprofit organization in Santa Monica, California, founded in 1946 with support from the U.S. Department of Defense.
The Rand Corporation researches and consults on political, national security, economic and healthcare issues. In summary, it helps governments, businesses and organizations make better decisions based on data and analytics.
Tasha McCauley
Shortly after joining OpenAI’s board in 2019, McCauley became CEO of GeoSim System, a company that offers advanced technology to visualize cities in 3D. He held the role of CEO for this company until 2022.
Tasha McCauley she is married to actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt. She and her husband are among more than 5,700 people who have signed Asilomar’s “Artificial Intelligence Principles,” a set of 23 AI governance principles published in 2017. Sam Altman’s name also appears among the thousands of signatories .
The analysis What is happening in OpenAi by Arcangelo Rociola 20 November 2023
Adam D’Angelo
D’Angelo is 39 years old and an entrepreneur known for co-founding Quora in 2009, a very popular platform that users turn to to ask questions on various topics. The answers come from other users, often experts or enthusiasts in the sector.
Of all the members of the OpenAI board, of which he has been a member since, D’Angelo is the one who has the potential the major conflict of interest.
In fact, in December 2022, D’angelo launched his startup Poe.com, a platform that brings together the best generative artificial intelligence tools around. By paying a single subscription, users can take advantage of numerous chatbots: da ChatGpt a Claude AI di Anthropicup to Facebook’s open source LLama 2.
Adam D’angelo
Some users on the social network .
Today we are launching creator monetization for Poe! This program lets any bot creator on Poe generate revenue. This is a major step forward for the platform and is the first program of its kind, so we are very excited to see what it lets everyone create. (thread) pic.twitter.com/feLjB62hYo
— Adam D’Angelo (@adamdangelo) October 25, 2023
Adam D’Angelo graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 2006 with a degree in computer science. In the past he worked for Facebook. In 2010, Fortune magazine listed him among the “smartest people in the tech world”.