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- 🤖 OpenAI Announces New Board Members
🤖 OpenAI Announces New Board Members
PLUS: Google Software Engineer Steals AI Secrets, The AI Malware Worm
James Roesser
March 11, 2024
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In today’s AI Report:
🗣OpenAI Announces New Board Members
🚔Google Software Engineer Steals AI Secrets
🐛The AI Malware Worm
🛠5 Trending Tools
💰Venture Capital Updates
💼Who’s Hiring?
Read Time: 3 minutes
🗞RECENT NEWS
OPENAI
🗣OpenAI Announces New Board Members
Image Source: World Economic Forum/Benedikt von Loebell
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will rejoin the Board of Directors with three new members as a first step toward preparing for expansion and growth.
Key Details:
The three new members added to the Board of Directors include:
Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann: a non-profit leader and physician serving on the boards of Pfizer and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Nicole Seligman: a globally recognized corporate and civic leader and lawyer who currently serves on numerous public company boards, including Paramount Global, MeiraGTx, and Intuitive Machines.
Fidji Simo: the CEO and Chair of Instacart and a member of the Board of Directors at Shopify.
These individuals have experience leading global organizations and navigating complex regulatory environments in technology, non-profits, and board governance.
The board’s expansion and Altman’s reinstatement follow an investigation by WilmerHale, a law firm providing global legal representation across various industry areas.
WilmerHale concluded that Altman’s brief firing was a “consequence of a breakdown in the relationship and a loss of trust” between Altman and OpenAI’s board members rather than “concerns regarding product safety or security and the pace of development.”
Why It’s Important:
Previously unreported details about Altman’s brief firing as OpenAI’s CEO are emerging. The New York Times reported that Altman’s manipulative behavior and hot-and-cold relationships with executives fueled a toxic work environment. He constantly froze out executives who didn’t support his decisions.
OpenAI plans to adopt new corporate governance guidelines to strengthen its conflict of interest policy “to serve as an anonymous reporting resource for all OpenAI employees and contractors.”
OpenAI is also establishing additional board committees, including a mission and strategy committee “focused on implementation and advancement of the core mission of OpenAI.”
🩺 PULSE CHECK
Should Sam Altman be on OpenAI’s Board of Directors?Vote Below to View Live Results |
🚔Google Software Engineer Steals AI Secrets
Image Source: Canva AI Image Generator
A former Google software engineer has been charged with stealing AI trade secrets from the company while secretly working with AI ventures in China.
Key Details:
Linwei Ding, a 38-year-old Chinese national, was arrested on four counts of federal trade secret theft, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Google discovered that Ding had been uploading hundreds of confidential files to his personal Google Cloud account for several years.
Within weeks of the theft, Ding founded a China-based startup centered around training language models powered by supercomputing chips.
He was also offered a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) position at an early-stage startup in China.
Another Google employee was scanning Ding’s access badge at the Google headquarters in the United States while he was in China.
The case was announced at the American Bar Association conference in San Francisco by Attorney General Merrick Garland, a vocal advocate for the threat of Chinese economic espionage and security concerns surrounding AI advancements.
FBI Director Christopher Wray explained: “Today’s charges are the latest illustration of the lengths affiliates of companies based in the People’s Republic of China are willing to go to steal American innovation.”
Why It’s Important:
Ding stole detailed information about the hardware infrastructure and software platforms that Google’s supercomputers leverage to train AI models.
This situation highlights concerns about China’s economic espionage to accelerate AI advancements and harm American companies.
🚨Read the full indictment here.
AI RESEARCH
🐛The AI Malware Worm
Cybersecurity researchers developed zero-click worms called “Morris II” to target GenAI-powered applications, steal sensitive data, And send malicious spam emails.
Morris II is deployed through the use of adversarial self-replicating prompts. The attackers can insert these prompts into conversational chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, tricking the AI models into replicating and spreading hostile actions.
Morris II successfully deployed replication, propagation, and malicious activity through Google’s Gemini Models. In response, Google’s Red Team asked to meet the researchers and “get into more detail to assess impact or mitigation ideas on Gemini.”
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🔮Browse our always Up-To-Date AI Tools Database.
💰VENTURE CAPITAL UPDATES
NLX raises $12M in funding to explore how airlines use AI systems to enhance their operations.
Prudence closes its $80M Fund III to invest in technology companies transforming the built world.
A16z, a prominent player in Silicon Valley’s venture capital arena, pools $6.9B for new investment funds focusing on AI models.
💼WHO’S HIRING?
🤖PROMPT OF THE DAY
EMAILS
🧊Cold Email Subject Lines
Generate 5 concise, attention-grabbing, and positive subject lines for this [Email] to [Recipient Details (e.g., Job, Hobbies, or Social Network)].
The goal is to create an open-worthy subject line that captures the recipient’s attention without annoying them.
Email = [Insert Here]
Recipient Details = [Insert Here]📒FINAL NOTE
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