OpenAI wasn’t alone: Money-versus-mission clashes afflict others too
OpenAI’s power brokers seem to have decided that the quickest fix for the dysfunction on display for the past few weeks is to borrow a page from America Inc’s playbook by adding some establishment figures to its board. The company’s initial new lineup of directors includes some of the archetypes that make its boardroom look much more like everyone else’s: A well-regarded technology executive in the form of Bret Taylor, Salesforce Inc’s former co-chief executive officer, and a bigwig economist in Larry Summers, a former US Treasury secretary.
The two join Quora’s Adam D’Angelo, the one holdover from the old group of directors that briefly ousted OpenAI’s co-founder and CEO Sam Altman. The board makeover into one that more closely resembles the traditional corporate mould is being cast by some as the beginning of adult supervision at OpenAI.
But it’s not yet clear that this board composition—or any board structure for that matter—can oversee Altman and his highly paid and devoted employees as they chase something that has the potential to destroy humanity. More important, this question of what oversight should look like at OpenAI has implications that stretch beyond the company and artificial intelligence (AI) community.
OpenAI was set up as a “humanity scale endeavor pursuing broad benefit for humankind." Not all companies are aiming for such lofty stakes, but it’s not at all out of the ordinary anymore for founders and CEOs to strive to build a money-making endeavour alongside a social mission—an attempt to tackle issues of public good that government simply cannot or will not address. The OpenAI debacle is a clear warning sign that how these types of complex enterprises are governed needs to be sorted out.
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