DC Welcomes Ex-OpenAI Board Member After Sam Altman Drama

Helen Toner finds out she isn’t going to have to hand over her private communications to Elon Musk while walking through Washington, DC, on an afternoon in June before the brutal heat has set in for summer. Toner, five months pregnant and on a mission to grab some food before a speaking engagement, proclaims herself “very, very glad” upon hearing the news, after I deliver it to her by reading aloud from a news alert on my phone as we head to a cafe in Penn Quarter.

The 32-year-old Toner is best known as one of the OpenAI board members who last November helped engineer the brief removal of Sam Altman, the company’s chief executive officer. The episode, which thrust Toner into the center of a bitter Silicon Valley debate over how to deal with the power of artificial intelligence, has mostly subsided. But soon after Musk filed a lawsuit in April accusing the startup of failing to adhere to its nonprofit mission, he threatened to dredge the controversy back up by subpoenaing Toner’s communications related to Altman’s firing. More tech industry drama was the last thing she needed. “I mean, it would have been fine. I would have done all the things you’re supposed to do,” she says. “But it’s not what I would choose to do with my time, if being presented the choice.”