LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman Quits OpenAI Board of Directors Over Conflicts of Interest

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman is leaving OpenAI’s board to avoid conflicts of interest as he backs more AI companies, he said in an online post .

Hoffman, who has invested in and advised the startup since its inception in 2015, said his venture capital firm Greylock funds companies such as presentation builder Tome, which pays for the tools of OpenAI, the creator of the sensation. of ChatGPT chatbot. Hoffman also co-founded Inflection AI, one of the most prominent startups working on technology similar to OpenAI.

“By stepping down from the board, I can proactively address any potential downstream issues for OpenAI and all of the Greylock portfolio companies I have backed,” he said, noting that OpenAI has avoided the conflicts to date.

Hoffman’s departure underscores the competition between a growing number of companies aiming to reshape content production as well as entire industries through AI.

At the same time, Hoffman said he remains OpenAI’s “ally” and wants to work to “uplift humanity” through technology, including cross-industry partnerships if desired. .

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a Twitter post in response to Hoffman that he looked forward to “much more collaboration in the future!”

Hoffman remains on the board of Microsoft, itself a major partner and investor in OpenAI.

Meanwhile, OpenAI, in its latest update, has made the ChatGPT tool available for companies to integrate into their own applications as it seeks commercial uses for the wildly popular chatbot.

The company now offers paid access to businesses and developers who want to use the software’s ability to answer questions and generate text in their own apps and products. Customers will be able to plug their applications into ChatGPT’s Application Programming Interface, giving them the same version of the GPT 3.5 model that OpenAI itself uses at a cost 10 times lower than OpenAI’s existing models.

© Thomson Reuters 2023