OpenAI has announced the appointment of Zico Kolter to its board of directors.
Colter, professor and chair of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University, focuses his research primarily on AI safety. [OpenAI’s] “Governance,” OpenAI wrote in an official blog post.
Colter will also join the OpenAI Board's Safety and Security Committee, along with board members Brett Taylor, Adam D'Angelo, Paul Nakasone, Nicole Seligman, CEO Sam Altman, and OpenAI technical experts. The committee is responsible for making recommendations on safety and security decisions for all OpenAI projects, but as we noted in our May article, its membership is primarily made up of insiders, raising questions among experts about its effectiveness.
“Zico brings a deep technical understanding and perspective on AI safety and robustness that will help ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,” Taylor, chairman of OpenAI's board of directors, said in a statement.
Colter, formerly the chief data scientist at C3.ai, earned his PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 2010 and then served as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT from 2010 to 2012. His research includes demonstrating the potential for automated optimization techniques to circumvent existing AI protections.
No stranger to industry collaboration, Colter currently serves as “chief expert” at Bosch and chief technical advisor to AI startup Grey Swan.