OpenAI Welcomes Carnegie Mellon Professor to Board of Directors

OpenAI has recently appointed Zico Kolter to its board of directors. Kolter, a prominent professor and director of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University, specializes in AI safety. OpenAI describes him as an “invaluable technical director for [OpenAI’s] governance” in a blog post announcing the news.

AI safety has become a significant concern for OpenAI, especially following the departure of several high-profile executives and employees focused on this issue, including co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Many of these resignations were from Sutskever’s former “Superalignment” team, which was dedicated to governing “superintelligent” AI systems. According to sources, this team was denied access to the computing resources that were initially promised to them.

In addition to his board position, Kolter will serve on the OpenAI board’s Safety and Security Committee alongside directors Bret Taylor, Adam D’Angelo, Paul Nakasone, Nicole Seligman, and CEO Sam Altman. This committee plays a crucial role in making safety and security recommendations for all OpenAI projects. However, as highlighted in our May article, the committee's composition—primarily made up of insiders—has raised concerns about its effectiveness.

OpenAI board chairman Bret Taylor commented, “Zico brings a profound technical understanding and perspective on AI safety and robustness that will ensure the benefits of general artificial intelligence reach all of humanity.”

Kolter, who was previously the chief data scientist at C3.ai, earned his PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 2010 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT from 2010 to 2012. His research is notable for demonstrating the potential to circumvent existing AI safeguards using automated optimization techniques.

Kolter is no stranger to industry partnerships, currently serving as "chief expert" at Bosch and as chief technical advisor at the AI startup Gray Swan.