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Assuming you don't mean the insiders or the Quora CEO, which aspects of these remaining backgrounds do you find unusual for a Silicon Valley board member? Tash
by Terretta 3y ago
Assuming you don't mean the insiders or the Quora CEO, which aspects of these remaining backgrounds do you find unusual for a Silicon Valley board member?
Tasha McCauley is an adjunct senior management scientist at RAND Corporation, a job she started earlier in 2023, according to her LinkedIn profile. She previously cofounded Fellow Robots, a startup she launched with a colleague from Singularity University, where she’d served as a director of an innovation lab, and then cofounded GeoSim Systems, a geospatial technology startup where she served as CEO until last year. With her husband Joseph Gorden-Levitt, she was a signer of the Asilomar AI Principles, a set of 23 AI governance principles published in 2017. (Altman, OpenAI cofounder Iyla Sutskever and former board director Elon Musk also signed.)
McCauley currently sits on the advisory board of British-founded international Center for the Governance of AI alongside fellow OpenAI director Helen Toner. And she’s tied to the Effective Altruism movement through the Centre for Effective Altruism; McCauley sits on the U.K. board of the Effective Ventures Foundation, its parent organization.
Helen Toner, director of strategy and foundational research grants at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, joined OpenAI’s board of directors in September 2021. Her role: to think about safety in a world where OpenAI’s creation had global influence. “I greatly value Helen’s deep thinking around the long-term risks and effects of AI,” Brockman said in a statement at the time.
More recently, Toner has been making headlines as an expert on China’s AI landscape and the potential role of AI regulation in a geopolitical face-off with the Asian giant. Toner had lived in Beijing in between roles at Open Philanthropy and her current job at CSET, researching its AI ecosystem, per her corporate biography. In June, she co-authored an essay for Foreign Affairs on “The Illusion of China’s AI Prowess” that argued — in opposition to Altman’s cited U.S. Senate testimony — that regulation wouldn’t slow down the U.S. in a race between the two nations.
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EDIT TO ADD:
The question wasn't whether this is scintillating substance. The question was, in what way is this unusual in Silicon Valley.
The answer is that it's not.
- jxi 3y agoNone of that sounds like actual work or results. It's just a bunch of empty business speak. They are definitely not qualified to serve on the board of a company like OpenAI.
- jsnell 3y agoWould Altman's bio be any more impressive if framed the same way? A trash tier startup, failing upwards to a VC, and starting one of the sleziest cryptocurrencies around. Sure sounds like no actual work, qualifications, competence or results.
- jxi 3y agoTheir achievements are already framed in their best light. Hopefully you're able to tell the difference between serving as CEO or president of real reputable companies (the "trash tier startup" still exited for mid-8 figures) versus what looks like being a figure head for fake companies.
- eddtries 3y agoHe was president of YC, I think it's fair to say people will think he's got a better set of credentials on a YC forum than some omg-ai-is-dangerous-please-fund-me think tank thinker.
- yowzadave 3y ago> "a company like OpenAI" Maybe the problem is the meteoric rise of OpenAI--at the time this board was instituted, the company was much smaller, and wouldn't have been able to draw a more illustrious set of board members?
- sumedh 3y agoDidnt they have Elon Musk and Jessica Livingston as founding members, their social network would have someone with more credibility to be on the board compared to the current members.
- pwb25 3y agoWhere is the companies or skills from here? I see a list of made up foundations or "centers" doing 0 valueable things Why do we need some moral superior person from some university to "think about safey and OpenAI" and not find it out ourselves? What a clown company also >And she’s tied to the Effective Altruism movement ah where SBF was involved. what an achivement
- LewisVerstappen 3y agoYeah, at least SBF managed to spin up a $20 billion dollar ponzi scheme. Sure, it's incredibly psychopathic, but it's still an achievement!
- abirch 3y agoFTX wasn't a Ponzi scheme per se. SBF committed fraud by saying they had risk controls in place when they had an exemption for his hedge fund: Alameda Research. FTX could be viable if it let Alameda fail.
- mannerheim 3y agoAlameda played a significant role in propping up the value of FTX through their investment in FTT. Worth questioning how much FTX would have been worth if it hadn't been for various tricks like this.
- fallingknife 3y agoI'm with you on the overall read of her resume, but "believes in <principal> that <bad person> believes in" isn't fair criticism.
- mannerheim 3y agoThey were both on the board for the Centre for Effective Altruism.
- pwb25 3y ago
- DebtDeflation 3y ago>She previously cofounded Fellow Robots Near as I can tell they never actually launched a product. Their webpage is a GoDaddy parked domain page. Their Facebook page is pictures of them attending conferences and sharing their excitement for what Boston Dynamics and other ACTUAL robotics companies were doing. >she launched with a colleague from Singularity University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_Group Just lol. >then cofounded GeoSim Systems Seems to be a consulting business for creating digital twins that never really got off the ground. https://www.linkedin.com/in/tasha-m-25475a54/details/experience/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tasha-m-25475a54/details/experie... It doesn't appears she's ever had a real job. Someone in the other thread commented that her profile reeks of a three letter agency plant. Possible. Either that or she's just a dabbler funder by her actor husband.
- metadat 3y agoI can't believe I'm going to write this.. but: So what? Regardless of launch/no launch, the company was a flop. This is a cheap shot. Just because someone was successful in the past (or not) is not an automatically relevant signal they'll be a great fit when placed in a different domain. Sometimes they have other relevant background and experience, and other times... Maybe they're just connected. What is the level of scrutiny of qualifications in other companies, even public ones? When looking closely at other companies, I've noticed board compositions can vary substantially. As outsiders, we're undoubtedly missing part of the context about what is relevant (to the board) or not. Suggested reading: Black Swan by Taleb. p.s. I am not partial to anyone involved, especially clueless board members. I found this comment annoying due to the breathless, baseless, and flawed logic. What was this supposed to add to the conversation?
- sumedh 3y ago> So what? Regardless of launch/no launch, the company was a flop. Nothing wrong with that but a company like Open AI which is literally changing the world does not have a board member who is qualified to be in that position.
- goatherders 3y ago
- threadweaver34 3y agoBoth those resumes read as not being unqualified for the job, but their primary qualification is being women.
- renewiltord 3y agoNone are out of the ordinary. It’s like Steel Perlot. It’s an indulge-the-wife tchotchke company position. There are lots of these for the wives and girlfriends of successful people. Just a sinecure and someone you trust for some other reason. But you’ve got to trust them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]