OpenAI’s crisis is yet another wake-up call

GOOD governance aims to reduce surprises and effectively overcome them when they arise. The recent crisis at OpenAI, which has resulted in none of the remaining founders – Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman – sitting on the interim board today, has again exposed the fragility of governance in high-speed tech organisations.

Many commentaries on the OpenAI crisis excessively personalise and polarise matters, framing the actors as AI doomers, accelerationists, altruists or greedy techno-capitalists. Instead of pointing fingers or engaging in these emotional debates, a more constructive point, we believe, is to acknowledge from the outset that all actors can excel in certain roles and contexts, while falling short in others.

While human nature cannot be controlled to always be good, effective organisations can more successfully harness their people’s greatest potential – and realise their own – by using a key human technology: good governance.