The Next CEO of OpenAI should be Peter Welinder

Nov 18, 2023

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I don’t know him personally, but in my exchanges with Peter covering the early days after OpenAI’s GPT-3 release, it was clear to me that he demonstrates the right leadership qualities for a company like OpenAI with such a grand mission.

Peter is level headed, fair, and extremely passionate about the product and mission. For many years, Peter was the most public and active company point of contact for product feedback, any issues, and for the OpenAI developer community at large.

We spoke early on about the grand vision for an AI company with a robust set of AI products, democratized access, and robust developer community. Peter gets it. Both what’s possible and what is important to OpenAI’s users and developers.

He even hopped on a call with me on a Sunday right away when I first raised issues early on about OpenAI’s GPT-3 developer application process and concerns I had around diversity. He didn’t hold back, was sincere, and cared about the issue at hand.

Peter is a seasoned technology leader and executive, accomplished researcher, product community champion, and internally respected by OpenAI employees. His current role as VP of Product makes him the ideal candidate to lead the company forward given yesterday’s incredible setback.

I don’t have any insight into OpenAI’s hiring process for the role, but if he’s interested in the role, I think making Peter the CEO of OpenAI could restore stability and keep OpenAI on its track towards success both within the company and the general public at large.

In order to restore stability and OpenAI’s previously strong public image, I strongly encourage OpenAI leadership and Board to consider Peter Welinder as the new CEO of OpenAI.

Multimodal by Bakz T. Future

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