Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who led the U.S. central bank through the 2008 global financial crisis, has joined Anthropic’s independent oversight body, the AI giant announced Thursday.
The Anthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust is supposed to ensure the company develops advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity. It has the power to appoint Anthropic board members, and advises the board and company leadership on decisions related to AI’s societal impact.
Bernanke is now one of four members of the Trust. He joins social entrepreneur Neil Buddy Shah, Richard Fontaine, a former national security official in the George W. Bush administration, and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, a former intelligence advisor to President Joe Biden.
Anthropic said Bernanke's experience studying financial crises and steering the U.S. economy through one of its most turbulent periods would help the company assess AI's effects on workforces and the broader economy.
“The potential of artificial intelligence is enormous, and so is the range of outcomes,” Bernanke said in a statement. “How that potential plays out will depend, in part, on the institutions we build around it.”
Bernanke remains a polarizing figure in financial history. As Fed chair from 2006 to 2014, he oversaw America’s central bank as the U.S. housing market collapsed and the ensuing financial crisis pushed the global economy into its worst downturn since the Great Depression.
Bernanke was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on banks and financial crises.
