Late Tuesday night Mo. OpenAI announced the return of Sam AltmanIts ousted chief executive officer, as well as a revamped board that included a name not often associated with Silicon Valley: Larry Summers.
The economist and former Treasury Secretary joined forces with former Salesforce Inc. co-CEO Brett Taylor and current board member Adam D’Angelo to form the company’s “initial board.” OpenAI’s former directors abruptly fired Altman on Friday, capping a dramatic saga that has cast doubt on the future of the most closely watched startup and the technology.
OpenAI said in an online post that it was still working on “figuring out the details” of its new management. But with Summers it has a board member with deep ties to Wall Street and Washington — and a strong belief that artificial intelligence is coming for white-collar jobs.
Summers already sits on a few tech boards: Block Inc., Jack Dorsey’s payments firm, and software company Skillsoft Corp. He was named an advisor to powerhouse venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in 2011, but has not been publicly involved recently. Investment. Summers led the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration and served 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 has made about AI focus on the labor impact.
In 2018, Summers refuted claims by then-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin 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 devastation if the US “loses its lead” to China in biotech and AI.
One month after ChatGPT launches, in December, 2022 – OpenAI’s chatbot that sparked the recent AI boom – Summers compared the service to the printing press, electricity and even older human evolution. “This may be the most important general-purpose technology since the wheel or fire,” he said on Bloomberg TV.
Then in April, Summers said that ChatGPT was “coming for the cognitive class”, predicting that it would render the first high-skilled roles obsolete. “ChatGPT is going to change the work of doctors, listening to symptoms and making diagnoses, before it changes the work of nurses,” he told Bloomberg TV. “It’s going to change what traders do going in and out of the financial markets, even before it changes the people doing the selling.”
At OpenAI, Summers will likely be tasked with recruiting a full board and sorting out the company’s governance. That board could include Altman and its biggest backer Microsoft Corp., a person familiar with the situation said on condition of anonymity because of the private talks.
In 2005, when Summers was president of Harvard University, her comments that innate differences in gender prevent women from pursuing mathematics and science careers drew outrage. He apologized for the comments.
The economist and former Treasury Secretary joined forces with former Salesforce Inc. co-CEO Brett Taylor and current board member Adam D’Angelo to form the company’s “initial board.” OpenAI’s former directors abruptly fired Altman on Friday, capping a dramatic saga that has cast doubt on the future of the most closely watched startup and the technology.
OpenAI said in an online post that it was still working on “figuring out the details” of its new management. But with Summers it has a board member with deep ties to Wall Street and Washington — and a strong belief that artificial intelligence is coming for white-collar jobs.
Summers already sits on a few tech boards: Block Inc., Jack Dorsey’s payments firm, and software company Skillsoft Corp. He was named an advisor to powerhouse venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in 2011, but has not been publicly involved recently. Investment. Summers led the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration and served 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 has made about AI focus on the labor impact.
In 2018, Summers refuted claims by then-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin 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 devastation if the US “loses its lead” to China in biotech and AI.
One month after ChatGPT launches, in December, 2022 – OpenAI’s chatbot that sparked the recent AI boom – Summers compared the service to the printing press, electricity and even older human evolution. “This may be the most important general-purpose technology since the wheel or fire,” he said on Bloomberg TV.
Then in April, Summers said that ChatGPT was “coming for the cognitive class”, predicting that it would render the first high-skilled roles obsolete. “ChatGPT is going to change the work of doctors, listening to symptoms and making diagnoses, before it changes the work of nurses,” he told Bloomberg TV. “It’s going to change what traders do going in and out of the financial markets, even before it changes the people doing the selling.”
At OpenAI, Summers will likely be tasked with recruiting a full board and sorting out the company’s governance. That board could include Altman and its biggest backer Microsoft Corp., a person familiar with the situation said on condition of anonymity because of the private talks.
In 2005, when Summers was president of Harvard University, her comments that innate differences in gender prevent women from pursuing mathematics and science careers drew outrage. He apologized for the comments.
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