OpenAI’s new ‘initial’ board is all-white, all-male. Really?

But that was then, this is now. With the return of Altman as CEO, the neanderthal days of technology are back with a vengeance.

That new world order emerged on Friday when the OpenAI board ousted CEO Sam Altman and named chief technology officer Mira Murati as interim CEO. The boardroom dustup prompted chairman Greg Brockman to depart as well, leaving the promising artificial intelligence company with a board that was half women.

For a brief shining moment, OpenAI represented what the future of technology should look like: a company headed by a female CEO and board that reached gender parity.

Three of the four board members who pushed Altman out last week are gone, notably the two female directors — tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

We’re all still unpacking the chaos that has enveloped the world’s most important AI company. One thing I know for sure: the new board can’t remain all-male and all-white.

Here’s the latest for those keeping score at home: Current director and Quora founder Adam D’Angelo got to keep his seat. The new additions are Bret Taylor, formerly co-CEO of Salesforce, and Larry Summers, former US Treasury Secretary and former Harvard president.

Summers, a Harvard professor, famously has misunderstood the gender gap. As Harvard president, he faced a barrage of criticism after suggesting the reason there aren’t more top female scientists is because of “innate” differences between men’s and women’s abilities in math and science. He later apologized.

Generative AI — OpenAI in particular, as the company behind ChatGPT — is supposed to change everything and lead us into a better future. But the question has always been for whom?

The fear among those of us who aren’t white men is that AI is going to maintain our world of inequities. The technology is likely to pose a bigger economic threat to women and people of color. That’s because AI is being brought to us by the same white male creators as before. These biases only disappear when there’s more diversity in the corner offices and in the boardrooms.

Diversity, as studies have shown , is better for the bottom line. Having different perspectives at the table is what leads to innovation and breaks corporate culture of group-think.

When I first read about OpenAI’s upheaval over the weekend, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of women on its board. How progressive for Silicon Valley, I thought to myself. The shakeup reflected a board that wasn’t afraid of disrupting the status quo.

Now what?

All is not lost. I’ve got to think OpenAI is still rebuilding its board. It now must make diversity a priority in the next round of board seats. No excuses.

There are women and people of color in AI who are up to the task. I can think of three candidates off the top of my head: Rumman Chowdhury , formerly of Twitter and a Responsible AI Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society; Timnit Gebru, former Googler and founder of The Distributed AI Research Institute , and Rana el Kaliouby , co-founder of AI company Affectiva.

If OpenAI is going to lead us into the future, its board has to represent all of us.

Shirley Leung is a Business columnist. She can be reached at .