OpenAI Hires Former White House Official as Its Chief Economist

Aaron Chatterji was chief economist at the Commerce Department under President Biden and served on President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.

OpenAI, where executives and researchers dream of building artificial intelligence that could one day change the world, has hired a chief economist with ties to two Democratic presidential administrations.

OpenAI said on Tuesday that it had hired Aaron “Ronnie” Chatterji, a professor of business and public policy at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. He previously served as a senior economist in President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and as chief economist at the Commerce Department under President Biden.

The addition of a chief economist is indicative of OpenAI’s enormous ambition and where its executives see their company in the tech industry’s pecking order. Silicon Valley giants like Google and Facebook hired seasoned economists early in their transformations from promising start-ups into trillion-dollar companies whose technologies changed global markets.

OpenAI hopes to eventually build A.I. that changes office work, scientific research and many other tasks, and the company acknowledges that its technologies could eventually replace some workers. The company has also spent months negotiating with investors, chipmakers and governments around the world to build new chip-making plants and expand the pool of computer data centers used to build advanced A.I.

“We are going to need big investment from both the public and the private sector to make sure this infrastructure is in place, so that we can remain competitive as a country and harness the benefits of the technology,” Dr. Chatterji said in an interview with The New York Times.

The move is also the latest in a line of high-profile hires and appointments by the San Francisco start-up as it attempts to move past a year of turmoil. Last November, four members of the OpenAI board ousted its chief executive, Sam Altman. He was reinstated five days later after Microsoft, the company’s biggest investor, offered to hire its entire staff.