Helen Toner
Born1992 (age 31–32)
Melbourne, Australia
OccupationResearcher
Known forFormer Board Member of OpenAI
Websitecset.georgetown.edu/staff/helen-toner/

Helen Toner is an Australian researcher and former board member of OpenAI.[1][2]

Eary life and education

Toner was born in 1992 in Melbourne, Australia. She graduated from the University of Melbourne in 2014 and participated in UN Youth, an organization that provides student engagement in international diplomacy simulations.[2][3] During her time at the university, she was recognized by her peers for her academic and extracurricular activities.[2]

Career

Toner's career includes involvement with the effective altruism movement, which focuses on using resources efficiently for charitable impact and ethical development in artificial intelligence.[2][4] After graduating, she worked with GiveWell and Open Philanthropy, an initiative co-founded by Dustin Moskovitz.[2]

Toner also worked in China studying the AI industry.[2] She later worked as a research affiliate at the University of Oxford's centre for the governance of AI, before becoming Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology's director of strategy and foundational research grants.[2][5] She has co-written articles in Foreign Affairs.[6][7]

In late 2021, Toner was appointed to the board of OpenAI.[2] OpenAI is owned by investors including Microsoft, but the organization has retained its non-for-profit governance structure, making board members accountable to the organization's altruistic goals, rather than shareholders.[8]

In October 2023 she would publish the report "Decoding Intentions: Artificial Intelligence and Costly Signals" with two other researchers writing[9]

OpenAI has also drawn criticism for many other safety and ethics issues related to the launches of ChatGPT and GPT-4, including regarding copyright issues, labor conditions for data annotators, and the susceptibility of their products to “jailbreaks” that allow users to bypass safety controls.

After the paper’s publication, Altman tried to push out Toner because he thought the paper was critical of the company.[10]

On November 17, 2023, Toner along with three other board members voted to remove Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI. The board's stated reason was that Altman was "not consistently candid in his communications” with the board,[11] and was influenced by perceptions that Altman was manipulating board members for his own gain.[12] Four days later, the decision was revoked and she was removed from the board of directors.[13]

References

  1. ↑ "Altman Argued With OpenAI Board Member Toner Before Ouster". The Information.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Aussie altruist at the heart of the OpenAI imbroglio". Australian Financial Review. November 21, 2023.
  3. ↑ Metz, Cade; Mickle, Tripp; Isaac, Mike (2023-11-21). "Before Altman's Ouster, OpenAI's Board Was Divided and Feuding". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-11-22.
  4. ↑ Hodgson, Camilla; Hammond, George (November 22, 2023). "Who were the OpenAI board members that sacked Sam Altman?". Financial Times.
  5. ↑ Wilson, Cam (2023-11-21). "Who is Helen Toner? Meet the 30-something Australian OpenAI board member who voted out Sam Altman". Crikey. Retrieved 2023-11-22.
  6. ↑ Remco Zwetsloot; Helen Toner; Jeffrey Ding (16 November 2018). "Beyond the AI Arms Race: America, China, and the Dangers of Zero-Sum Thinking". Foreign Affairs. ISSN 0015-7120. Wikidata Q123517027.
  7. ↑ Helen Toner; Jenny Xiao; Jeffrey Ding (2 June 2023). "The Illusion of China's AI Prowess: Regulating AI Will Not Set America Back in the Technology Race". Foreign Affairs. ISSN 0015-7120. Wikidata Q123517054.
  8. ↑ "OpenAI's 'unusual' board can make unilateral decisions without asking permission from anyone—like deep-pocketed backer Microsoft and Satya Nadella". Fortune. Retrieved 2023-12-17.
  9. ↑ Andrew Imbrie; Owen Daniels; Helen Toner (1 October 2023), Decoding Intentions: Artificial Intelligence and Costly Signals (PDF), Wikidata Q123517123
  10. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-board-fight.html
  11. ↑ Montgomery, Blake; Anguiano, Dani (2023-11-18). "OpenAI fires co-founder and CEO Sam Altman for allegedly lying to company board". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-12-17.
  12. ↑ "OpenAI leaders warned of abusive behavior before Sam Altman's ouster". Washington Post. 2023-12-08. Retrieved 2023-12-18.
  13. ↑ "Sam Altman Returns as OpenAI CEO in Chaotic Win for Microsoft". Bloomberg. November 22, 2023 – via Bloomberg.com.
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