Exclusive: OpenAI expands policy team amid legislative headwinds
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Photo: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
OpenAI's global affairs team is growing with three key hires focused on state policy, a spokesperson for the lab told Axios.
The big picture: OpenAI tapped policy professionals with Republican and Democratic ties, as well as industry experience, as bipartisan efforts across the country to regulate artificial intelligence intensify.
Driving the news: Jessica Schumer, former Council of Economic Advisers chief of staff in the Obama administration, will oversee policy and partnerships across the Northeast.
- Schumer, daughter of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, most recently led Amazon's public policy work in New York.
- Caulder Harvill-Childs, who most recently managed public policy for Meta, will lead state-level policy and partnerships across the Southeast. Harvill-Childs is a Republican policy veteran who worked for Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns.
- Thomas MacLellan will lead OpenAI's state cyber defense policy after more than twenty years of cyber and public policy experience, including at Palo Alto Networks, Symantec, FireEye and the National Governors Association.
Zoom out: OpenAI is facing a wave of state legislative efforts and, under the leadership of top lobbyist Chris Lehane, is taking on a "reverse federalism" approach — as Lehane likes to call it — where large, powerful states adopt similar rules and create a de facto national standard.
- It's a way to get around Congress' inability to pass tech laws as states race ahead.
- OpenAI has so far successfully influenced California and New York's AI transparency laws.
What we're watching: With cyber alarm bells regularly going off and legislators feeling the pressure to take action, Schumer, Harvill-Childs and MacLellan will have to hit the ground running.
