OpenAI has appointed a professor from Carnegie Mellon University to its board of directors.

OpenAI has announced that Zico Kolter, a professor and director of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University, has joined its board of directors. Kolter, whose research primarily focuses on AI safety, is described by OpenAI as an "invaluable technical director for [the company's] governance," according to a post on their official blog.

AI safety has been a significant concern for OpenAI, particularly after several key figures, including co-founder Ilya Sutskever, left the company in recent months. Some of these departures were from Sutskever's "Superalignment" team, which had been working on governance strategies for "superintelligent" AI systems but reportedly faced restrictions on the computing resources they were initially promised.

Kolter will also serve on OpenAI’s Safety and Security Committee, joining board members Bret Taylor, Adam D’Angelo, Paul Nakasone, Nicole Seligman, CEO Sam Altman, and other technical experts from OpenAI. This committee is tasked with making recommendations on safety and security matters for all of OpenAI's projects. However, there have been concerns about its effectiveness due to the majority of its members being insiders, as highlighted in a May article.

Board chairman Bret Taylor commented on Kolter's appointment, stating that Kolter brings a deep technical expertise in AI safety and robustness that will help OpenAI ensure that general artificial intelligence benefits humanity as a whole.

Before joining OpenAI, Kolter served as the chief data scientist at C3.ai and completed his PhD in computer science at Stanford University in 2010, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT from 2010 to 2012. His research includes exploring how existing AI safeguards can be bypassed using automated optimization techniques. In addition to his new role at OpenAI, Kolter is the "chief expert" at Bosch and the chief technical advisor at the AI startup Gray Swan.