OpenAI forms security committee | TIME

OpenAI says it is creating a security committee and has started training a new AI model to replace the GPT-4 system that underpins its ChatGPT chatbot.

The San Francisco startup said in a blog post Tuesday that the committee will advise the entire board on “critical safety and security decisions” for its projects and operations.

The security committee comes as debate swirls around AI security at the company, which has been thrust into the spotlight after a researcher, Jan Leike, resigned and leveled reviews on OpenAI for letting safety “take a backseat to shiny products.” OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever also resigned, and the company disbanded the “super-alignment” team focused on AI risks that they jointly led.

Leike said Tuesday that he is joining rival AI company Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI leaders, to “continue the super-alignment mission” there.

OpenAI said it “recently began training its next frontier model” and that its AI models lead the industry in capability and security, although it made no mention of the controversy. “We welcome robust debate at this important time,” the company said.

AI models are predictive systems trained on vast data sets to generate text, images, videos, and human conversations on demand. Frontier models are the most powerful, state-of-the-art AI systems.

The security committee is packed with members from across the company, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Bret Taylor, and four OpenAI technical and policy experts. It also includes board members Adam D’Angelo, CEO of Quora, and Nicole Seligman, former general counsel at Sony.

The committee’s first task will be to evaluate and further develop OpenAI’s processes and safeguards and make its recommendations to the board within 90 days. The company said it will publicly disclose the recommendations it is adopting “in a manner that is consistent with safety and security.”