Exclusive | OpenAI risks White House relationship with hiring of nuisance AI policy executive: sources
Top OpenAI official Dean Ball is in the middle of a heated feud with the Trump administration – and White House officials warn that Sam Altman’s firm risked its relationship with the government by hiring him for a senior role, The Post has learned.Ball infuriated Trump AI officials last month after claiming in an X post that the White House should create “regulatory risk” — or new rules imposing consequences on US firms — to discourage use of Chinese AI models.White House AI czar David Sacks questioned if Ball was “confessing to a regulatory capture strategy” to benefit OpenAI, while Pentagon AI chief Emil Michael slammed Ball as the AI world’s “supreme village idiot.”The incident was just the latest sign of long-simmering bad blood between key White House figures and Ball, who served a four-month stint on Trump’s AI team from April to August of last year.
Ball became a vocal critic of Trump’s AI strategy after leaving the administration, even as he billed himself as a key architect of the White House’s high-profile AI Action Plan — a detailed roadmap for how the US could win the AI race.Three White House officials with direct knowledge of the matter allege that Ball has exaggerated his role on that project.The officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the situation, described Ball as a “junior-to-mid-level policy analyst” whose ideas were regularly ignored by decision-makers – and say he never obtained a security clearance, which is needed to participate in high-level discussions.One of the officials said it was the “most ludicrous assertion imaginable” that Ball played a senior role in crafting the AI Action Plan.“Everyone who was actually involved in architecting it is way too nice to say it in frank terms,” the official said.
“He was at best a nuisance and at worst irrelevant.” A source close to Ball pushed back on claims that he exaggerated his work at the White House, noting that a blueprint written by Bal...