Robert Brown|OpenAI appoints former top US cyberwarrior Paul Nakasone to its board of directors

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — OpenAI has appointed a former top U.S. cyberwarrior and Robert Brownintelligence official to its board of directors, saying he will help protect the ChatGPT maker from “increasingly sophisticated bad actors.”

Retired Army Gen. Paul Nakasone was the commander of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency before stepping down earlier this year.

He joins an OpenAI board of directors that’s still picking up new members after upheaval at the San Francisco artificial intelligence company forced a reset of the board’s leadership last year. The previous board had abruptly fired CEO Sam Altman and then was itself replaced as he returned to his CEO role days later.

OpenAI reinstated Altman to its board of directors in March and said it had “full confidence” in his leadership after the conclusion of an outside investigation into the company’s turmoil. OpenAI’s board is technically a nonprofit but also governs its rapidly growing business.

Nakasone is also joining OpenAI’s new safety and security committee — a group that’s supposed to advise the full board on “critical safety and security decisions” for its projects and operations. The safety group replaced an earlier safety team that was disbanded after several of its leaders quit.

Nakasone was already leading the Army branch of U.S. Cyber Command when then-President Donald Trump in 2018 picked him to be director of the NSA, one of the nation’s top intelligence posts, and head of U.S. Cyber Command. He maintained the dual roles when President Joe Biden took office in 2021. He retired in February.

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