tech
OpenAI is bringing on some big guns in the lead-up to its IPO
OpenAI is bulking up before its IPO, landing Transformer co-inventor Noam Shazeer from Google DeepMind and former Trump AI policy official Dean Ball in the same week.
TL;DR
- OpenAI has hired Noam Shazeer, co-lead at Google DeepMind's Gemini and co-author of the "Attention Is All You Need" paper.
- Dean Ball, former Trump White House AI policy official, will lead OpenAI's new Strategic Futures team focused on AI policy and governance.
- Shazeer's departure from Google followed reported internal disputes over political issues.
- Ball's team will focus on catastrophic risk, self-improvement, labor market impact, and the relationship between AI labs, governments, and society.
- Ball emphasized the critical role of internal governance for AI labs.
- The hires occur amidst ongoing shifts between top AI labs and following an export control ban on Anthropic's models by former President Donald Trump.