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The board should include a data ethicist, a philosopher of mind, a neuroscientist, a computer scientist with interdisciplinary expertise and a political strategist.

Sam Altman’s sudden ouster and revolving-door return as CEO of OpenAI was the result of a boardroom power struggle between Altman and board members like Helen Toner who raised concerns about the unbridled power of artificial intelligence. The debacle shows that when a board is not aligned with the objectives of management and investors, chaos ensues.

What comes next for OpenAI will require extreme statesmanship from Altman and surgical implementation of just the right checks to balance the safety risks of AI against the company’s commercial interests. The stakes will only rise as the company continues to pursue its quest for artificial general intelligence, the kind of AI that can learn and think like humans.

Navigating the perilous road ahead requires a clear resolution to what started this conflict: the unusual makeup of OpenAI’s board, which controls a nonprofit organization that oversees OpenAI’s for-profit businesses.

I’ve argued that addressing AI’s biggest questions requires an interdisciplinary approach. AI is not just an engineering challenge but a human challenge requiring comprehensive consideration of technological, policy, moral and epistemological issues. OpenAI needs a revamped board of directors guided by fiduciaries who are fully equipped to handle all of them.

The former OpenAI board was brash and unsophisticated. It didn’t have a transition plan sorted out before firing Altman, nor did it appear to have contemplated the effects of its seismic decision. Professional fiduciaries examine all the facts, alternatives and risks, and then proceed stepwise. They look at a slate of potential successors, weigh the pros and cons, consider the broader ramifications and move in a thoughtful, calculated manner. I’ve seen community boards composed of well-meaning novices exercise 1,000 times more acumen than OpenAI’s board—which is why all but one member is gone.

Altman now has a unique opportunity to use his negotiating power to shape a governance structure that balances the ethical and safety concerns of OpenAI’s technology with its commercial interest. He does not have sole discretion, but he certainly has more power and fewer constraints than he did pre-coup. If he uses this power wisely, it will seal his reputation as a “master of AI and persuasion,” as Paul Graham, a co-founder of Y Combinator, has described him, while attending to the concerns and objectives of his investors.

I’m betting on Altman to effectively straddle these lines and manage the resulting complexities.

The temporary board currently consists of Bret Taylor, former co-CEO of Salesforce and Twitter’s final board chair prior to Elon Musk’s acquisition; Larry Summers, an economist and former president of Harvard University who served as treasury secretary during the Clinton administration; and Adam D’Angelo, Quora CEO and a holdover from OpenAI’s previous board who apparently played a significant role in Altman’s return. The final OpenAI board will have nine seats in total.

Taylor and Summers are heavy-hitting, pragmatic veterans who can provide the commercial, financial and regulatory guidance Altman needs. But Toner and her supporters were right about one thing: We can’t swat away the long-term concerns about AI. Appointing a new board that doesn’t attend to AI’s societal risks would be a grave mistake.

Achieving ethical AI requires an integrative approach rooted in critical thinking from both the humanities and the sciences. Those disciplines also need to be represented on the board, which should include a data ethicist, a philosopher of mind, a neuroscientist, a computer scientist with interdisciplinary expertise and a political strategist.

There are promising candidates for data ethicist; I like Kate Crawford or R. David Edelman for this role. Crawford has expertise in understanding large-scale data systems, machine learning and AI in broader cultural contexts. Edelman would bring both political acumen, as the architect of the U.S.’s first international cyber policy and AI policy, and the technical background to ask critical questions about the data that fuel OpenAI’s systems. The person holding this seat would address short- and long-term issues with data and AI, including but not limited to articulating and adopting ethical data principles, citizens’ rights around how OpenAI uses their data and protocols for shaping and adequately controlling AI behavior.

Daniel Dennett could fill the spot for a philosopher of mind. He’s the “great American rationalist,” a leading light who has thought deeply for decades about the intersection of computing, epistemology, language and consciousness. This perspective is critical to consider the longer-term, existential concerns of AI with a principal focus on the alignment problem: how to define safeguards, policies, back doors and kill switches for AI to align it to the maximum extent possible with human needs and objectives. Dennett would be a welcome contrast to the fundamentalism of prior board members Toner and Tasha McCauley and would address OpenAI’s unintended consequences.

Promising candidates for the neuroscientist seat include polymath David Sulzer, a leading expert on how different parts of the brain communicate, and Karl Friston, developer of the free energy principle (an organizing principle of life and intelligence). A neuroscientist would advise on critical questions of sentience and how intelligence unfolds within AI models, what models of human cognition are most relevant and useful for the development of AI, and what AI can teach us about human cognition.

Noted computer scientist Fei-Fei Li would bring a computational and cognitive neuroscience lens to navigate the fast-evolving possibilities of the interface between human cognition and AGI—while also examining the technical advances OpenAI needs to advance its commercial interests.

There are reports that OpenAI considered but did not select philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Of these, Rice would have rounded out the board with diverse policy expertise, though Summers can provide political savvy to manage the regulatory issues with AI. If Altman isn’t considering former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the seat of a political strategist, he should.

Altman has a small window of opportunity to put forward suggestions to strengthen the board. At the end of the day, whether this board can create the checks and balances OpenAI needs is the biggest question of Altman’s leadership—and the biggest legacy he’ll leave in the most consequential job he’ll ever have.