Hundreds of agencies across the federal government are scrambling to find more than 400 chief AI officers by the end of the year, as Ryan reports.

Why it matters: The requirement, one of the edicts of President Biden's recent AI executive order, aims to make sure every arm of government has a top exec who is ready to deal with AI.

Driving the news: The Office of Management and Budget released guidance to federal agencies on how to implement Biden's AI executive order — and how to hire a chief AI officer (CAIO) is on top of that list.

• The Executive Office of the President is also required to hire a Chief AI Officer, per the memorandum's definition of federal agencies.
• The order gave agencies a 60-day window to designate a person for this role and we are now approximately halfway through that window.

What's happening: The primary role of a CAIO is "coordination, innovation, and risk management for their agency's use of AI," acting as eyes and ears for agency leadership.

• The CAIO will need to develop an AI strategy for their agency, and be "deeply interconnected" with HR, IT, data, cybersecurity, civil rights, and customer experience leaders in their agency.

The intrigue: Though each CAIO is expected to "improve accountability for AI issues," per the memorandum, the Government Accountability Office is exempt from hiring a CAIO, along with the Federal Election Commission.

By the numbers: CAIOs should be employed at Senior Executive Service level (which requires PhD level education) — meaning maximum pay of $212,100.

• The lowest CAIO salary in Glassdoor's database is $223,184 — more than the highest available to a government CAIO — the median package for a private sector CAIO is around $300,000, per Glassdoor.

Context: The Department of Homeland Security has already appointed a CAIO, while Health and Human Services is onto its second CAIO since 2021 and has published an AI playbook.

• The Department of Housing and Urban Development named HUD CFO Vinay Singh its new chief AI officer.
• CAIOs from all sectors will gather for a summit in Boston on Dec. 14.

Private sector CAIOs have advice for those about to take on government CAIO roles. Several tell Axios that CAIOs should push for broad mandates covering a mix of functions — strategy, talent and skills, product development, implementation and governance.

What they're saying: Dan O'Connell, chief AI and strategy officer at Dialpad, a competitor of Zoom and Cisco, tells Axios that reporting lines matter.

• "I report directly to our CEO" and "our chief product officer and I work hand-in-hand," O'Connell says.
• Steve Mills, chief AI ethics officer at BCG GAMMA tells Axios that agency chiefs should look beyond technical expertise when selecting a CAIO: "It has to be somebody that can manage a large complex program," he says, and they should have a mandate to search for "incremental wins" but also to ask "How do we completely create a new citizen experience with AI?'"
• "There's so much that can be driven in a common way like basic policy tooling and vendor management" but there are many individual use cases that require specific attention and their own AI ethics officer, Mills says.

Yes, but: Don't expect CAIOs to deliver AI accountability if they lack resources or direct support from their agency leadership.

• Spencer Reynolds, a former DHS senior intelligence counsel has written that the agency needs far better oversight than what accountability teams across the 260,000 person organization and the department's CAIO have provided on services "such as new facial recognition technology and algorithmic risk assessments."

Sam Altman's return to OpenAI as CEO is a win for him, but not a total win — and even now, the game still has more innings, as Scott Rosenberg and I report.

Why it matters: The company that sparked the generative-AI boom isn't going to collapse in chaos or lose all its employees to competitors, but its future still carries big question marks.

What's next: The turmoil at OpenAI will calm down as a new three-man board takes over. But Altman isn't on that board — and Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, part of the old board majority that fired Altman, is.

An independent investigation into the events around Altman's firing could strengthen Altman's position if it concludes that he did no wrong.

• But if it finds a smoking gun somewhere in the former board's reasons for giving him the sack — which the board has failed repeatedly to explain since then — Altman could face more challenges.

The new board could move rapidly to expand its roster, including with representatives of Microsoft, the firm's largest investor and closest partner.

• But the board is unlikely to add Altman back until the investigation clears him.

That means ultimate authority over OpenAI's fate, which used to rest with six people, now rests with three: D'Angelo; new board chair Bret Taylor, former co-CEO of Salesforce; and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.

• It's an all-white-male board deciding the future of a technology that's beset with concerns over bias, misinformation and deepening inequality.

Zoom out: OpenAI's creation as a nonprofit was intended to help insure that the development of advanced AI would "benefit humanity." But since the release of ChatGPT a year ago, the company has been riding the tiger of a tech boom that could mint billions.

• At first, the board battle looked like a last stand by the forces that aim to slow AI down for safety's sake against Silicon Valley's move-fast-and-break-things ethos.
• In fact, sources familiar with the old board's thinking say the falling out was more personal and involved a loss of trust in Altman.

The bottom line: There will be no pause in AI research and deployment. But OpenAI's near-implosion could reinforce efforts in Washington and abroad to regulate the AI industry more quickly.

• Promises and commitments by CEOs don't look as reliable when the CEOs can come and go this quickly.

• While the major large language models continue to implement safeguards against bias, hate speech and other explicit content, others are building generative AI systems without such protections. (The Atlantic)
• X (formerly Twitter) could lose up to $75 million in ad revenue due to the latest advertiser pullback, The New York Times reported, citing internal documents.
• Russia's interior ministry added Meta spokesperson Andy Stone to a list of wanted criminals. (Axios)
• Former Google and Uber engineer and Trump pardonee Anthony Levandowski calls AI an "inorganic lifeform" and explains why he's relaunching his Way of the Future AI church. (Bloomberg)

Break time is over, sadly.