A.I. Belongs to the Capitalists Now
What happened at OpenAI over the past five days could be described in many ways: A juicy boardroom drama, a tug of war over one of America’s biggest start-ups, a clash between those who want A.I. to progress faster and those who want to slow it down.
But it was, most importantly, a fight between two dueling visions of artificial intelligence.
In one vision, A.I. is a transformative new tool, the latest in a line of world-changing innovations that includes the steam engine, electricity and the personal computer, and that, if put to the right uses, could usher in a new era of prosperity and make gobs of money for the businesses that harness its potential.
In another vision, A.I. is something closer to an alien life form — a leviathan being summoned from the mathematical depths of neural networks — that must be restrained and deployed with extreme caution in order to prevent it from taking over and killing us all.
With the return of Sam Altman on Tuesday to OpenAI, the company whose board fired him as chief executive last Friday, the battle between these two views appears to be over.
Team Capitalism won. Team Leviathan lost.
OpenAI’s new board will consist of three people, at least initially: Adam D’Angelo, the chief executive of Quora (and the only holdover from the old board); Bret Taylor, a former executive at Facebook and Salesforce; and Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary. The board is expected to grow from there.
OpenAI’s largest investor, Microsoft, is also expected to have a larger voice in OpenAI’s governance going forward. That may include a board seat.