Mira Murati breaks silence on Thinking Machines Lab and AI governance

Mira Murati, the former chief technology officer of OpenAI, has stepped back into the public spotlight during an interview with Bloomberg in San Francisco on Thursday. This marked her first major media appearance in roughly 18 months. Murati used the platform to discuss her new venture, Thinking Machines Lab, a frontier AI lab—a term for organizations developing highly capable AI models. The startup has been operating in the background for approximately 18 months. Murati detailed the company’s development of “interaction models,” which are AI interfaces designed to process continuous streams of audio, text, and video in 200-millisecond intervals, rather than relying on traditional turn-based prompts.

The interview also addressed Murati’s tenure at OpenAI, where she spent six years, including two as CTO. She reflected on the “chaotic week” in November 2023 when the board fired Sam Altman. During this five-day crisis, Murati briefly served as interim CEO. She asserted that OpenAI would have “imploded” without her involvement during the crisis. Looking back, Murati stated she would have pushed for more information and a transition plan during the November 2023 events, though she sidestepped questions regarding whether she still trusts Altman.

Beyond her former employer, Murati raised broader concerns about the concentration of power among a few industry leaders, pointing to an absence of structural checks in the AI industry regarding consequential decisions. While competitors like Anthropic gain momentum and Elon Musk’s xAI integrates further into the market, Murati downplayed personal rivalries. “When I wake up in the morning, I am not thinking about how to kill the competitor,” she said. She also addressed organizational volatility and the nine-figure compensation packages currently used to attract AI talent. Regarding broader societal anxieties, such as “mass job displacement” and the potential use of AI to build “chemical weapons,” Murati urged active human oversight. Born in Albania, Murati spoke with a slight Eastern European accent as she warned that the future will look very different, and not better, if humans take their hands off the wheel too soon.

Why it matters

As the former CTO of OpenAI and current CEO of Thinking Machines Lab, Murati’s first major media appearance in 18 months offers a rare look at her new company’s technical direction and her critique of the AI industry’s governance.