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The committee will evaluate and develop OpenAI’s processes and safeguards over the next 90 days, after which it will share its recommendations with the board.
OpenAI has announced the formation of a new safety and security committee today (28 May) co-led by CEO Sam Altman, as it begins training its next frontier AI model.
Other than Altman, the safety and security committee will be led by directors Bret Taylor, Adam D’Angelo and Nicole Seligman.
The company said the committee’s role will be to make recommendations to its board on “critical safety and security decisions” for OpenAI projects and operations.
OpenAI said it anticipates its new frontier AI model – presumably GPT-5, although the company hasn’t called it that yet – to “bring us to the next level of capabilities on our path” towards artificial general intelligence.
“While we are proud to build and release models that are industry-leading on both capabilities and safety, we welcome a robust debate at this important moment,” the company said in a statement.
The committee is set to evaluate and further develop OpenAI’s processes and safeguards over the next 90 days, after which it will share its recommendations with the full board.
“Following the full board’s review, OpenAI will publicly share an update on adopted recommendations in a manner that is consistent with safety and security,” the company said.
Some of the OpenAI technical and policy experts who will join the committee include Aleksander Madry (head of preparedness), Lilian Weng (head of safety systems), John Schulman (head of alignment science), Matt Knight (head of security) and Jakub Pachocki (who recently replaced Ilya Sutskever as chief scientist).
OpenAI said it will also consult other experts to support its work, including former cybersecurity officials Rob Joyce (who advises OpenAI on security) and John Carlin.
Just last week, the San Francisco-based AI start-up announced a global partnership with News Corp, the multibillion-dollar news media organisation, that will allow it to access content from the likes of The Wall Street Journal and The Sunday Times.
It was also one of 16 leading tech companies that agreed to an expanded set of safety commitments relating to the development of AI at a global summit in Seoul, South Korea.
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