Mira Murati - The most powerful woman in AI

The chief technology officer (CTO) of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, Mira Murati, has had quite a spectacular career that already includes a number of top-level positions. Born in Vlorë, a coastal city in south-western Albania, Murati was fascinated by mathematics, video games and computer science from an early age. She left her home country to study at Dartmouth College, an Ivy League university in New Hampshire, in the US, graduating in 2012 with a degree in mechanical engineering.

Beginning her career in Tokyo as an analyst for the bank Goldman Sachs, Murati later moved to Silicon Valley to get experience at some of the world's most innovative technology companies. She worked as an engineer at an aerospace company, spent three years at Tesla as a senior product manager and she worked at the computer hardware manufacturer Leap Motion as vice president of product and engineering. In 2018, Murati joined OpenAI and quickly got two big promotions, becoming CTO in May 2022. And she's still only in her mid-30s.

In January 2023, OpenAI's estimated value was around $29 billion, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. ChatGPT, which had been launched just two months earlier, already had an estimated 100 million active monthly users. Murati's role in the growth of the business has been significant: she leads the teams behind both DALL-E, which uses AI to create art based on text prompts, and ChatGPT.

Addressing the ethics of AI

Murati openly addresses criticisms based on the ethical concerns of artificial intelligence. "The technology has such a huge effect on society," she told Trevor Noah on The Daily Show. "But also, society can and should shape it. There are a ton of questions we are wrestling with every day." She has also spoken out about the potential risks of AI, stating that it is time to move towards regulating it. In an interview with TIME magazine in February 2023, she acknowledged common concerns over AI's impact on society: "There are a lot of ethical and philosophical questions that we need to consider."

Renowned for being a very private person, Murati is uncomfortable with the hype that ChatGPT has generated. When asked about the updated version of ChatGPT, GPT-4, she told the US business magazine Fast Company: "Less hype would be good."