Reid Hoffman steps down from OpenAI board to avoid potential conflicts of interest

Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn Corp., leaves the stage after talking in the course of the Bridge Discussion board in San Francisco, California.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Photographs

LinkedIn founder and Greylock accomplice Reid Hoffman is leaving the nonprofit board of OpenAI, he introduced in a post on Friday.

Hoffman cited a need to spend money on firms utilizing OpenAI’s software program, which may trigger a battle of curiosity, he mentioned within the publish.

“I began to surprise: Will my place as a 501c3 board member of OpenAI doubtlessly seem like it is resulting in differential financial development? To be clear, for the reason that begin, OpenAI and its board has been very cautious to observe and keep away from any conflicts to this point,” Hoffman wrote. “However by stepping off the board, I can proactively put to relaxation any downstream potential points for each OpenAI and all Greylock portfolio firms I’ve backed.”

OpenAI is without doubt one of the leaders in creating and coaching giant language fashions, a comparatively new method in synthetic intelligence that makes use of a number of computing energy and information to supply software program that may return blocks of textual content or solutions that seem like a human wrote them.

Hoffman mentioned firms that use giant language fashions may grow to be extremely beneficial.

“There are future trillion-dollar firms being constructed and invested in proper now, which won’t solely change markets, however launch new ones,” Hoffman wrote.

OpenAI provides different firms entry to its AI fashions by way of a programming interface, or API. Earlier this week, it said it might cost firms utilizing its AI about one-fifth of 1 cent to supply about 750 phrases.

OpenAI has an uncommon company construction: It was initially based as a nonprofit in 2015, earlier than shifting its construction in 2019 to grow to be a for-profit firm, though it says its revenue is “capped” as a part of its bylaws and that extra earnings would move to the corporate’s nonprofit wing.

The weird construction factored into Microsoft’s current $10 billion investment in OpenAI, by which the tech big would reportedly get a share of OpenAI’s earnings till it recouped its funding. Hoffman is on Microsoft’s board.

Beforehand, Tesla CEO Elon Musk left OpenAI’s board in 2018. OpenAI mentioned on the time that Musk was avoiding conflicts with Tesla’s work in synthetic intelligence.

An OpenAI consultant did not return a request for remark.

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