Sam Altman Leaves OpenAI’s Safety Committee

AI Governance | Sep 17, 2024

Image: Freepik

More Independent Safety Governance With Power to Halt Releases

In a recent OpenAI post titled 'An update on our safety and security practices', it was announced that CEO Sam Altman has resigned from the Safety and Security Committee, presumably to give the committee greater autonomy in the face of mounting criticism of the company's safety procedures by U.S. lawmakers and former executives.

Safety Committee

The committee was established in May 2024 to assess the potential safety risks associated with OpenAI's artificial intelligence models, such as GPT-4 and the latest LLM, Strawberry (with PhD -level reasoning). Critics are concerned about Altman's outsized influence over the company's direction as CEO and the claim of prioritizing faster development over AI safety.  This comes as regulatory scrutiny is ramping up. In July, a group of U.S. senators wrote a letter pressuring OpenAI to make safety and transparency a top priority.

See:  Worldcoin Launches ‘World Chain’ for Human ID.

Also, early this year, several OpenAI employees in charge of AI safety, especially those who deal with long term risk reduction just 'quit' saying safety concerns were losing priority.  There's also an August 2024 'Letter from OpenAI Whistleblowers' written by members of the technical and policy teams.  Having said all this, skeptics are still concerned about the independence of the newly shaped committee, and concerns over the company's ultimate goals given the recent surge in lobbying activities that has increased it's budget almost 3x since the start of the year.

The restructured Safety and Security Committee will now be led by Zico Kolter (professor from Carnegie Mellon University) with additional members including Adam D’Angelo (CEO of Quora), and Paul Nakasone (retired U.S. Army General). The revamped committee will have more independence, and perhaps more importantly, more power. It now has the authority to delay or halt the release of AI models if safety concerns arise, a significant shift in OpenAI’s internal governance​.

More Independent Safety Oversight

With Altman’s departure from the SSC, the committee is now chaired by Zico Kolter, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, alongside other external members like Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, a retired U.S. Army General Paul Nakasone, and Nicole Seligman a former EVP and General Counsel of Sony Corporation.  The redesigned committee will arguably be more independent.  It also has now powers with the authority to delay or halt the release of AI models if safety concerns arise.

See:  Whistleblowers Accuse OpenAI of Illegally Restrictive NDAs

Blog post quote:

The Safety and Security Committee will be briefed by company leadership on safety evaluations for major model releases, and will, along with the full board, exercise oversight over model launches, including having the authority to delay a release until safety concerns are addressed.

Outlook

Altman leaving the Safety committee is a step in the right direction but how truly independent the revamped committee will be has yet to be seen.

The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, artificial intelligence, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org

National Security Is Now Part of Financial Supervision

How Canadians Pay Is Changing Before Real-Time Rail

Canadians Cut Holiday Spend but Still Pay More for Canadian

Ondo Launches Tokenized Pre IPO Private Markets

Snaplii Puts AI Agent Spending in a Separate Wallet

Building a Legal Bench: How Fintech and Crowdfunding Companies Can Hire the Right Legal Talent

Tangerine Business Launches on Starling Banking Core

🔥 TOKEN2049 Singapore — Tech EZ KOL Club

How Fintech Companies Can Document R&D Involving Machine Learning Models

What Are the Top Challenges in MedSpa Management?