Source: Quantum Bit
Author: Krissy Yuyang
Published on: [date]
Just a moment ago, OpenAI CEO Ultraman announced his return to the board of directors!
At the same time, OpenAI also put an end to the internal dispute that took place in November last year, announcing the completion of an independent review of the incident. “We all believe that Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI.” The announcement from the OpenAI Board of Directors’ Special Committee also revealed that the board will improve OpenAI’s governance structure, with new members including Sue Desmond-Hellmann, an American oncologist and biotechnology leader who served as CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation from 2014 to 2020. Nicole Seligman, a legal professional who has provided consulting services to Bill and Hillary Clinton and served as Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel of Sony, as well as President of Sony Entertainment. Fidiji Simo, a senior figure in the consumer technology industry who previously served as Vice President of Facebook Applications and Head of Facebook App. Previously, when the OpenAI board of directors was restructured after the “palace struggle,” the initial members were Bret Taylor, former CEO of Salesforce and former CTO of Meta, former chairman of the Twitter board of directors, Larry Summers, former US Secretary of the Treasury, and Adam D’Angelo, founder of Quora. Microsoft joined as an observer without voting rights. This new development has sparked heated discussions among the audience. Of course, at this point, while enjoying the show, people have not forgotten about GPT4.5/5. Many blind fans have noticed that OpenAI, after the impact of Claude 3, GPT-4 Turbo is still at the top of the rankings. It seems like they are dragging their feet again.
The investigation into the palace struggle On December 8, 2023, 22 days after the annual palace struggle at OpenAI, the law firm WilmerHale was hired to investigate Ultraman’s departure. After reviewing more than 30,000 documents and conducting dozens of interviews, WilmerHale concluded that the rupture of trust between the former board of directors of OpenAI and Ultraman led to the events of November 17. At that time, the former board of directors believed that the action of kicking Ultraman out of the company would alleviate the internal management challenges and did not anticipate that it would disrupt the stability of the company. The investigation results also emphasized that the decision made by the former board of directors of OpenAI was “not due to concerns about product safety, development speed, OpenAI’s finances, etc.,” but rather because of the broken relationship with Ultraman personally. And the decision was executed in a very short period of time, without prior notification to the investors or a comprehensive investigation.
Based on the investigation results, the OpenAI board of directors officially stated today that they “fully trust” Ultraman and Greg Brockman, who “stood with him” at the time. Bret Taylor, Chairman of the OpenAI Board of Directors, said: “We all believe that Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI.” The official announcement from OpenAI did not disclose more details about the investigation. However, just before this, The New York Times revealed that Mira Murati, the Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, who supported Ultraman’s return and led the comments with hearts, was also a key figure in pushing Ultraman out of the company.
According to the revelations, Mira and Ilya, at about the same time, expressed their concerns about Ultraman’s leadership abilities to the board of directors, which became one of the important reasons for the board’s decision to remove Ultraman. However, just a moment ago, Mira tweeted to refute this claim, saying that the former board of directors used her as a scapegoat for the sake of face, and she was “very disappointed” with their actions.
New members of the OpenAI board of directors Finally, let’s take a look at the information of the new board members and see the new direction of the OpenAI board of directors after this restructuring. Sue Desmond-Hellmann is a 66-year-old doctor from the medical field and an American oncologist and biotechnology leader. Sue currently serves on the board of directors of Pfizer and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. She previously served as Chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and a member of the Facebook board of directors.
She received her Bachelor’s and Doctoral degrees in Medicine from the University of Nevada, Reno, and completed her medical residency at UCSF. In 1989, Sue and her husband Nicholas, who was an infectious disease physician, went to Africa and served as visiting professors at the Uganda Cancer Institute for two years. During this time, they also provided treatment for Kaposi’s sarcoma patients under the sponsorship of the Rockefeller Foundation.
After leaving Africa, Sue worked at a private clinic for two years before returning to the research field as the Deputy Director of Clinical Cancer Research at Bristol Myers Squibb, responsible for the development of paclitaxel. In 1995, she joined Genentech as a Clinical Scientist and was appointed Chief Medical Officer the following year. In 1999, she became the Executive Vice President of Development and Product Operations. From 2004 to 2009, she served as President of Product Development and played a crucial role in the development of two of the earliest targeted cancer gene therapies, Avastin and Herceptin. During this time, Sue also served as a member of the American Cancer Society board of directors and the Executive Committee of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. In 2009, Sue accepted the invitation from UCSF and officially became the ninth Chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco, as well as the first woman to hold this position. During her tenure as Chancellor, UCSF faced strained relations with other campuses of the University of California due to financial issues. Sue proposed establishing partnerships with private pharmaceutical companies to increase revenue and resolve the unstable financial situation.
On December 17, 2013, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced that Sue would be its next CEO. She held this position until December 2019 when she announced her resignation from the foundation due to health and family reasons. Nicole Seligman, 67, comes from the legal field and is a globally renowned lawyer who currently serves on the boards of three public companies. Seligman held various senior leadership positions at Sony, including Executive Vice President and General Counsel, overseeing global legal and legal affairs, and also served as President of Sony Entertainment and President of Sony Corporation of America.
During her studies, Seligman obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Law (1978) and a Doctorate in Law (1983) from Harvard University. After graduating, she worked as a clerk in the courts and even entered the Supreme Court of the United States. After leaving the court, Seligman became a partner at a law firm in Washington, D.C., and during that time, she provided defense for Clinton in his scandal, with CNN and other major media organizations as her clients. From 2001 to 2016, Seligman worked at Sony. In September of that year, she was hired by the then-CEO of Sony Corporation of America to serve as Executive Vice President and General Counsel. In June 2003, she became the President of Sony Entertainment and held various positions in the global Sony Corporation until 2016 when the nearly sixty-year-old Seligman announced her resignation as President of Sony Entertainment and Sony Corporation of America, ending her career at Sony. Fidiji Simo, the current CEO and Chairman of Instacart, is focused on providing grocery delivery services similar to “errands.”
Before this, this French businesswoman, who was included in Fortune’s “Most Powerful Women” list, had nearly 15 years of experience in operations, strategy, and product development in the consumer technology field. Prior to joining Instacart, she served as Vice President of Facebook Applications and was responsible for them. It was under her leadership that video became an important part of the Facebook experience. In 2021, Simo ended her 10-year career at Facebook. Information shows that Simo also participated in the co-creation of Women in Product, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting women’s career development in the technology field. Simo is also a member of the Shopity board of directors. Oh, by the way, except for Ultraman, all the other new board members are women. Previously, there were doubts that the restructured board of directors of OpenAI was composed entirely of white men, lacking diversity and AI research experience. Now it seems that they have filled the gaps. (doge)
