Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary and Harvard president, has resigned from the board of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, in the wake of a firestorm over his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Summers’ exit from the high-profile artificial intelligence firm came Wednesday, just two days after he announced he was stepping back from all public commitments following the release of thousands of his emails with the disgraced financier.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to have served, excited about the potential of the company, and look forward to following their progress,” Summers said in a statement to CNBC.
OpenAI’s board said it respected Summers’ decision.
“We appreciate his many contributions and the perspective he brought to the Board,” the board said in a statement.
The controversy erupted last week when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released more than 20,000 documents from Epstein’s estate, revealing a chummy relationship between Summers and the notorious pedophile.
The emails, which continued until the day before Epstein’s 2019 arrest, showed the two men corresponding about a woman Summers was interested in, among other topics.
