Late Tuesday night, OpenAI announced the return of Sam Altman, its ousted CEO, along with a revamped board that included one name not often associated with Silicon Valley: Larry Summers.
The economist and former Treasury secretary joined Bret Taylor, former co-CEO of Salesforce Inc., and existing board member Adam D’Angelo to form what the company called an “initial board.” The former directors of OpenAI fired Altman suddenly on Friday, setting. outside a dramatic saga that casts doubt on the future of the most closely watched startup and technology.
OpenAI said it is still working to “figure out the details” of its new management in a post online. But with Summers it has a board member with deep ties to Wall Street and Washington — and an adamant belief that artificial intelligence is coming for white. -collar jobs.
Summers already sits on a number of tech boards: Block Inc., Jack Dorsey’s payments company, and the software company Skillsoft Corp. He was named an adviser to powerful venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in 2011, but has not been publicly involved with it recently. investments Summers led the Treasury in the Clinton administration and worked as an economic adviser in the Obama administration, serving as president of Harvard University in between. He is now a paid contributor to Bloomberg Television.
The few comments he made about AI focused on the job impact.
In 2018, Summers disputed then-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s claims that AI would not replace American jobs for 50 to 100 years. “The robots are coming,” Summers wrote in the Washington Post. That year, he also warned of economic disaster if the US “loses its lead” in biotechnology and AI to China.
In December 2022, a month after the arrival of ChatGPT – the OpenAI chat room that sparked the recent AI boom – Summers compared the service to the printing press, electricity and even older human advances. “This could be the most important general-purpose technology since the wheel or fire,” he said on Bloomberg TV.
Then in April, Summers said that ChatGPT is “coming for the cognitive class”, predicting that it will make higher-quality roles obsolete first. “ChatGPT will replace what doctors do, hearing symptoms and making a diagnosis, before it changes what nurses do,” he told Bloomberg TV. “It will change what traders do entering and exiting financial markets before it changes what sellers do.”
At OpenAI, Summers will likely be tasked with recruiting a fuller board and sorting out the company’s management. That board could include Altman and Microsoft Corp., its biggest backer, according to a person familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified to disclose details of private negotiations.
In 2005, when Summers was president of Harvard University, his comments that innate differences in gender prevented women from flourishing in mathematical and scientific careers drew outrage. He apologized for the comments.
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Updated: 22 Nov 2023, 23:04 IST
(tagsTo Translate)Larry Summers