Artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer Andrew Ng expressed hope that OpenAI's new board will steer the company to a more stable structure and the ChatGPT maker comes out stronger from the recent boardroom saga that rocked the AI upstart in November.
Ng made these remarks during a fireside chat at CNBC-TV18 and Moneycontrol Global AI Conclave on December 16.
On November 17, the tech industry was rocked by the sudden ousting of Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI and a prominent figure in the current AI boom. However, a week later, Altman was reinstated as the CEO of OpenAI following intense pressure from employees and investors, including Microsoft, on the company's board.
As part of Altman's return, OpenAI overhauled its board with new members, including former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, who also assumed the role of chairman, and former US treasury secretary Larry Summers.
Quora co-founder Adam D'Angelo was the only person who remained from the old board, while other members, including Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner, and OpenAI's chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, stepped down. The shake-up also saw Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest investor, getting a non-voting observer seat on the board.
Ng, who taught Altman at Stanford, termed these developments as an "unfortunate event" and said these were driven by OpenAI's strange corporate structure which led to "serious governance problems".
"Part of me wonders if OpenAI would be better off just being a normal for-profit organisation. Many of my friends in the OpenAI team are passionate, hard-working, want to do the right thing, want to ship product features, and just build things that are useful for people," he said.
OpenAI's unconventional structure currently functions as a partnership between a non-profit research organisation and a capped for-profit subsidiary. The board oversees both entities with a primary focus on advancing AI that is safe and beneficial for all of humanity rather than prioritising the interests of investors.
Ng, however, said both Taylor and Summers are "serious powerhouses". "Hopefully, OpenAI will come out even stronger than how they entered this episode," he said.
Ng also said that fears over AI technology are "overblown" and credited India's approach towards AI regulation.
"India has taken a relatively light touch (approach to regulation), which in my opinion is superior to some of the things going on in the United States and the European Union. I think that having good regulation on AI applications was a very positive step forward," he said.
He also believes that India is well-positioned to be the global leader in the nascent but rapidly growing field. This is because of a higher rate of AI skill penetration and the sheer amount of interest in the technology in the country.
Ng, who co-founded the online learning platform Coursera in 2012 and is currently serving as its board chairman, said the platform witnessed the second fastest enrollment for its generative AI course from India, accounting for 20,000 of the total 90,000 enrollments within the first month.
"We have active activities right now in India, exploring one specific application. And I think that there'll be many of those opportunities in India and around the world in the future," Ng said.
