OpenAI is facing pressure to diversify its board. It can start by looking outside of Silicon Valley

Over the past year, OpenAI has cemented its place as one of the most powerful tech startups in the world. Its release of ChatGPT heralded an artificial intelligence revolution that sent shockwaves through nearly every industry, and the public remains both enamored and terrified by the possibilities it has unleashed.

Over the past year, OpenAI has cemented its place as one of the most powerful tech startups in the world. Its release of ChatGPT heralded an artificial intelligence revolution that sent shockwaves through nearly every industry, and the public remains both enamored and terrified by the possibilities it has unleashed. But the company creating this technology, with an estimated valuation as high as $90 billion, has also come under fire recently for a glaring lack of diversity within its current governing body. After a brief corporate explosion last month that saw CEO Sam Altman ousted and reinstated within a week, OpenAI has said that the company is back to focusing on its core mission with a reconstituted board of directors. The saga resulted in the departure of the board’s only women directors, and it now consists of just three white men. Two of them largely fit the mold of a Silicon Valley “tech bro.” The third, an East Coast economist, has made controversial statements about women in the past. The board’s lack of diversity appears to be at odds with OpenAI’s publicly-stated mission, which the company says is meant to ensure that artificial general intelligence “benefits all of humanity.”