Tag: silicon valley

Unlike OpenAI, Mozilla’s nonprofit cannot fire executives in charge of for-profit work. Each for-profit unit has its own board, with members annually selected by the nonprofit foundation’s board. “It’s different jobs, it’s a different mix of skills,” Surman says. “If you have different functions, it makes sense to have a separation of powers.”The different boards, with distinct characters and missions, are also intended to give the commercial endeavors greater autonomy. Mozilla tries to seat people who know philanthropy, open source technologies, social issues, and tech policy on the nonprofit board, Surman says. On the for-profit boards, it looks more toward leadership experience in venture capital or corporate marketing and innovation.Mozilla’s different boards have sometimes convened t...

Altman’s ouster shows an organization that was meant to align superintelligent AI with humanity failing to align the values of even its own board members and leadership. Adding a profit-seeking component to the nonprofit project turned it into an AI powerhouse. Launching products was supposed to provide not only profits but also opportunities to learn how to better control and develop beneficial AI. Now it’s unclear whether the current leadership thinks that can be done without breaching the project’s original promise to create AGI safely.Murati faces the challenge of convincing OpenAI’s staff and backers that it still has a workable philosophy for developing AI. She must also feed the company’s hunger for cash to operate the expansive infrastructure behind projects like ChatGPT. At the t...