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Written by Anna Tong and Shivansh Tiwary
(Reuters) – OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman will return to the ChatGPT maker’s board with three new directors, the world’s most prominent artificial intelligence company said on Friday.
Following the conclusion of an investigation by law firm WilmerHale into the events surrounding Mr. Altman’s firing in November, the company has instituted new governance rules and strengthened its conflict of interest policy. The Board of Directors announced unanimous support for Mr. Altman’s leadership.
Employees, investors, and Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest financial backer, expressed shock at Altman’s firing, but it was retracted within days.
OpenAI announced Friday that in addition to Altman, former Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond Hellman, former Sony Entertainment president Nicole Seligman, and Instacart CEO Fiji The company announced the appointment of Mr. Simo and others as new directors.
Altman welcomed the new board members in a post on X, adding: “We have important work ahead of us.”
They will be joined by current board members Quora CEO Adam DiAngelo, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Chairman Brett Taylor, former Salesforce co-CEO.
An investigation by WilmerHale found that Altman’s firing was not the result of concerns related to OpenAI’s finances, product safety or other issues.
“Rather, this was the result of a broken relationship and loss of trust between the former board and Mr. Altman,” OpenAI said in explaining the law firm’s findings.
OpenAI said in a blog post that “WilmerHale believed at the time that the previous board’s actions would alleviate internal management challenges and did not anticipate that their actions would destabilize the company. It turns out,” he said in a blog post.
“WilmerHale found that while the previous board exercised its broad discretion to terminate Mr. Altman, his actions did not constitute a mandatory termination,” it added.
conflict of interest
OpenAI said it will adopt new corporate governance guidelines and create a whistleblower hotline. The startup, whose CEO is a significant investor in other companies, also said it was tightening its conflict of interest policies.
The board provided few details about these improvements.
The board did not provide details about its surprise decision in November, which raises questions of possible wrongdoing by Altman and existential risks posed by the technology OpenAI is building, which Mr. Altman and the company deny. Speculation has increased.
Altman’s reinstatement as CEO, about four days after his firing, came after nearly all of OpenAI’s employees were threatened with resignation unless the board reinstated Altman and resigned. .
His return sparked discussions about how to govern OpenAI, and the company announced a reconstituted board without Altman and with Taylor at the helm.
(Reporting by Shivansh Tiwary in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Angela Christie; Editing by Shweta Agarwal, Krishna Chandra Elli, Bill Berkrot, Diane Craft and William Mallard)
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