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OpenAI is bringing on some big names to the team in the lead-up to its public debut: Google DeepMind AI legend Noam Shazeer and former Trump White House AI policy official Dean Ball.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shazeer, a co-lead at Gemini and the founder of AI role-playing startup Character AI, announced his departure on Wednesday<\/a>. He had been at Google since 2000, leaving only for a three-year period when he left to co-found Character AI. Two years ago, Google re-hired Shazeer<\/a> in a $2.7 billion deal that gave the tech giant access to the startup\u2019s technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n The move is the latest in a series of shufflings between the top AI labs, including Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. Shazeer is credited for being one of the foundational minds behind modern generative AI. He co-authored the seminal 2017 paper \u201cAttention Is All You Need,\u201d which introduced the Transformer architecture.<\/p>\n Before leaving Google, Shazeer had also reportedly been stirring the pot when it came to political issues. According to The Information,<\/a> Shazeer voiced opinions on internal messaging boards on transgender identity and Israel\u2019s war in Gaza that resulted in management deleting his posts.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whether those controversies will follow him to his new employer remains to be seen. In the meantime, OpenAI is also shoring up its policy credentials by bringing Ball to the team. Ball had a brief stint last year in the White House, where he helped publish America\u2019s AI Action Plan before stepping down to rejoin the techno-libertarian think tank the Foundation for American Innovation as a senior fellow.<\/p>\n \u201cI am pleased and honored to announce that, on July 6, I\u2019ll be joining OpenAI as leader of a new team called Strategic Futures,\u201d Ball wrote on X on Thursday<\/a>. \u201cOur mandate will be to help the company\u2019s leadership shape frontier AI policy.\u201d<\/p>\n Ball will report directly to Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon. The \u201csmall, high-agency team\u201d will focus on \u201cmatters pertaining to: catastrophic risk, recursive self-improvement, labor market impact, and the relationship between the frontier labs, governments (particularly the U.S. Federal Government), and society,\u201d Ball wrote in a blog post.<\/a><\/p>\n The Strategic Futures team will cover both public-facing policy and internal governance, he added. That last is important \u2014 Ball noted that \u201calmost by necessity,\u201d AI labs will have to lead on AI governance decisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn other words, internal governance<\/em> will be more central to the future of AI than most people realize,\u201d Ball wrote.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Ball\u2019s decision to join OpenAI \u2014 arguably an AI favorite in the administration \u2014 comes as Anthropic battles once again with the U.S. government. Late last week, President Donald Trump ordered an export control ban on Anthropic\u2019s latest models,<\/a> Fable 5 and Mythos 5<\/a>, leading to the AI firm being forced to take the models down entirely to avoid noncompliance. For anyone who had \u201cgovernment interference\u201d on their S-1 risk factor bingo card, Ball is what it looks like when a company locks in its insider status while a rival is squeezed.<\/p>\n TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for more information.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n