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Former US Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers has stepped down from the board of OpenAI following the release of emails that showed he solicited advice from the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on pursuing a relationship with a female mentee.
Summers was among a number of high-profile figures shown to have exchanged emails with the disgraced financier after a House of Representatives committee released a tranche of Epstein’s correspondence last week.
“In line with my announcement to step away from my public commitments, I have also decided to resign from the board of OpenAI,” Summers said in a statement.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to have served, excited about the potential of the company, and look forward to following their progress,” he added.
Summers said earlier this week that he would step back from “public commitments” following the release of the Epstein documents, which showed he had asked the late paedophile for advice on an extramarital relationship between 2018 and 2019.
Summers joined the OpenAI board in November 2023 following the temporary ousting of chief executive Sam Altman by its old board.
“Larry has decided to resign from the OpenAI Board of Directors, and we respect his decision. We appreciate his many contributions and the perspective he brought to the Board,” the board said.
The San Francisco-based company was founded as a non-profit in 2015 with the mission to create AI technologies that “benefit all of humanity”. It completed a corporate restructuring in October, which allows it to raise more money through a new for-profit entity called the OpenAI Group.
Summers sat on the board of both the OpenAI Group and its new non-profit, called the OpenAI Foundation.
Other board members include Altman; Bret Taylor, co-founder of start-up Sierra and former Twitter chair; and Adam D’Angelo, founder and chief executive of Quora and the former chief technology officer of Facebook.
Summers has already withdrawn from roles at a variety of think tanks, including the Budget Lab at Yale, the Center for American Progress, the Center for Global Development and the Hamilton Project. The New York Times has said it would not be renewing his contract as a columnist.
Summers has said he intends to continue teaching at Harvard University, where he is a professor.
This is a developing story