OpenAI’s board is getting a makeover and expansion as per terms of Sam Altman’s reinstatement as the AI firm’s CEO. Former Salesforce Co-CEO Bret Taylor (CRM) and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will now hold board seats, while experts speculate whether Microsoft (MSFT) — which owns a 49% stake in OpenAI — could push for its own seat at the table.
Forbes Senior Editor Alex Konrad highlights who else these figures could bring onto OpenAI’s board of directors, believing this board won’t be “the exact board a year or two from now.”
“The prevailing narrative is more of that OpenAI is going to get back to what it was doing and that this will be hopefully a blip or a distraction from the mission they were on,” Konrad tells Yahoo Finance.
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Video Transcript
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– The Silicon Valley saga is over for now. Sam Altman is going to be back in the driver’s seat at OpenAI after a stunning few days that have shaken the tech industry. OpenAI revamping its board, ditching all but one member who chose to oust him and replacing him with former Salesforce Co-CEO Bret Taylor, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. But questions still remain on the role Microsoft will play, and if the boardroom drama has played in its favor.
Joining us now is Alex Conrad, senior editor at Forbes, who has been following every twist and turn of this roller coaster ride. So Alex, it is great to see you. Let me start there, Alex, with you actually. Sam Altman is back but there’s been some big personalities now, some changes. Got Bret Taylor and Larry Summers. I’m just interested, Alex, how you think about the addition of Taylor and Summers and what changes you think, if any, they might push for at OpenAI.
ALEX KONRAD: Yeah, Thank you. It’s interesting. I think that Bret Taylor and Larry Summers, they’re going to be there to bring in more grown ups. So I don’t think the buck stops with them. I think that they are going to be bringing in a bunch more folks. And it remains to be seen if Sam Altman will get a board seat back.
So for now you have a very small board. Bret is almost a meme in the tech world that he solves problems. If there’s something broken, he comes in. He was obviously on the Board of Twitter. And Larry also has gone back a long time with some of these tech folks. But I see them more as a transition team as a stabilizing team. And I would not expect this to be the exact Board a year or two from now.
– Alex, I’ve seen some of the narrative come out that, at least on this interim Board, there are no women or People of Color, right, that you could argue that this whole exercise is a victory for the profit motive over the more altruistic version of AI. However you want to frame it. That seems to be a narrative that is out there. Is that a narrative that the people in the Valley are talking about or subscribing to as well.
ALEX KONRAD: It’s certainly not the dominant narrative, at least in Silicon Valley today. We had over 95% of OpenAI employees sign a petition on Monday saying that they would resign if the Board of Directors didn’t resign first. So Sam Altman was very popular almost to a cult-like level within his own company.
And also you saw a bunch of the leaders in the tech world, whether it was the CEOs of Airbnb, or it was Marissa Mayer, formerly of Google, and a bunch of other stuff, and maybe angling for a board seat here. A lot of folks were speaking out in support of Sam, and so I think that the prevailing narrative is more that OpenAI is going to get back to what it was doing and that this will be hopefully a blip or a distraction from the mission they were on.
But what you said is more popular with the research community, and with maybe people outside of Silicon Valley, where some folks are asking questions as you note about, is this the end for such non-profit governance? Does this basically give Sam Altman unchecked power to just grow at all costs or pursue business deals that may not fit the original mission? And so I think that question is one that is a valid one for us to discuss. But I think it’s coming more from outside of the inside baseball Silicon Valley sphere.
